According to Wall Street Journal (subscription only), the FDA has been negotiating with industry to increase user fees, money paid by the drug industry to FDA ostensibly to help speed up drug approval. Small user fees were first introduced at FDA in the early 90's after industry complained that drug approval was too slow. The fees now make up over half of FDA's budget for drug reviews. Now FDA if negotiating yet another increase in these fees at closed-door meetings with industry representatives, several of them former FDA officials, according to the article:

Our Executive Director, Gary Bass, speaks out in the Philanthropy Journal Leaders pushing estate-tax repeal, ignoring measures to help nonprofits. With Congress finishing a recess and headed back to Washington, many of us in the nonprofit community are taking stock of the year so far and what lies ahead....

The Senate is now taking up the must-pass-eventually defense appropriations bill. From BNA (subscription): Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said the Senate will convene Sept. 5 and immediately take up the DOD spending bill that lawmakers failed to finish prior to the August recess.

From a Sept. 1, 2006 http://www.brennancenter.org/presscenter/releases_2006/pressrelease_2006_0901.html"> Brennan Center press release CLEVELAND, OH - A federal court in Cleveland blocked enforcement of an Ohio state law enacted earlier this year that would have imposed crippling requirements on voter registration groups. The plaintiffs, civic and religious organizations and voting rights groups that have been working in Ohio through many election cycles without government interference, say that the law had dramatically curtailed their efforts to help eligible voters get on the rolls....