An American woman accused of plotting to kill a Swedish cartoonist whose work enraged Muslims has led a checkered and sometimes troubled life, including at least two run-ins with the law before she was indicted on terror-related charges last week.

An indictment unsealed this week revealed that 46-year-old Colleen LaRose who authorities said used the screen name “JihadJane” in Internet posts attempting to recruit jihadis was charged March 4 with providing material support to terrorists. She has been held in a Philadelphia detention center since October, when she was arrested and charged with identity theft.

A person familiar with the matter said Ms. LaRose has been cooperating with authorities since her arrest. She helped prosecutors in their case against seven Muslims in Ireland accused of plotting to kill cartoonist Lars Vilks, this person said. Mr. Vilks’s depictions of the Prophet Muhammad incited protests by Muslims. Law-enforcement officials said Ms. LaRose left the U.S. for Europe in August 2009, intending to train with jihadists and try to kill Mr. Vilks.

Ms. LaRose was born in Michigan and moved to Texas as a child, said a person who knows her. At age 14 she married a man at least twice her age, this person said. She later married another man who has numerous criminal convictions in Texas, court records show.

Ms. LaRose held temporary jobs, the person who knows her said. In Texas, she was arrested for driving under the influence but wasn’t convicted, this person said. In 1997 she was charged in Tom Green County with writing a bad check, a criminal misdemeanor. An arrest warrant for that charge is outstanding.A law-enforcement official said Ms. LaRose appears to have converted to Islam several years ago.

According to a May 2005 incident report, Ms. LaRose’s sister told Pennsburg police Ms. LaRose was threatening suicide. “Colleen was highly intoxicated and having difficulty maintaining her balance,” an officer reported.In 2007, Ms. LaRose, calling herself “Fatima LaRose,” registered a social-networking profile on dailymotion.com. Among videos she posted are what appear to be depictions of attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq.

Ms. LaRose lived in a second-story unit of a red-brick multifamily residence here in Pennsburg from at least 2003, when police records show she called in a report about two kittens in her yard, until August 2009. Debbie Turner, who works in a real-estate office across from the home, said she saw Ms. LaRose at a local store about a year ago. Ms. LaRose wasn’t covering her face or hair, Ms. Turner said, adding, “Her hair was frizzy and she looked very rough.”

“She was definitely out there,” said Matthew Nelson of Pennsburg, who said Ms. LaRose lived with her former boyfriend Kurt Gorman for about five years. Mr. Gorman is president of a company in Quakertown, Pa., that supplies components to the broadcast industry and where Mr. Nelson is a plant manager. Mr. Nelson said Ms. LaRose disappeared in August, and Mr. Gorman’s passport went missing. The indictment says Ms. LaRose took the U.S. passport of someone identified as “K.G.”Mr. Gorman didn’t return messages seeking comment.

Although investigators don’t believe Ms. LaRose posed an imminent threat and wasn’t plotting an attack in the U.S., she is another in a series of recent cases involving Westerners using the Internet to incite jihad. In June 2008, according to the indictment, she posted a comment on YouTube using the name “JihadJane” and said she was “desperate to do something somehow to help” Muslims. In later messages she described her wish to become a “martyr in the name of Allah,” according to the indictment.

U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts said Tuesday the scene at President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union address was “very troubling” and that the annual speech to Congress has “degenerated into a political pep rally.”Responding to a University of Alabama law student’s question about the Senate’s method of confirming justices, Roberts said senators improperly try to make political points by asking questions they know nominees can’t answer because of judicial ethics rules.

“I think the process is broken down,” he said. Obama chided the court for its campaign finance decision during the January address, with six of the court’s nine justices seated before him in their black robes. Roberts said he wonders whether justices should attend the address.”To the extent the State of the Union has degenerated into a political pep rally, I’m not sure why we’re there,” said Roberts, a Republican nominee who joined the court in 2005.Roberts said anyone is free to criticize the court and that some have an obligation to do so because of their positions.

“So I have no problems with that,” he said. “On the other hand, there is the issue of the setting, the circumstances and the decorum. The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court — according the requirements of protocol — has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling.”Breaking from tradition, Obama used the speech to criticize the court’s decision that allows corporations and unions to freely spend money to run political ads for or against specific candidates.

“With all due deference to the separation of powers, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections,” Obama said. Justice Samuel Alito was the only justice to respond at the time, shaking his head and appearing to mouth the words “not true” as Obama continued. In response to Roberts’ remarks Tuesday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs focused on the court’s decision and not the chief justice’s point about the time and place for criticism of the court.

“What is troubling is that this decision opened the floodgates for corporations and special interests to pour money into elections — drowning out the voices of average Americans,” Gibbs said. “The president has long been committed to reducing the undue influence of special interests and their lobbyists over government. That is why he spoke out to condemn the decision and is working with Congress on a legislative response.”

Justice Antonin Scalia once said he no longer goes to the annual speech because the justices “sit there like bumps on a log” in an otherwise highly partisan atmosphere. Roberts opened his appearance in Alabama with a 30-minute lecture on the history of the Supreme Court and became animated as he answered students’ questions. He joked about a recent rumor that he was stepping down from the court and said he didn’t know he wanted to be a lawyer until he was in law school.

While Associate Justice Clarence Thomas told students at Alabama last fall he saw little value in oral arguments before the court, Roberts disagreed.”Maybe it’s because I participated in it a lot as a lawyer,” Roberts said. “I’d hate to think it didn’t matter.”

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday praised Israel for agreeing to renew the Middle East process and pledged that the United States would always “stand by those who take risks for peace.” “Historic peace will require both sides to make historically bold commitments,” said Biden during a joint press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Biden welcomed Netanyahu’s move this week to begin U.S.-mediated indirect talks with the Palestinians and said he hoped it would lead to direct negotiations that would produce a historic peace treaty.

Netanyahu, in pledging to work with Washington to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians, repeated a key Israeli condition that they recognize Israel as a Jewish state – a demand they have rejected.He said any peace accord must guarantee Israel’s security “for generations to come”.The vice president arrived on Monday as the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Israel since Barack Obama became president.

“There is no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security,” Biden said as the two leaders made statements to the media following talks in Jerusalem.This was a message Biden had been widely expected to bring in person from Obama. Israeli political sources have said he is also making clear Washington does not want Israel to risk any military action against Iran while the United States is seeking a wide coalition for sanctions on Tehran.

Netanyahu said Israel’s security priorities were ensuring Iran did not build nuclear weapons and establishing peace with the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors.”I very much appreciate the efforts of President Obama and the American government to lead the international community to place tough sanctions on Iran,” he said.

“The stronger those sanctions are, the more likely it will be that the Iranian regime will have to chose between advancing its nuclear program and advancing the future of its own permanence,” added Netanyahu.For his part, Biden declared that the United States was intent on stopping Iran from being able to produce nuclear weapons.

“We’re determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and we’re working with many countries around the world to convince Tehran to meet its international obligations and cease and desist,” he said.Earlier Tuesday, Biden assured President Shimon Peres of Washington’s commitment to its security and said the agreed resumption of Israeli-Palestinian talks provided a “moment of real opportunity” for peace.

His visit coincided with Palestinian and Israeli agreement, in meetings with Obama’s Middle East envoy George Mitchell this week, to resume peace talks suspended since December 2008, amid strong skepticism about their chances for success.

“I think we are at a moment of real opportunity,” Biden said at a meeting with President Shimon Peres, the first diplomatic session to be held over the course of his five-day visit. Biden plans to see Palestinian leaders in the West Bank on Wednesday.”The interests of both the Palestinians and the Israeli people, if everyone would just step back and take a deep breath, are actually very much more in line than they are in opposition,” he said.

A strong earthquake, with a preliminary magnitude of 6.0, hit eastern Turkey on Monday, killing at least 57 people and knocking down houses in at least six small villages, a government official says. The quake affected villages near the town of Kovancilar, toppling stone or mud-brick homes and minarets of mosques, officials and media reports said. The worst-hit area was the village of Okcular where some 17 people were reported killed and homes crumbled into piles of dirt.

The government’s crisis centre said around 100 people were also injured in the quake, which occurred at 4:32 a.m. local time Monday in Elazig province, about 550 kilometres east of the capital Ankara. It caught many people in their sleep. It was centered near the village of Basyurt, and was followed by more than 30 aftershocks, the strongest measuring 5.5, the Kandilli seismology centre said.

Emergency workers were trying to rescue four people from debris, Gov. Muammer Erol said. CNN-Turk television said the dead included four young sisters trapped in the rubble. Authorities blocked access to Okcular village to facilitate the entry and exit of ambulances and rescue teams on the village’s narrow roads. Relatives rushed to the village for news of their loved ones.”The village is totally flattened,” Okcular’s administrator Hasan Demirdag told private NTV television.

“Everything has been knocked down, there is not a stone in place,” said Yadin Apaydin, administrator for the village of Yukari Kanatli, where he said at least three villagers died. The quake was felt in the neighboring provinces of Tunceli, Bingol and Diyarbakir where residents fled to the streets in panic and spent the night outdoors.

Some of the injuries occurred during the panic, when people jumped from windows or balconies. Dogan news agency footage showed people bringing in the injured to hospitals by cars and taxis. Kandilli Observatory’s director, Mustafa Erdik, urged residents not to enter damaged homes, warning that they could topple from the aftershocks, which could last for days.

Television footage showed rescue workers and soldiers at Okcular lifting debris as villagers looked on. Rescuers could be seen digging into dirt and then removing an elderly man. The man had died and his body was quickly covered with a sheet. Two women sat on mattresses wrapped in blankets. Turkey’s Red Crescent organization began setting up tents in the region.

Earthquakes are frequent in Turkey, much of which lies on top of the North Anatolian fault. In 1999, two powerful earthquakes struck northwestern Turkey, killing about 18,000 people. In 2007, an earthquake measuring 5.7 damaged buildings in Elazig, briefly trapping a woman under debris. In 2003, an earthquake measuring 6.4 in magnitude collapsed a school dormitory in the neighboring province of Bingol province, killing 83 children. The collapse was blamed on poor construction.

John Patrick Bedell was an independent-minded and skeptical teenager bright and questioning, with strongly held opinions, like countless other young people, his brother remembered Saturday.Bedell, who went by Patrick, had vigorously objected to the 1991 Persian Gulf War since high school, telling relatives that the United States was trying to enrich itself and oil companies, said his brother, 33-year-old Jeffrey Bedell.

In 2002, after the breakup of a four-year relationship with a girlfriend, his skepticism began to turn to deep-rooted suspicion. Soon it became paranoia, his brother said.Patrick Bedell would point skyward, convinced that “they” were watching him. He believed songs he heard on the radio were meant as warnings. The Bedell family and close friends tried to seek medical help for him, but he refused, convinced that he was privy to information that warranted his mindset.

No one knows why Patrick Bedell, 36, traveled across the country from his parents’ home in Hollister and opened fire Thursday at the entrance to the Pentagon, injuring two police officers. But these accumulating moments of paranoia in the early 2000s appear to signal the time when he started on the course that would end with him shot and killed by Pentagon police.

“There were symptoms of a mental disorder, approaching paranoid schizophrenia,” said Jeffrey Bedell, a former California deputy attorney general who is a financial adviser. “I can only imagine the terror in his own mind. He believed there were people who meant to do him harm.”

Patrick Bedell was perpetually in and out of school, enrolling in undergraduate or graduate programs and sometimes auditing courses. In 1999, the brothers lived together in Berkeley, when Jeffrey Bedell was a senior on his way to law school and Patrick Bedell was auditing a physics course. “It was fantastic. We would go to the café, and I’d be studying, he’d be studying.It was wonderful,” Jeffrey Bedell said.

The brothers parted ways when Patrick Bedell moved to Austin to live with a woman he met at a bookstore at the University of California at Davis. Jeffrey Bedell didn’t want to name the woman, who he said was pursuing a graduate degree in literature. “I think she appreciated his intelligence. He was charming and very funny, and he was very kind and considerate,” Jeffrey Bedell said. “It was fantastic to go out with them. I dearly love her.”

But Patrick Bedell’s curiosity and skepticism changed to an off-putting perspective laden with conspiracy theories. He smoked marijuana frequently. The Bedells pleaded with him to seek medical help, but he refused. “I would have conversations with him, trying to convince him to stop smoking marijuana, that it was making his thinking more disordered,” Jeffrey Bedell said. “He would come back to a familiar theme: ‘If you knew what I knew.’\u2009″

Jeffrey Bedell said he was having dinner Thursday at home in Sacramento when his father called and told him to turn on the news.”He said, ‘Your brother has fired shots at the Pentagon,’\u2009″ said Jeffrey Bedell. “I turned on the television, and I called George Washington’s hospital and spoke to an FBI agent and doctor. The doctor told me he ‘expired.’ He said they did everything they could, but that when he was brought to the hospital, he was not physiologically alive.”

Iraqis go to the polls on Sunday to elect the members of parliament who will, if all goes according to plan, help complete the transition of power and security from the U.S. military back into Iraqi hands. The stakes are as high as they’ve ever been — and not just for Iraqis and their politicians. How smoothly the voting goes, and its results, will have direct implications for the Obama administration’s goals of drawing down U.S. combat troops by September, and getting all troops out of the country by the end of this year.

Mr. Obama isn’t the first American president with hopes of reducing the U.S. military presence in Iraq by trying to support and foster a stable, democratically elected government — a government able to protect its own and deliver basic services. But U.S. foreign policy is littered with failed attempts.

Iraq’s population remains largely divided along sectarian lines, with Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish populations resoundingly backing politicians of the same ethnicity. As the U.S. and the United Nations aim to keep their role in the vote low-key, there is uncertainty about how far the elections can go toward ending those divisions and accomplishing the goals stated above.

Almost 19 million Iraqis are eligible to vote, and security on election day — the perception of security on election day — will be essential to drawing battle-scarred residents out of their homes to cast votes. More than 6,000 candidates are contesting 325 seats in Iraq’s Parliament, and the makeup of that body is essential as Parliament chooses the Iraqi Prime Minister.

Deadly suicide bombings have increased in the lead-up to the elections and militias continue to intimidate voters. The same militants may try to promote civil strife in the aftermath of the voting. The U.N.’s role in the vote is dictated by a Security Council Resolution which requires the world body to advise the Iraqi Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) and to work with Iraq’s political leaders to prepare for elections, but the U.N. will not be monitoring the elections.

“Monitoring is done by other parties; since the U.N. provided technical support for the elections, we couldn’t credibly monitor them (which would, in effect, amount to monitoring ourselves),” Farhan Haq, a spokesman for the Secretary General tells CBS News.

Some of the biggest controversies took place before campaigning even began, with the selection — and disqualification — of candidates. Many were removed from the ballot because of links to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. In response to criticism, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki planned to bring 20,000 Hussein-era military officers into the Iraqi Armed Forces.

The U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Iraq, Ad Melkert, briefed the Security Council last month on the controversial “de-Baathification” process, saying the U.N. Mission in Iraq has consistently emphasized the due-process requirements and refrained from judging the outcomes.

“What will matter most is the acceptance by the Iraqi people of the election result,” Melkert said. The Security Council is playing a role by laying the groundwork to lift sanctions imposed under Saddam’s rule.The greatest fear, both in Iraq and for the Obama Administration, is that elections could divide, rather than unite the country. There is little question, however, that the country is engaged in the campaign.

In a nation where providing even the most basic services has been a huge challenge since the war, it is remarkable the level to which candidates in this election have taken their campaigns abruptly into the 21st century. Many are taking full advantage of social networking sites, with individual candidates and political coalitions offering information on their platforms to anyone with access.

The strongest among the coalitions are: the State of Law coalition led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki; the Iraqi National Alliance, a Shiite coalition which includes supporters of powerful anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and former Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari; and the Iraqi Nationalist Movement (al-Iraqiyya), which includes former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. There are also Kurdish alliances and significant tribal coalitions in play.

Violence is the greatest threat to the election; the Associated Press calculates a 44 percent increase in Iraqis killed in military conflict between January and February, made up largely of civilians.

The Obama Administration is banking on an election with enough U.N. support, reasonable transparency and political unity to keep the 20 percent minority Sunni population, the tribal groups, and the Kurds in government alongside the Shiite majority. If that happens, and Iraq’s relative, fragile stability remains in tact and growing, then Mr. Obama’s aspirations for withdrawal will also live to see another day.

Iraq opened its polls early on Thursday for tens of thousands of soldiers and police officers and other security workers, but a series of attacks in Baghdad aimed directly at them marred the first day of voting in the country’s parliamentary elections. The attacks killed at least 12 people and wounded dozens more, according to preliminary reports from Iraqi officials.

The attacks occurred despite the overwhelming presence of Iraqi security personnel on the streets in Baghdad and in cities across the country. The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who faces a fierce contest to win a second term, declared a holiday from Thursday to Sunday, allowing security officials to vote early so they would be free to work on Election Day.

Two suicide bombers struck two different polling stations at schools in the center of Baghdad, killing seven soldiers and wounding at least 35 other people. Those attacks followed another involving a hidden bomb, which struck a school in northern Baghdad. That school will also be a polling station on Sunday, but early voting was not taking place on Thursday. That blast killed at least five people and wounded 22.

Iraqi official and United States commanders have braced for violence, imposing strict controls on vehicles and cordoning off entire streets around polling sites. Thursday’s attacks made it clear there are still gaps in security, but on the streets of Baghdad, where lines of soldiers and police officers formed as soon as voting began at 7 a.m., there was also a sense of defiance.

“The last two or three months we’ve been receiving warnings about violence around the elections,” a senior federal police commander said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of orders from the Ministry of the Interior. “And we know that even after the elections, until they form a government, we have to worry about attacks.” He received a text message on his telephone about the first bombing and then vowed not to let violence disrupt the election, which is widely viewed a pivotal moment in Iraq’s history seven years after the American invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

“Even if they hit a polling station somewhere,” he said, shortly before two suicide bombers did just that, “we will have it open within 30 minutes and people will continue to vote.”The latest violence came the day after a large coordinated attack in Baquba, the provincial capital of Diyala, northeast of Baghdad, killed at least 31 people.

In Baquba on Thursday, a group of police officers at one polling station began to dance elatedly: several of them had survived a suicide attack on the city’s hospital.“They promised each other to dance in front of every one of the polling stations,” Ibrahim Said, a colleague, said as he watched.

Thursday’s early voting also included prisoners and patients at the country’s hospitals. In addition to the bombings, problems also emerged with the voting itself, a potentially ominous signal ahead of Sunday’s vote, which many candidates have said could be tainted by confusion or fraud.

In Baghdad, Anbar and other provinces there were numerous reports that Iraqi soldiers and police officers could not find their names on the voter rolls at the polling stations. An election official promptly appeared on television and noted that voters could cast provisional ballots, which would be counted in their proper districts. No results from the early voting will be announced until after Sunday’s election.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry rode a wave of anti-Washington sentiment to victory Tuesday in the hard-fought Republican gubernatorial primary, beating U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. Notching what he described as a victory for American conservatism, Mr. Perry also avoided an expensive and time-consuming runoff. Ms. Hutchison conceded when it appeared almost certain he would get more than half the vote. With nearly all of the state’s more than 8,000 precincts reporting, Mr. Perry had 51%, while Ms. Hutchison had 31%.

Nearly one in five voters cast ballots for newcomer Debra Medina, a favorite of Tea Party activists, in a race that drew national attention as a referendum on the direction of the Republican Party. As personified by Mr. Perry, the party’s future would stress economic growth and independence from Washington—he accuses agencies from the Education Department to the Environmental Protection Agency of treading on Texas’s toes. Though Texas traditionally prizes independence from the federal government, Mr. Perry also tapped into surging anti-incumbent fervor here, despite the fact that he has been governor since 2000 and is seeking an unprecedented third full term.

Ms. Hutchison’s 16 years in the U.S. Senate, by contrast, helped Mr. Perry turn her into a political piñata. The Republican nomination has been a hotly contested prize since July, when Ms. Hutchison said she would leave the Senate to campaign for governor. Her later decision not to do so hurt her chances, giving Mr. Perry an opening to brand her as indecisive. She also failed to make a strong case for replacing Mr. Perry, political experts say.

“There’s been way too much Hamlet in the last year,” said Calvin Jillson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “It makes her seem a little rudderless.” Ms. Hutchison argued that she needed to remain in the Senate to fight for Texans, and has pledged to stay in Washington until the Obama administration’s health-care plan is defeated.

Many Republicans would be happy to see her stay in the Senate, said Royal Masset, a former state party chairman and consultant in Austin. The exception: “The 100 people down on the food chain who couldn’t move up because she didn’t vacate the seat,” he said, noting that some of them are his clients.

Mrs. Medina, a nurse from south Texas who favors replacing property taxes with sales taxes, burst into the statewide political scene through her strong performances at two debates. But she fumbled a question about whether the federal government was involved in the 9/11 attacks. She was also hampered by a small war chest, having raised less than $800,000, most of it since mid-January. Ms. Hutchison raised $14 million and spent almost $20 million, while Mr. Perry raised almost $13 million and spent about $17 million.

The eventual Republican winner will face Bill White, the former mayor of Houston, who declared victory in the Democratic primary, dominating a quirky field led by Farouk Shami, a hair-products impresario. Mr. White immediately attacked Mr. Perry’s policies and the length of his tenure in office. “Texas is ready for a new governor,” he said.

The Senate tied itself in knots Monday as it tried to get around a single lawmaker’s objection to a spending bill, a showdown that has become emblematic of capital’s partisan gridlock. Sen. Jim Bunning (R., Ky.) again blocked a $10 billion bill that would have extended unemployment benefits and other programs after halting its progress last week.

And on Monday, the impact of his blockade started biting, with the expiration of benefits to 100,000 people and the suspension of 41 transportation projects across the country. Mr. Bunning is holding things up by objecting to a “unanimous consent” request to advance the bill quickly, a routine maneuver for moving legislation forward that requires all senators to go along.

As the $10 billion measure foundered, Senate leaders began debating another, more than $145 billion bill that would achieve some of the same ends, including prolonging unemployment insurance until year’s end. A vote on that bill is expected by Friday, and lawmakers hope to make it retroactive so that jobless workers would still get their benefits, albeit delayed.

Even so, those who lost benefits might have to reapply, resulting in delays from three weeks to two months, according to Andrew Stettner, deputy director of the National Employment Law Project, a left-leaning advocacy and research group. Democrats used Mr. Bunning’s move to highlight what they said was a pattern of Republicans gumming up the works on even the most popular measures.

Many Republican leaders, cognizant of the political peril surrounding Mr. Bunning’s action, quietly distanced themselves. But others, including Arizona’s Jon Kyl, the Senate’s second-ranking Republican, supported Mr. Bunning’s right to raise the cost issue. “Every time we pass one of these bills, we are adding to the deficit, and we are not creating jobs,” Mr. Kyl said. “And it’s a legitimate point for Republicans to make.”The standoff has brought renewed attention to the Senate’s arcane procedures, which give enormous power to individual senators and have prompted many people, including House members, to call the Senate dysfunctional.

“It might work under the Senate rules that they can do that, but it certainly doesn’t work for American families,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.). “I hope Republicans will reconsider and think about their constituents standing in the unemployment line as we speak.”Mr. Bunning says he favors the unemployment-benefits extension but wants it to be paid for. The current bill would add to the deficit. “If we can’t find $10 billion to pay for something we all support, we will never pay for anything on the floor of this U.S. Senate,” Mr. Bunning said.

According to the Department of Labor, the expiration of unemployment benefits caused 100,000 people to lose their benefits immediately and about 400,000 people within one to two weeks. About 500,000 jobless people would lose their health-insurance subsidies under the Cobra program over the course of a month.

The bill blocked by Mr. Bunning also would have halted steep cuts in payments to doctors who treat Medicare patients. The logjam leaves doctors with a 21% reduction in those payments. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has asked health-care providers to hold their claims for 10 days, in hopes that the Senate will rescind the payment cuts by then.

The bill would have extended the Highway Trust Fund, whose expiration caused the U.S. Department of Transportation Monday to furlough nearly 2,000 employees without pay. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials said states are losing more than $153 million a day in federal reimbursements.

Democrats hope to take care of many of these problems by passing the larger bill at the end of the week. This “extender” bill, which the Senate took up Monday, not only would extend unemployment benefits, the Cobra health program and Medicare doctors’ payments, but would also prolong expiring tax breaks such as the research-and-development tax credit.

For now, Democrats appeared to relish the fight, because it plays into a broader narrative the party has constructed that paints the GOP as the main cause of Washington’s gridlock. “Because of the games of Washington, hundreds of thousands of people are without the benefits they need as they continue to look for work,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.

Mr. Bunning, 78 years old, is known on Capitol Hill as a gruff, sometimes irascible figure. A Hall of Fame pitcher, Mr. Bunning has a chilly relationship with Republican leaders over the perception they sought to prevent him from seeking re-election this year. He announced his planned retirement from the Senate several months ago.

Lawmakers from both parties are mindful of the government shutdown in 1995, which was part of a showdown between then-President Bill Clinton and then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R., Ga.). The public largely blamed Mr. Gingrich and the Republicans, and the episode marked the beginning of a resurgence in Mr. Clinton’s popularity.

President Barack Obama took aim Monday at the nation’s school dropout epidemic, proposing $900 million to states and education districts that agree to drastically change or even shutter their worst performing schools. Obama’s move comes as many schools continue to struggle to get children to graduation, a profound problem in a rich, powerful nation. Only about 70 percent of entering high school freshmen go on to graduate. The problem affects blacks and Latinos at particularly high rates.

Obama described the crisis as one that hurts individual kids and the nation as a whole, shattering dreams and undermining an already hurting economy.”There’s got to be a sense of accountability,” Obama said in announcing his latest get-tough school proposal at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The president’s plan would seek to help 5,000 of the nation’s lowest-performing schools over the next five years.”In this kind of knowledge economy, giving up on your education and dropping out of school means not only giving up on your future, but it’s also giving up on your family’s future,” Obama said. “It’s giving up on your country.”

Obama has been pushing schools – using federal money as his leverage – to raise their standards and prod them to get more children ready for college or work. It is a task that former President George W. Bush and Congress, along with many leaders before them, have long taken on, but the challenge is steep.

Obama’s 2011 budget proposal includes $900 million for School Turnaround Grants. That money is in addition to $3.5 billion to help low-performing schools that was in last year’s economic stimulus bill.To get a share of the new money, states and school districts must adopt one of four approaches to fix their struggling schools.

The school district must replace the principal and at least half of the school staff, adopt a new governance structure for the school, and implement a new or revised instructional program.Restart Model: The school district must close and reopen the school under the management of a charter school operator, a charter management organization or an educational management organization. A restarted school would be required to enroll, within the grades it serves, former students who wish to attend.

School Closure: The school district must close the failing school and enroll the students in other, higher-achieving schools in the district. Transformational Model: The school must address four areas, including teacher effectiveness, instruction, learning and teacher planning time, and operational flexibility.

The administration also is putting $50 million into dropout prevention strategies, including personalized and individual instruction and support to keep students engaged in learning, and better use of data to identify students at risk of failure and to help them with the transition to high school and college.

Obama announced his plan Monday at an education event sponsored by the America’s Promise Alliance, the youth-oriented organization founded by former Secretary of State Colin Powell and his wife, Alma. Obama also planned to discuss ways to better prepare students for college and careers.