The Rev. Gus Booth of Warroad Community Church in Minnesota, a delegate to this year's Republican National Convention, gave a sermon in May urging the opposition of Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. About two weeks after the sermon, Booth sent an e-mail message to Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU), noting that he had used his pulpit for partisan purposes and attaching a copy of a newspaper article describing the sermon. As a result, on June 11, AU asked the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to investigate the church for possible illegal campaign intervention in violation of its tax-exempt status.

After months of negotiations and stalled efforts, the House leadership reached common ground with the White House in passing a bill that reforms the legality of foreign surveillance and grants telecommunications companies retroactive immunity for assisting in warrantless wiretapping. On June 20, the House passed the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (H.R. 6304) by a vote of 293 to 129. Despite opposition from key senators and the public interest community, at this point it appears likely to pass the Senate as well.

When the House Democratic leadership introduced a supplemental appropriations bill the week of June 16, chock-full of popular spending measures, it ensured easy passage of the $257 billion package. The Democrats and President Bush can each claim they won items in the negotiation over the bill: the Democrats won increased spending on domestic programs; Bush was able to kill any requirements for withdrawal of soldiers from Iraq. Yet the bill remained controversial because the Democrats refused to include fiscally responsible measures or accede to the opinion of 63 percent of Americans that soldiers should return home within two years.

A House panel recently examined efforts by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to study human exposure to, and toxic effects of, common industrial chemicals. EPA is not assessing enough chemicals and is taking too long to complete the assessments it does undertake, lawmakers said. Witnesses complained that without rigorous scientific studies as a foundation, federal and state agencies cannot set air and water quality standards that protect public health.