In the Nation

NEW YORK - Former Democratic fund-raiser Norman Hsu was sentenced to more than 24 years in prison yesterday by a judge who accused him of funding a Ponzi scheme with a "conniving use of the political process."

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero said Hsu - who pleaded guilty to fraud charges and was convicted of violating campaign-finance laws - used his political connections to impress investors and stole $50 million from hundreds of them over 10 years.

His donations became an embarrassment for Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign, which returned $800,000 to donors linked to Hsu after his arrest.

Prosecutors said Hsu claimed his clothing or high-technology ventures would pay returns of 14 and 20 percent. His scheme collapsed in September 2007. - AP

WASHINGTON - House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer said yesterday he would be cool to a Senate proposal to take away the retroactive immunity given to telecommunications companies that participated in warrantless wiretapping at the behest of the Bush administration.

"I don't think that revisiting that issue is really going to get us anyplace," the Maryland Democrat told reporters.

He spoke a day after some Senate Democrats, including Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, said they would seek to repeal a provision in a 2008 act granting immunity from lawsuits to the telecom companies.

Civil-liberties groups say the law gives the government powers to conduct surveillance with little or no connection to terrorism. - AP

WASHINGTON - A Republican congressman who called President Obama an "enemy of humanity" said yesterday through a spokeswoman he was referring only to the president's policies related to abortion.

Trent Franks of Arizona said in a speech to conservatives Saturday in St. Louis that given Obama's decision to fund international family planning organizations that support legal abortion, "he has no place in any station of government and we need to realize that he is an enemy of humanity."

Spokeswoman Bethany Haley said Franks was referring to "unborn humanity" and meant to say Obama's policies have no place in government, rather than that Obama has no place in government.

Franks' remarks "show a stunning lack of respect for our president and the office of the presidency," said Michael Keegan, president of the liberal interest group People for the American Way, which provided a video of Franks' speech. - AP

A man who went to the Lawrenceville, Ga., police for a background check for a job was held in a 1976 Missouri murder. Johnny Wright, 65, was wanted in the slaying of Rebecca Doisy, a University of Missouri student and granddaughter of Edward A. Doisy, who shared the 1943 Nobel Prize in medicine for the discovery of Vitamin K.