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Poll: Paterson's numbers are inching up.

(CNN) – Two new surveys suggest that David Paterson's poll numbers are inching up - but that the New York governor still trails state attorney general Andrew Cuomo by a wide margin in a hypothetical Democratic primary race.

According to a Quinnipiac University survey released Tuesday, 40 percent of New York's registered voters approve of the job Paterson's doing as governor. That's up 10 points from a Quinnipiac survey in October. The poll indicates that Paterson's disapproval rating has dropped 8 points, from 57 percent in October to 49 percent now.

A Siena College Research Institute survey released Monday suggested a similar trend, with Paterson's favorable rating at 37 percent, up 9 points from earlier this year.

But both polls indicate voters believe Paterson does not deserve election next year to a full four-year term as governor. Fifty-nine percent of people questioned in the Quinnipiac survey say Paterson doesn't deserve to be elected in 2010, a modest improvement from October, when more than two of out three voters felt the governor didn't deserve a full term. The Siena poll also indicates an improvement for Paterson, but less than one in five think he should be elected next year, with nearly two-thirds preferring someone else.

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Washington (CNN) - The nation's capital city is expected to take a major step Tuesday towards legalizing same-sex marriage.

The District of Columbia's city council is scheduled to vote - and expected to pass - a measure that would recognize gay marriages as legal. The city council overwhelmingly passed the bill in a previous vote on December 1.

Tuesday's second vote is needed to send the measure to District Mayor Adrian Fenty, who has said he will sign the bill. Then the measure goes to Congress for a 30-day review period, but it's considered unlikely that the Democratic majority on Capitol Hill will block the bill. By law, Congress has the right to review and overturn laws created by the District's city council.

If the measure becomes law, the District would join Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont and Iowa in allowing legal same-sex marriages. A law legalizing gay marriage in New Hampshire takes affect on January 1.

Earlier this year, lawmakers in Maine approved a measure legalizing same-sex marriages, but voters in the state last month passed a referendum to overturn the new law. Last week, New York's state senate defeated a bill that would legalize gay marriages. A similar bill stalled last week in New Jersey's state senate.

–CNN Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser contributed to this story

Washington (CNN) – A limited number of detainees from the Guantanamo Bay prison will be transferred to a prison in Illinois, President Obama will announce Tuesday, a senior administration official said.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and Sen. Richard Durbin will go to the White House on Tuesday for a briefing on the plan to use Thomson Correctional Center in Thomson, Illinois, to help shut down the controversial facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Illinois state officials have said the plan would call for housing federal prisoners, including some detainees from the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in the largely vacant maximum-security facility in northern Illinois.

The governor and other officials have said such a deal could provide up to 2,000 jobs and up to $1 billion in federal money to the area.

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Rep. Murtha rested in a hospital Monday after being admitted the previous night.

Washington (CNN) - U.S. Rep. John Murtha rested in a hospital Monday after being admitted the previous night due to abdominal pains caused by a gallbladder issue, his spokesman said.

"He's currently resting and doing well," said Matt Mazonkey, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Democrat.

Murtha is chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee on defense, and a strong critic of President Barack Obama's recent decision to deploy an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

He was scheduled to chair a subcommittee hearing Tuesday addressed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Due to Murtha's illness, the hearing has been canceled.

The CNN Washington Bureau’s morning speed read of the top stories making news from around the country and the world.

WASHINGTON/POLITICAL
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CNN: Sources: Medicare buy-in likely to be dropped from health care bill Senate
Democrats are preparing to drop a compromise health-care plan that would allow 55- to 64-year-olds to buy into Medicare because of opposition from Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, two senior Democratic sources said Monday.

Bloomberg: ‘Disaster’ Health Plan Breaks Obama Cost-Cut Vow
President Barack Obama’s $1 trillion health-care overhaul won’t buy corporate America relief from medical costs that more than doubled in the last decade, chief executive officers of more than a dozen U.S. companies said.

Chicago Tribune: Illinois to take Gitmo detainees
President Barack Obama has directed the federal government to buy the near-empty state prison in rural Thomson, Ill., to house federal inmates and up to 100 detainees from the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, officials said late Monday.

NY Daily News: Bankers remember to take commercial planes to meet with Obama, but forget to check the weather
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack and Citigroup Chairman Richard Parsons were all no-shows at a big White House meeting after their commercial flights were grounded in New York because of fog in the nation's capital. …The sitdown came a day after Obama ramped up his rhetoric on financial institutions, telling CBS' "60 Minutes" in an interview aired Sunday night: "I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat-cat bankers."

CNN: Millions of Bush administration e-mails recovered
Computer technicians have recovered about 22 million Bush administration e-mails that the Bush White House had said were missing, two watchdog groups that sued over the documents announced Monday.

CNN: U.S. is 'pragmatic' with China, Russia
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has been criticized as being too soft on human rights issues, said the "pragmatic" Obama administration approach is designed to make a difference, not prove a point.

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Washington (CNN) – Two senior Democratic sources tell CNN senate Democrats are headed towards dropping the compromise idea to allow 55 to 64 year-olds to buy into Medicare because of opposition from Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman.

"It’s what the White House wants and there aren’t many other options that allow us to finish by Christmas," said one source.

Senate Democrats had an emergency meeting Monday night to discuss this issue, which threatens to derail health care.
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Updated 6:30 pm ET: Earlier today, two sources - one White House and one Senate - indicated White House chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had suggested to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid the possibility of using budget reconciliation to pass health care. Both sources now tell CNN that Emanuel did not make that suggestion. One of the sources said there had been some recent White House interest in using the reconciliation process. However, the source acknowledged that the idea now appears to be a non-starter. Reid has said he opposes using the legislative maneuver.

Washington (CNN) – As the White House rushes to the finish on health care reform, fissures on the best way to get there are developing between the White House and Senate Democrats.

Two sources have told CNN that White House Chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has been asking Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to use the budget process known as reconciliation to push through health reform – and that Reid has rejected that request.

The procedure, which can only be used on budget measures, would allow Senate Democrats to bypass the 60-vote threshold required to end debate on the current bill, and pass the proposal by a simple majority – but would require major changes to the legislation.

Reid’s resistance, said the sources, stemmed from concern that adoption of the strategy would spark major political pushback from Democrats facing re-election next year.
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Computer technicians have recovered about 22 million Bush administration e-mails. (Photo Credit: Getty Images/File)

Washington (CNN) - Computer technicians have recovered about 22 million Bush administration e-mails that the Bush White House had said were missing, two watchdog groups that sued over the documents announced Monday.

The e-mails date from 2003 to 2005, and had been "mislabeled and effectively lost," according to the National Security Archive, a research group based at George Washington University. But Melanie Sloan, executive director of the liberal-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), said it could be years before most of the e-mails are made public.

"The e-mails themselves are not what we're getting," Sloan said.
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Hadassah Lieberman is under attack over industry ties.

Washington (CNN) - Sen. Joe Lieberman – whose opposition to a public insurance option has drawn outrage from liberal groups for months – is used to finding himself in progressive crosshairs.

Now it's his wife's turn.

Activists are setting their sights on Hadassah Lieberman, launching a celebrity-studded petition drive to convince the nation's largest breast cancer non-profit to end the Connecticut senator's wife role as a spokeswoman.

The move to pressure the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation came the same day Lieberman's husband angered Democrats by announcing that he would not support an expansion of Medicare to cover individuals under the age of 55. Organizers did not point to that decision, instead citing Hadassah Lieberman's own ties to the health care industry.

Lieberman has worked as a consultant for companies including Pfizer and ALCO.

"We are asking Ellen DeGeneres, Christie Brinkley and other high-profile celebrities who are associated with Komen to demand that no more money raised for cancer treatment be given to Hadassah Lieberman or any other ex-Pharma/Insurance strategists," said Jane Hamsher, founder of the Firedoglake blog.

(Updated after the jump with statement from the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation)

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Sen. Evan Bayh is urging President Barack Obama to veto an end of the year government funding bill that fellow Democrats pushed through the Senate this past weekend.

Washington (CNN) –  Sen. Evan Bayh is urging President Barack Obama to veto a huge end of the year government funding bill that fellow Democrats pushed through the Senate this past weekend.

On a mostly partisan vote of 57-35, the Senate approved the compromise omnibus spending plan worked out with the House, which passed it last week. The measure now goes to President Barack Obama to be signed into law.

The senator from Indiana was one of three Democrats, joining Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Claire McCaskill of Missouri, to vote against the spending bill, which is needed to keep the federal government running as of next week.

"The president didn't create this mess, but Congress must be restrained," Bayh said in a statement released Monday. "We have to take the credit card away from the politicians who just want to spend, spend, spend. More than one trillion dollars of spending was just way too much. This may not win me a popularity contest in the halls of Congress, but it's the right thing to do."
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Senate Democrat fuming at Lieberman.

Washington (CNN) – Senate Democrats struggled to find a way forward on health care legislation Monday in the wake of Sen. Joe Lieberman's announcement that he will oppose a leading compromise proposal Democrats saw as their best way to get the 60 votes needed to pass a bill.

Privately fuming at the Connecticut senator, Democrats wrestled with whether to meet his demand to remove an expansion of Medicare from the bill - a move that would anger liberal Democrats who believe they've already made concessions on a government insurance option.

Democrats "may have to do what Mr. Lieberman wants," liberal Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa said to CNN.

Democratic leaders, who had hoped to file procedural motions this week to end debate and begin voting on the bill, called a special caucus meeting for 5:30 pm Monday to assess their bleak situation.

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Sen. Joe Lieberman has emerged as the main obstacle to Senate Majority Leader Reid's efforts to get a health care bill through the Senate before Christmas, if ever. (Photo Credit: Getty Images/File)

Washington (CNN) - A few weeks ago, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said colleague Joe Lieberman was the least of his problems in passing a health care bill.

Today, Lieberman has emerged as the main obstacle to Reid's efforts to get a health care bill through the Senate before Christmas, if ever.

An independent from Connecticut who sits with the Democratic caucus, Lieberman ratcheted up his public opposition to the bill Sunday. On the CBS program "Face the Nation," Lieberman said he would join a Republican filibuster if the bill contained either a government-run public health insurance option or a proposed alternative to the controversial provision - expanding Medicare to people as young as 55.

Lieberman also called for eliminating a provision to provide long-term home health care to the disabled while adding more cost containment measures to the $848 billion Democratic bill.

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"My main message in today's meeting was very simple: America's banks received extraordinary assistance from American taxpayers to rebuild their industry," Obama said. "Now that they're back on their feet, we expect an extraordinary commitment from them to help rebuild our economy."

Updated: 1:18 p.m.

Full story

The Supreme Court will determine whether a police officer has a 'reasonable expectation' of privacy on his official wireless two-way text-messaging pager.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - When Ontario, California, Police Sgt. Jeff Quon used his city-issued text messaging pager to exchange hundreds of personal messages, some of a "sexually explicit" nature, did he have a right to expect those messages would be kept private?

The Supreme Court decided Monday that it will determine whether a police officer has a "reasonable expectation" of privacy on his official wireless two-way text-messaging pager.

The justices accepted a pair of appeals on this free-speech and privacy dispute, and will hear oral arguments in the spring.

At issue is how far a government employer may go to monitor the private communications of its workers when they believe that the use of such equipment is being abused.

And the court will explore whether service providers can be held liable for providing those communications without the consent of the sender.

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(CNN) - With less than two months until primary day in Illinois, a new poll suggests that Democrat Alexi Giannoulias and Republican Mark Kirk are their party's frontrunners in the battle for President Barack Obama's old senate seat - though the Chicago Tribune/WGN survey also indicates that more than a third of Democratic voters and nearly half of Republican voters are undecided.

Thirty-one percent of likely Democratic primary voters questioned in the poll say they're backing Giannoulias, who was elected in 2006 at age 30 as Illinois state treasurer. That's 14 points ahead of former Chicago Urban League President Cheryle Jackson.

No other Democratic candidate was in double digits, according to the survey, which also indicates that 35 percent of Democrats remain undecided.

According to the poll, Giannoulias leads Jackson among female voters by a two-to-one margin, even though Jackson's the only woman in the Democratic primary.

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Washington (CNN) – Rep. Bart Gordon of Tennessee announced Monday that he will not run for re-election next year, the fourth House Democrat in the past four weeks to retire rather than than defend their seat in next year's midterm elections.

The 13-term Democrat has held the seat in Tennessee's 6th congressional district since 1985, winning nearly three-quarters of the vote in his re-election bid last year.

But the district, located in the north-central portion of the state, went for John McCain in last year's presidential election by 25 points. George W. Bush won the district by 20 points in 2004.

"I feel honored that the people of Middle Tennessee have allowed me to serve them for the past 25 years," Gordon, who chairs the House Science and Technology Committee, said in a statement released Monday. "Every decision I have made in Congress has been with their best interests in mind. I hope the people here at home feel that I have served them as well as their good advice and views have served me.

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