Colorado: Washington

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Wednesday resoundingly rejected an effort to spend $80 million to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and relocate the terrorism suspects, possibly to U.S. prisons.

Considered a setback for President Barack Obama and his pledge to close the prison by January, the vote ended a day of crossed signals and Democratic infighting, including a dust-up between California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Colorado lawmakers.

The future of the detention facility at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has Democrats increasingly on the defensive over the fates of the 240 terrorism suspects detained there.

In a floor speech before Wednesday's 90-7 Senate vote, Feinstein said she knew of one federal facility

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that would be a perfect fit — Supermax prison in Florence, Colo.

Democratic Sen. Jim Isgar has applied for a regional agricultural job in the Obama administration, setting the stage for the biggest game of legislative musical chairs in recent history.

Isgar would resign if he got the job of state rural business-development director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But he said he would like to finish the session, which must end by May 6.

"I don't know if I'll get it," Isgar said. "But I think (the appointment) could happen in the next few weeks."

Isgar, of Hesperus could be the fourth Democrat to exit this year. Rep. Anne McGihon has resigned, and Democratic Sens.

WASHINGTON — As Rep. Jared Polis toured Iraq this week, he had something more than security conditions or troop withdrawals on his mind: the case of a man allegedly sentenced to death in a criminal court for membership in a gay-rights group.

An openly gay member of Congress, Polis has been investigating the treatment of gays in Iraq for several months, and last week he spoke through a translator by phone to a transgender Iraqi man who said he had been arrested, beaten and raped by Ministry of Interior security forces.

Human-rights groups tracking the issue also passed Polis a letter, allegedly written from jail by a man who said he was beaten into confessing he was a member of the gay-rights group Iraqi-LGBT.

WASHINGTON — In one of her earliest appearances before the Senate Natural Resources Committee, Gale Norton, President George W. Bush's first interior secretary, proclaimed in 2001 the need to "explore the entire smorgasbord of different options" when it came to domestic energy production.

But what was actually on the buffet was telling: Drilling off the coast of Florida, coal extraction in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah and exploring for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

Now fast forward eight years, to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's first appearance before the same Senate committee last week.

He laid out maps that showed wind-energy potential across the West; talked about tapping geothermal energy underlying states including Idaho and Colorado; and evoked the vision of a high-tech "super- electron highway" that will connect "renewable-energy zones" on public lands to homes in California or New Jersey.