Today's Details

-Despite record low approval ratings, House lawmakers Tuesday embraced a $3,300 pay raise that will increase their salaries to $168,500. The 2 percent cost-of-living raise would be the seventh straight for members of the House and Senate. Lawmakers easily squelched a bid by Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, to get a direct vote to block the COLA, which is automatically awarded unless lawmakers vote to block it. (They're not interested in raising the minimum wage to help lift those at the bottom of the economic scale - who btw don't get cost of living increases. These folks are all about themselves. They need to go. eaprez) DETAILS

-Rumsfeld expels U.S. media from Guantanamo Bay. DETAILS

-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, under federal investigation for possible insider trading, will have a nice nest egg to fall back on when he retires from Congress in January, recording income last year of more than $5 million from his largest blind trust. DETAILS

- In the next few days, the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct is expected to recommend changes to the chamber's rules on privately sponsored travel, including measures that could strengthen disclosure requirements and close loopholes used by lobbyists. However, the Center for Public Integrity has found that the current members of the committee are no strangers to taking privately funded trips. From January 2000 through June 2005, the members — five Republicans and five Democrats — and their aides accepted about 400 such trips valued at nearly $1 million, according to a Center review of disclosure records. DETAILS