A Senate committee Wednesday embraced legislation that would for the first time allow federal regulation of cigarettes.

The bill, approved 13-8 by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, would require the Food and Drug Administration to restrict tobacco advertising, regulate warning labels and remove hazardous ingredients.

The agency also would be given the authority to set standards for products that tobacco companies advertise as "reduced risk" products.

"This is an enormous step forward," said Matt Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. "This could end up being the signature public health action this Congress takes."

The bill has broad bipartisan support in the Senate, where more than 50 senators have signed on as co-sponsors. A similar bill passed the chamber in 2004 but was blocked in the House.

The tobacco legislation was crafted through several years of negotiations led by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., involving health groups and tobacco giant Philip Morris, which broke from its competitors to endorse FDA regulation.

The bill would allow the FDA to reduce the amount of nicotine in cigarettes, but only Congress could permanently ban them.

The committee adopted an amendment by Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., that would ban clove cigarettes, reversing a controversial decision by Kennedy to allow the FDA to make that decision.

Kennedy, the panel's chairman, said he was responding to several senators who contacted him with concerns that a ban on cloves would not be compliant with World Trade Organization rules. But Kennedy agreed to the ban after several senators objected.

Most cloves are marketed in Asia, and Philip Morris, a unit of New York-based Altria Group Inc. (MO), recently launched a Marlboro cigarette flavored with cloves in Indonesia.

Kennedy said at the meeting that Philip Morris had "nothing to do with our decision" and he supported the clove ban as long as it is WTO compliant.

Philip Morris's competitors are strongly opposed to the overall bill, saying it would lock in Philip Morris's dominant market share. The panel rejected several amendments by Republican Sen. Richard Burr, who represents R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in his home state of North Carolina. Kennedy said that Burr's amendments would undermine the legislation.

After the hearing, Burr said he would not rule out trying to hold up the bill on the Senate floor.

Enzi, the top Republican on the panel, also opposes the legislation and has objected to Philip Morris's involvement.

"If this bill is good for big tobacco, how can it be good for public health?," Enzi asked after the hearing. "The fact is, it can't. This bill is nothing more than a 'Marlboro Protection Act,' written to keep Philip Morris at the top of the tobacco market."

Enzi has introduced his own bill that would aim to greatly shrink the size of the tobacco market over the next 20 years.

I find myself in an unaccustomed and unexpected position: defending Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Gonzales fans, if there are Gonzales fans left, except for the only fan who counts: Don't take any comfort from my assessment.

In his Senate testimony last week, Gonzales once again dissembled and misled. He was too clever by seven-eighths. He employed his signature brand of inartful dodging — linguistic evasion, poorly executed. The brutalizing he received from senators of both parties was abundantly deserved.

But I don't think he actually lied about his March 2004 hospital encounter with then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. I certainly don't think he could be charged with — much less convicted of — perjury.

Go back to December 2005, when The New York Times reported on a secret program of warrantless wiretapping. President Bush acknowledged an effort "to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al-Qaida and related terrorist organizations."

Soon, the first stories about the hospital visit appeared.

In a Jan. 1, 2006, article, the Times reported then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey's refusal to approve continuation of the surveillance program and described "an emergency visit" to Ashcroft's hospital room by Gonzales and Andrew Card, then White House counsel and chief of staff, respectively.

Similarly, Newsweek reported how the White House aides "visited Ashcroft in the hospital to appeal Comey's refusal. In pain and on medication, Ashcroft stood by his No. 2."

It was in this context — senators knew about the hospital visit well before Comey's riveting description in May — that Gonzales appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in February 2006.

Asked about those reports, he said that "with respect to WHAT THE PRESIDENT HAS CONFIRMED, I do not believe that these DOJ officials that you were identifying had concerns about this program." The disagreements, he said, "dealt with operational capabilities that we're not talking about today."

Flash-forward to last week, when Gonzales once again said: "The disagreement that occurred and the reason for the visit to the hospital ... was about other intelligence activities. It was not about the Terrorist Surveillance Program THAT THE PRESIDENT ANNOUNCED TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE."

The emphasis is mine, and it matters. We know, from Comey's account, that the dispute was intense. We don't know precisely what the disagreement was about — and it makes sense that we don't know: This was a classified program, and all the officials, current and former, who have testified about it have been deliberately and appropriately vague.

In his May testimony, Comey referred only to "a particular classified program." FBI Director Robert Mueller told the House Judiciary Committee last week that the hospital-room encounter was about "an NSA program that has been much discussed."

Does this really contradict Gonzales or turn him into a perjurer? It's clear there was an argument over the warrantless wiretapping program. Comey refused to recertify it. In response, something about the program changed; Justice officials were willing to go along with the modified program.

The New York Times reported Sunday that the disagreement involved "computer searches through massive electronic databases" — not necessarily the more-limited program the president acknowledged. As the Times put it, "If the dispute chiefly involved data mining, rather than eavesdropping, Mr. Gonzales' defenders may maintain that his narrowly crafted answers, while legalistic, were technically correct."

Congress deserves better than technically correct linguistic parsing. So the bipartisan fury at Gonzales is understandable. Lawmakers are in full Howard Beale mode, mad as hell at Gonzales and not wanting to take it anymore.

But perjury is a crime that demands parsing: To be convicted, the person must have "willfully" stated a "material matter which he does not believe to be true."

The Supreme Court could have been writing about Gonzales when it ruled that "the perjury statute is not to be loosely construed, nor the statute invoked simply because a wily witness succeeds in derailing the questioner — so long as the witness speaks the literal truth" — even if the answers "were not guileless but were shrewdly calculated to evade."

Consequently, the calls by some Democrats for a special prosecutor to consider whether Gonzales committed perjury have more than a hint of maneuvering for political advantage. What else is to be gained by engaging in endless Clintonian debates about what the meaning of "program" is?

Rather, lawmakers need to concentrate on determining what the administration did — and under what claimed legal authority — that produced the hospital room showdown. They need to satisfy themselves that the administration has since been operating within the law; to see what changes might guard against a repetition of the early, apparently unlawful activities; and to determine where the foreign intelligence wiretapping statute might need fixes.

That's where Congress's focus should be — not on trying to incite a criminal prosecution that won't happen of an attorney general who should have been gone long ago.

Under the terms of the agreement, Nike Retail Services will pay $7.6 million to the current and former employees to resolve the claims. The lawsuit covers black employees who worked at the store from 1999 until now.

Nike also must make a host of other changes to address diversity, such as appointing a diversity consultant to monitor the Chicago store's compliance and a compliance officer at Nike's headquarters in Beaverton. The company must also add an ombudsperson at the store and conduct diversity training for all supervisors and managers there.

Nike also is required to review its human resources practice, create equal opportunity objectives for the store and review its theft-loss policies. It also will create a formal mentoring program for black employees.

The company and the attorney for the plaintiffs declined to comment further on the case.

"Discrimination has no place in our law, no place in our hearts and no place because of technicalities," said Rep. Robert Andrews, D-N.J.

The Supreme Court voted 5-4 on May 29 to throw out a Goodyear employee's complaint that she earned thousands of dollars less than her male counterparts because of discrimination.

Lilly Ledbetter, a supervisor at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.'s plant in Gadsden, Ala., sued right before she retired. She ended a 19-year career making $6,500 less than the lowest-paid male supervisor, and claimed earlier decisions by her supervisors kept her from making more.

The court said she had waited too long to sue. Under the justices' decision, which they said was based on congressional legislation, an employee must sue within a 180-day deadline of a decision involving pay if the employee thinks it involved race, sex, religion or national origin.

That opens the door for corporations to discriminate, Democrats said. "If you can get away with it for 180 days, you're home free," said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chair of the House Education and Labor Committee.

The Democrats' legislation would allow employees to sue within 180 days of their last affected paychecks. Senate Democrats are working on a similar bill.

Ledbetter, who will not be helped by the legislation, said she hopes it helps other people. "I just want to open the doors for women in the future so they can be treated fairly," she said in an interview.

The White House has threatened to veto the bill, and has enough votes in the House to make it stick.

The legislation "would allow employees to bring a claim of pay or other employment-related discrimination years or even decades after the alleged discrimination occurred," the White House said.

"Employers would be forced to defend against an avalanche of decades-old, frivolous claims. The anticipated increase in legal and record- keeping costs could be staggering," said Jay Timmons, the National Association of Manufacturers' senior vice president for policy and government relations.

House Republicans also said the measure was designed to benefit trial lawyers _ a Democratic constituency _ by giving them a new forum for thousands of lawsuits.

"Trial lawyers, you can be sure, are salivating at this prospect," said Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon of California, the ranking Republican on the Education and Labor Committee.

"The majority on the Supreme Court bent over backwards, ignoring both precedent and simple common sense, to rob (Ledbetter) of her right to equal treatment in the workplace," AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said. "The legislation passed today remedies that inequity and once again makes it possible for victims of discrimination to take their cases to court and receive fair hearings and just compensation."

Faris is serving 20 years in a maximum-security federal prison in Florence, Colo., for his role in an al-Qaida plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge. Faris scouted the bridge and told al-Qaida its plans wouldn't work, court papers have said.

Federal agents arrested Abdi the morning of Nov. 28, 2003, the day after Thanksgiving, out of fear the attack would be carried out on the heavy shopping day. He was arrested at 6 a.m. while leaving his Columbus home for morning prayers.

Prosecutors say Abdi gave stolen credit card numbers to a man accused of buying gear for al-Qaida, and lied on immigration documents to visit a jihadist training camp.

Abdi's attorneys said he was merely upset at the war in Afghanistan and reports of civilians killed in bombings by the U.S.-led invasion. They have said that the stolen numbers were never used and that the Justice Department never alleged what organization they believed was running the camp, what Abdi intended to do with the training, or whether he ever actually went.

Prosecutors accused Paul, who was arrested in April, of joining al-Qaida and plotting to bomb European tourist resorts and U.S. government facilities and military bases overseas.

Under a plea deal, Abdi is expected to receive a 10-year sentence on the one conspiracy count, which carries a maximum penalty of 15 years. Three additional charges were dropped in exchange for the plea.

He was to remain at the Franklin County jail until his sentencing date, which was not set.

Jaime Coulter, senior deputy district attorney, said Gore's sentencing will be continued until Feb. 7. If he has complied with all the conditions of the diversion program, the sentencing will be continued again for another year, with charges possibly being dropped in 2009.

"At that point, he will be able to withdraw his guilty plea as if he never entered it," Coulter said. Gore has been at a live-in treatment center since his arrest, said Allan Stokke, his attorney.

"He's actually doing more than what other people do as far as treatment goes," Stokke said. "He's got great family support." Gore's parents did not attend the hearing at the request of their son, but they were in California to support him, Stokke said.

The family had no comment, said Kalee Kreider, a spokeswoman.

Deputies who pulled over Gore said they discovered less than an ounce of marijuana and a variety of medications, including Xanax, Valium, Vicodin and Adderall. Authorities said he did not have a prescription for any of those medications. Gore also was charged with a traffic infraction for speeding.

The son of the former vice president and Democratic presidential nominee was previously arrested for marijuana possession in Maryland in 2003, when he was a student at Harvard University. Gore completed substance abuse counseling to settle those charges.

He now lives in Los Angeles and is an associate publisher of GOOD, a magazine aimed at young people that is about philanthropy.