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or Thursday.
• Hagel faces fierce opposition from Republicans who have challenged his past statements and votes on Israel, Iran, Iraq and nuclear weapons. Committee Republicans forced a delay in the expected committee vote last week when they pressed Hagel for more information about his personal finances.
• The panel's chairman, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said the GOP demands were beyond the scope of those traditionally asked of previous nominees, Republican and Democrat -- a point echoed by his Republican colleague, Sen. John McCain of Arizona. Levin set a committee vote that will probably break along party lines -- 14 Democrats for Hagel, 12 Republicans against their former colleague -- just hours before Obama's State of the Union address to Congress.
• More critical to whether Republicans drag out the nomination is the closed-door, weekly Republican luncheon Tuesday where Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., will determine whether GOP lawmakers have the inclination and votes to filibuster a president's Cabinet choice. Such a move would be unprecedented in the Senate, where Republicans and Democrats have argued that a president's nominee should get an up or down vote.
• ___

• WASHINGTON (AP) -- A woman whose Chicago police officer brother was fatally shot in 2010 says it's time for Congress to pass laws keeping guns from criminals. Another woman says firearms restrictions prevented her from protecting her parents when they were killed in a 1991 mass shooting in a Texas restaurant.
• The two were among several witnesses taking opposing sides Tuesday as the Senate holds its second hearing on gun curbs since December's shooting deaths of 20 first-graders in Newtown, Conn. This time, a Senate Judiciary subcommittee is examining the constitutionality and effectiveness of federal firearms limits.
• "We need to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and those who are mentally unstable," the subcommittee's chairman, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said in a brief interview Monday. "I hope everyone will acknowledge that within our Constitution is not only an individual right to bear arms, but the collective right of Americans to be safe."
• A Republican on the panel, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, said existing gun laws are not being effectively enforced. He cited the often ignored requirement that states make mental health records available to the federal background check system.

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