Action on Stevens set

Action on Stevens set

WASHINGTON — Sen. Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican convicted of seven felony counts last month, faces a vote by his Republican colleagues next week on whether to kick him out of the Senate’s GOP conference and strip him of plum committee assignments.

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., has served notice that he’ll seek to expel Stevens from the GOP conference at a Nov. 18 meeting to elect party leaders for the session that begins in January.

Stevens is leading narrowly in his re-election bid but has not officially been declared the winner of a seventh full Senate term, but faces potential expulsion proceedings after being found guilty in federal court of seven counts of lying on his financial disclosure reports to conceal more than $250,000 in free home renovations and other gifts from a wealthy oil contractor.

Texas killer executed

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A man who went on a murderous rampage against the family of his ex-girlfriend was executed Wednesday after he apologized and asked his family to pray for him. George Whitaker III, who killed a 16-year-old girl and seriously wounded her mother and 5-year-old sister in 1994, was pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. CST, eight minutes after lethal drugs began flowing into his body.

“I apologize for your pain and suffering,” he said in the death chamber, mentioning the parents of his victim by name. None of her relatives were present.

Gay marriage in Conn.

WEST HARTFORD, Conn. — Same-sex couples exchanged vows Wednesday for the first time in Connecticut amid cheers and tears of joy, while gay activists planned protests across the country over the vote that took away their right to marry in California.

Surrounded by red roses and smiles, Jody Mock and Elizabeth Kerrigan, who led the lawsuit that that overturned the state law, emerged from West Hartford’s town hall to the cheers of about 150 people and waved their marriage license high.