Hoping to pounce on Gonzales's sagging support among Senate Republicans, Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said they will offer the no-confidence resolution on the Senate floor as early as next week.

The resolution would have no force of law, but Democrats hope it would raise the political stakes for Gonzales and for Republicans who vote to support him.

"Any faith that he can run or manage the department is gone," Schumer said. "It's going to be very surprising if we get fewer than 60 votes."

Gonzales continued to lose backing yesterday among GOP lawmakers as Norm Coleman (Minn.) became the sixth Senate Republican to call for his resignation. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) predicted Gonzales will resign once Congress completes an inquiry into the firings because he is "unable to perform his duties."

"I have a sense that when we finish our investigation, we may have a conclusion of the tenure of the attorney general," Specter said.

Gonzales has been under siege for four months because of Justice's shifting explanations for the prosecutor dismissals last year. Documents released by the department showed the effort was based in part on their loyalty to the Bush administration and its policies.

The attorney general was further damaged by testimony Tuesday from former deputy attorney general James B. Comey, who described how Gonzales, then the White House counsel, attempted to persuade then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft to reauthorize a terrorism surveillance program while Ashcroft was in intensive care recovering from surgery.

The Justice Department had deemed the secret warrantless program illegal, and Comey, as acting attorney general, refused to renew it. Comey, Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and others threatened to resign before President Bush intervened, Comey testified.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) said Bush "should obviously seriously consider" firing Gonzales over the 2004 incident.

Bush, who has strongly supported Gonzales, declined to comment yesterday on whether he ordered Gonzales and Andrew H. Card Jr., then Bush's chief of staff, to make the hospital visit.

In another challenge to Gonzales yesterday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and subcommittee chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) called on the Justice Department to widen the circle of lawmakers briefed on the surveillance program.

In a joint letter, they said that if the administration refuses to share information on the eavesdropping program with the Judiciary Committee, it would be "impossible" for the panel to consider any changes the administration is seeking in the wiretap law.

The Washington Post yesterday identified 26 U.S. attorneys included on firing lists compiled from February 2005 to December 2006 by D. Kyle Sampson, then Gonzales's chief of staff, and his colleagues.

Sources yesterday identified four other current or former U.S. attorneys included on a Jan. 1 list that grouped a dozen prosecutors into three tiers. They include current U.S. Attorneys Matthew Mead of Wyoming and Eric Melgren of Kansas and former prosecutors James K. Vines of Nashville and Michael G. Heavican of Nebraska.

None responded to requests for comment yesterday. The four names did not reappear on any of Sampson's other lists, according to the sources, who are familiar with the documents, which have been withheld from the public.

The same Jan. 1 list includes U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie of New Jersey, who also appears on a Nov. 1 list, sources said.

Several prosecutors considered for termination said in interviews that they had received no complaints about their performance and did not know why Sampson included them. His attorney declined to comment.

U.S. Attorney Gregory Miller of Tallahassee, who appeared on three lists between February 2005 and November 2006, said he has 17 years as a career prosecutor.

"I have no idea why Kyle put me there," Miller said. "I would note that, although I am on his list, Kyle is no longer with the department and I still am."

Two U.S. attorneys placed on a Nov. 1 list said yesterday that they received apologetic telephone calls in March from the official who assembled it, Michael J. Elston, chief of staff to the deputy attorney general. On Wednesday, Christie described a similar call.

Colm F. Connolly, the chief federal prosecutor in Delaware, said Elston called "to inform me that there was an e-mail that was going to be turned over to Congress and, although it was not to be disclosed publicly, often times Congress would leak things and this could be public at some point."

Connolly said he "expressed disappointment" and asked how the e-mail was prepared. He said Elston told him "that there was this firing process in the works at the time, and he had been asked to find out whether there were any other U.S. attorneys about whom there had been concerns."

Connolly said Elston told him that he collected names by "speaking to people" but that he "could not remember who he spoke with, and he said he could not remember what the concerns were as they related to me."

In Roanoke, U.S. Attorney John L. Brownlee issued a statement saying that he received a similar call from Elston on March 14 and "reported Mr. Elston's conduct" to Justice officials in Washington.

Another prosecutor included in Elston's e-mail, Mary Beth Buchanan of Pittsburgh, expressed astonishment and pointed to her stints in Washington running both the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys and, currently, the Office on Violence Against Women.

One U.S. attorney, Frank Maxwell Wood of Macon, Ga., appeared on Elston's list shortly after his district appeared on an internal Justice Department document as having a voter-fraud problem.

Elston's attorney, Robert N. Driscoll, said in a statement yesterday that Elston assembled the list based on other officials' concerns and was not suggesting that any of those prosecutors be fired. Elston and Sampson mutually agreed that none of the five prosecutors should be removed, he said.

"To the contrary, Mike's view is that the five U.S. attorneys mentioned in the e-mail are among the department's best," Driscoll said.

Echols said her three children excelled in school. In fact, she had attended two awards ceremonies for two of her children days before deputies came knocking on her door.

"The very next day, May 18, I was arrested, and I sat in jail for over five hours. I had never seen the inside of a jail," said Echols.

But in closing statements, prosecutors said Echols signed legal documents seven times saying her family lived at addresses in the city when in fact the family did not.

"Ladies and gentlemen, a lie is a lie, and our law says when you lie to the government, you have committed a crime," said assistant district attorney Grady Moore.

Echols' defense attorney, however, called the 16 felony charges overkill. They asked jurors to send a message that prosecutors had gone too far.

"She wanted her children to get a good quality education in a situation where they would not be latch-key children, where they would not have to come home alone, where they would not have to have a baby sitter, where they would not have to have day care, where their family would be responsible and take care of them," said attorney Vic Reynolds.

The sex scandal surfaced last year, shortly after Kutun was sworn in as North Miami's city attorney.

Kutun admittedly signed an affidavit in October 2006 detailing the meetings with a 16-year-old prostituted but claimed the girl pretended to be 18. The affidavit was drawn up in response to an extortion attempt against Kutun, his attorney said.

Kutun claimed the affidavit became public after it was stolen from his desk. He was briefly suspended from office and later fired. "I'm not a criminal here," he said when the allegations surfaced. Kutun was arrested in May 2006. He was charged in Miami-Dade and Broward counties with having sex with a minor.Sharpstein said those charges shouldn't have been filed.

"There was no victim. The girl's underage, but she was also performing acts of prostitution," he said. The Hollywood madam who set up Kutun's liaisons pleaded guilty to her role in the case. Roberta Orenbuch received probation.

Kutun will also receive five years of probation, which could end earlier if he continues undergoing sex-offender treatment and marital counseling.

Kutun, who wouldn't comment about his guilty plea, still faces charges in Broward County. Kutun's attorney said he is hoping for a similar plea deal there.

"Mr. Kutun believes it's in his best interests to get this over with -- the public spectacle and all the humiliation he's had to deal with," Sharpstein said.

The law offices of Peter Polischuk and Robert Dreher have filed suit on behalf of a class of plaintiffs alleging that Apple made "false claims" about the superior display capabilities of the MacBook and MacBook Pro. Class participants purport that the following marketing claims were made by Apple: "a nuanced view simply unavailable on other portables; "TFT display with support for millions of colors;" Aperture as "the ultimate photographer's workstation" Those claims are, at least in part, constituent of deception and misrepresentation, according to the plaintiffs, who claim that instead of adhering to the aforementioned degree of refinement, MacBook and MacBook Pro displays have been prone to flaws like "grainy" or "sparkly" quality, banding in gradients, and distracting lines of distortion.

The lawsuit even directly references a MacNN forum thread in which users note a distinct "grainy" quality of the MacBook Pro display that is extant regardless of booted operating system (Windows XP or Mac OS X) and non-extant on externally connected displays. The platform independence of this issue, as noted in the thread, is directly referenced as a key proponent of the lawsuit's claim.

Posters to that thread also identified a small LCD test application that dramatically exhibits the "sparkle" effect when run on afflicted systems. Another poster to the thread took several pictures of the "grainy" effect.

To showcase the defects, the lawsuit claims that Apple's mechanisms for dealing with users experiencing these issues was less than cordial, with class litigants complaining of Apple employees denying requests for exchange or refund on the basis that machines were "within spec" or that users were "imagining" the problems. In addition, the lawsuit claims that Apple routinely corralled discussion of the problems on its own message boards, deleting grievances voiced by users.

A temporary guest worker program would also be implemented once the borders are declared secure, and the worker identification program is enacted. Finally, up to 1.5 million migrant farm-workers could obtain legal status through an "AgJobs" measure, supported by Senator Diana Feinstein (D-CA) and Senator Larry Craig (R-ID). AgJobs would be a five year pilot program that would grant legal status to those would have worked in US farms for at least 150 days in the last two years.

Today's action by the California Supreme Court is a victory for our state because potentially life-saving science can continue without a shadow of legal doubt. This decision reaffirms voters' will to keep California on the forefront of embryonic stem cell research. California's leadership gives the best promise of finding a cure for deadly and debilitating diseases.

The research program, known as Proposition 71, was approved in a 2004 state referendum by a 59 percent margin.

The lawsuit against the program was brought by the California Family Bioethics Council and two anti-tax organizations - the People's Advocate and the National Tax Limitation Foundation. The trial court determined that the stem cell program was being administered with sufficient state control and did not violate ballot initiative or conflicts of interest rules.