The reporters and editors could hardly believe what they were hearing.

Over the past four months, NBC News investigative reporters have explored the trafficking of sex slaves in Latino brothels in the United States.

"It has been a story where the more we learned, the more we realized what we didn’t know," wrote NBC correspondent Richard Lui.

"In our editorial meetings, it was common for my editor to simply stare at me and say he did not believe what I was saying."

Here are links to the full series, Enslaved in America:

Stories
Azriel James Relph, The sex slaves next door. New form of trafficking invades US.

Richard Lui, A story both sordid and unbelievable. The spread of Latino brothels across the US has been silent but steady.

Sandra Lilley, Victims of the unimaginable speak out. Women rescued from Atlanta brothel recount trauma and abuse, caution others.

Graphics
Map: Latino residential brothels spread nationally.

Interactive: How the sex slave supply chain feeds the U.S. market.

Slide show: Breaking the code: Common practices at brothels.

Videos
See all the videos at this link, including Web-only exclusives.

We've long known that many Roman Catholic priests accused of having sex with children and teenagers have been sent for rehabilitation at the Vianney Renewal Center in Dittmer, Mo., 30 miles southwest of St. Louis.

What we haven't known is that priests there are able to maintain their access to pornography.

Reporter Leisa Zigman at KSDK, the NBC-affiliated TV station in St. Louis, has interviewed a former coordinator of the therapeutic program, Reyma McCoy, who says the accused priests are not in the strictly supervised setting that courts and parishioners have been told to expect. She provides memos to back up her story.

McCoy says residents can view porn on the Internet and receive pornographic material in the mail, because there are no disciplinary guidelines or repercussions.

A clinical director at Vianney denied that pornography is allowed.

But McCoy provide memos from the center showing that residents were able to turn off the filtering software on their computers.

As a result of the TV station's investigation, the Missouri Board of Probation and Parole is investigating whether the retreat is the appropriate facility for priests on parole. The Vianney center is operated by a religious order called the Servants of the Paraclete.

You can see KSDK's two-part investigation here:

Part one

Part two

By Robert Windrem
NBC News investigative producer for special projects

Moammar Gadhafi’s regime controls $32 billion in liquid assets around the world, including hundreds of millions of dollars invested in U.S. banks, according to a confidential cable written by the U.S. ambassador to Libya last year. The leaked diplomatic message was distributed through WikiLeaks.

The same cable reported that Libya had been approached by two men accused of running huge Ponzi schemes, Bernard Madoff and Allen Stanford, but had resisted offers from them to invest Libyan funds with them. Madoff is serving time in a U.S. prison; Stanford has not been convicted of a crime and is awaiting trial.

The cable is entitled "Technology of Tourism: Head of Libyan Investment Authority Discusses Opportunities for US Business in Libya," and was written Jan. 28, 2010, by Ambassador Gene A. Cretz, after a meeting with Mohamed Layas, the head of the LIA, Libya’s sovereign wealth fund. Sovereign wealth funds are the vehicles used by Middle East and other governments to invest oil wealth. The LIA, according to U.S. intelligence, is controlled by Gadhafi's regime.

"Layas asserted that the LIA has USD 32 billion in liquidity, and noted that several American banks are each managing USD 300-500 million of the LIA's funds," according to the cable.

Cretz also quotes Layas as saying, "We have USD 32 billion in liquidity,  mostly in bank deposits that will give us good long-term returns." Layas explained that beyond the hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. banks, not further identified, Layas said the LIA has extensive investments in the United Kingdom.

Cretz wrote that Layas "said that the LIA has an office in London and preferred doing business there rather than in the United States, due to the ‘ease of doing business’ in the UK and relatively 'uncomplicated tax system.' He noted that the LIA's primary investments are in London, in banking and residential and commercial real estate."

The LIA’s best-publicized investment was in a Canadian oil company, Verenex. Libya paid $316 million for the company in 2009.

However, the Libyan claimed he had avoided being involved in two Ponzi schemes, those run by Madoff and Stanford. Layas denied press reports that LIA had invested $100 million with Stanford, but admitted being approached by both Stanford and Madoff.

"Stanford had approached the LIA in the middle of his crisis, offering a 7-8% share in his investment scheme, but Layas had refused," Cretz wrote. "Layas also mentioned having been previously approached by Bernard Madoff about an investment opportunity, 'but we did not accept’." 

Read the cable here.

Other diplomatic cables on Libya are described in this New York Times article, "WikiLeaks cables detail Qaddafi family's exploits."

By Robert Windrem
NBC News investigative producer for special projects

U.S. officials, while declining to point to a single country that could follow Tunisia and Egypt into regime change, say they believe there are three countries whose protests could, under some circumstances, reach that same level of intensity.

The officials cited Yemen, Bahrain and Iran (not necessarily in that order) as being in a separate category from the rest of the Middle East nations. There may be protests and demonstrations in the other countries, but the protests are less widespread or more likely to be put down by brutal state security forces, U.S. officials said.

Here's a country-by-country assessment drawn from the accounts of U.S. officials:

Yemen: plenty of kindling
Yemen has been facing daily protests, and the nation is fraught with all sorts of issues: deep poverty and unemployment, a strong belief that the society is inherently corrupt, an active al-Qaida presence, and an unpopular ruler, who's been in power almost as long as Presidents Ben Ali and Mubarak in Tunisa and Egypt. Overlaying that is a water crisis unlike any other in the world. There has been a strong security presence in Sanaa, the capital, but things could get out of hand.

Iran: Look to March 21
The level of Iran's demonstrations surprised demonstration organizers, say U.S. officials. While some reports put the number of demonstrators at a half-million, officials dismissed that number as exaggerated, but said the real number, "tens of thousands, maybe a hundred thousand," was larger than organizers expected. In fact, the vote in the Iranian Majlis (parliament) to prosecute Green Movement leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mahdi Karroubi and former reformist President Mohammad Khatami was a function of the regime's anxiety rather than a realistic piece of legislation. While the protests, the largest since December 2009, are reflective of the Green Movement's strength, U.S. officials say they are uncertain that the protests can be sustained. Next time to look for widespread demonstrations: March 21, the Iranian New Year, known as Nowruz.

Bahrain: confidence in the streets
Bahrain is the most interesting to many U.S. analysts. Although there have long been demonstrations by the Shiite majority against the ruling Sunni royal family, this week's demonstrations show a great degree of confidence, fueled in part by the successes on Tunisia and Egypt. The demonstrators are demanding a new constitution that would lessen the power of the king, who now rules absolutely. There are reports that Iran is financing the protests in its role as Guardian of the Shiite faith, but U.S. officials have expressed suspicion about those reports.

Libya, Syria, Algeria, Saudi Arabia
As for the rest, U.S. officials say they believe that Libya, Syria and Algeria will continue to have demonstrations, but face brutal repression, which the populace well knows.

The Saudi regime, the officials say, does not have anywhere near the animosity found elsewhere, in large part because of the nation's wealth.

Lisa Myers and Sarah Heidarpour of NBC News report...

JPMorgan Chase moved on Tuesday to make amends for its treatment of servicemen and women on mortgage loans over the last few years. After an investigative report by NBC News, Chase has admitted that it overcharged 4,500 troops and wrongly foreclosed on 18 of them.

Today the bank said it will:

• Lower the mortgage interest rate for active duty military to 4 percent (2 points less than required by law).
• Start an enhanced modification program for anyone serving in the military after Sept. 11, 2001. Yes, over the past decade. This program will be for anyone delinquent or having problems paying the mortgage.
• Set up a special 24-hour hotline staffed by experts.
• Refuse to foreclose on any active-duty military personnel.
• Donate 1,000 homes to military families and veterans over the next five years in conjunction with its non-profit partners.
• Offer more jobs for veterans.

For more information, see our previous story on msnbc.com: Overcharges on soldiers' mortgages investigated.

The chairman and CEO of the New York bank, Jamie Dimon, said in a news release that the new programs "are a start, but in no way a finish."

"This company has a great history of honoring military and veterans, and the mistakes we made on military foreclosures are a painful aberration on that track record," Dimon said. "We deeply apologize to our military customers and their families for these mistakes. We cannot undo them, but we can take accountability for them, fix them and learn from them."

A South Carolina lawyer representing some of the servicemembers mistreated by Chase, Dick Harpootlian, offered this reaction: "When I was prosecuting cases, I never had a defendant who got caught breaking the law that didn't want to give back what they took and promise to lead a better life."

The full news release from Chase
JPMorgan Chase Announces New Programs for Military and Veterans

Commits to lower SCRA rate and increasing modifications, jobs, training, and home ownership assistance for military and veterans

NEW YORK, February 15, 2011 - JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) announced today it will significantly enhance its programs to help military and veteran customers.              
                       
"The programs we are announcing today are a start, but in no way a finish," said Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase.  "This company has a great history of honoring military and veterans, and the mistakes we made on military foreclosures are a painful aberration on that track record.  We deeply apologize to our military customers and their families for these mistakes.  We cannot undo them, but we can take accountability for them, fix them and learn from them.  Today we want to begin a new way forward with the military and veteran community to make serving them a core part of how we operate our business every day.  Our servicemen and servicewomen deserve nothing less."                       

The new Chase programs announced today are:

Reduced Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA) Pricing
Effective 4/1/11, subject to any required approvals, Chase will put in place a rebate or similar program for SCRA-protected military personnel, which will lower eligible borrowers' effective mortgage interest rate to 4% while on active duty and for a year thereafter.  That maximum rate is 2% lower than the 6% rate currently required by SCRA.

Military Modification Program
Beginning 4/1/11, Chase will introduce an enhanced modification program for all members of the military who have served on active duty as far back as 9/11/01.  The program will be offered to those who are delinquent or having trouble making their mortgage payments.  Subject to the required regulatory and investor approvals, the program will go beyond the government's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) requirements.  In addition, in cases when we modify any Chase-owned or Chase-serviced primary residential mortgage, if there is a second mortgage on the same property that is also owned by Chase, we will modify the interest rate on the second to 1%. 

Home Ownership Assistance
Chase will not foreclose on any currently deployed active military personnel.  This change goes beyond current SCRA requirements, which protects military borrowers against foreclosure only if they took out their loans prior to going on active duty.

Chase believes we now have the systems and controls in place to avoid wrongful foreclosure proceedings on any military covered by SCRA.  In cases where we have mistakenly foreclosed on military borrowers who should have been covered by SCRA, in addition to rescinding the sale, we will forgive all their remaining mortgage debt.  Going forward, if we ever have a wrongful foreclosure sale on an SCRA covered customer, we will forgive all of their remaining mortgage debt, as well. 

Chase will donate 1,000 homes to military and veterans over the next five years through our non-profit partners.

By the end of 2011, Chase will open five new Chase Homeownership Centers in cities near the following large military bases: Ft. Hood (Killeen), Texas; Naval Station Norfolk (Norfolk), Virginia; Ft. Bragg/Pope Air Force Base (Fayetteville), North Carolina; Camp Lejeune (Jacksonville), North Carolina; Ft. Campbell (Clarksville, TN), Kentucky.

 In 2011, Chase will host 10 borrower outreach events near large military bases.

Chase will staff all of its Homeownership Centers with employees specifically trained in SCRA, military issues and Chase special military programs.  

Jobs
JPMorgan Chase will take significant measurable steps to offer jobs and training to veterans. The company:

Will form an alliance with other major corporate employers to commit to hire 100,000 military and veterans in total over the next ten years.  We have already received commitments from several corporate partners and have reached out to many others.  We will announce full details of the alliance in the coming weeks. 

Will require all of its vendors to disclose its military hiring practices and will make contract decisions in part based on how strong those programs are.  This is in addition to our current practice of requiring vendors to disclose their diversity practices. 

Education and Training
Through its groundbreaking collaboration with Syracuse University, JPMorgan Chase will now offer a Technology Education certificate exclusively for veterans to prepare them for technology careers.  All military who have served on active duty going back to 9/11/01 will be eligible to apply for the free program.  It will be delivered online, so students can complete the coursework from any location.  JPMorgan Chase employs 20,000 technology employees in the United States and will actively recruit graduates of the school to fill open roles. 

For more information about the program, go to www.veterans.syr.edu. Further details on enrollment will be available on chasemilitary.com in the coming weeks. 

Veterans Advisory Council
Chase is forming a Veterans Advisory Council to advise the firm on these programs and other ways we can help the military and veteran community.  The Council will be chaired by Tom Higgins, JPMorgan Chase's head of Operational Control and Veterans Affairs.  Tom recently joined the firm after 24 years with the US Government.  During his career in public service, he worked closely with all branches of the armed forces and served in the US Navy.  He has a deep understanding of the unique issues facing our servicemen and women, particularly as they leave and return from active duty. 

Enhanced SCRA Controls
Chase has already made several changes to our services and products for military customers, including a dedicated hotline for military customers staffed by a unit of experts that is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  We have greatly enhanced controls to ensure that loans are properly categorized, SCRA protection periods are identified, and multiple verifications are done and documented to confirm that borrowers are not SCRA-eligible. 

Chase is pleased to announce that Maggie Belknap has been named head of SCRA oversight across the firm.  Ms. Belknap is a retired Colonel and the former head of Economics and Finance on the faculty at West Point.  She is also a West Point graduate and served in the army from 1981 - 2008, including a tour of combat duty in Desert Storm I.  She joined JPMorgan Chase in 2008 and is currently Head of Global Operations Control Management for Treasury Services.      
                                                                                                                                                                                                        
 "We will continue to monitor vigilantly how we serve military and veteran customers and will not be satisfied until we are 100% convinced that we are doing the right thing in every case," said Charlie Scharf, CEO of Retail Financial Services. "We understand we have breached the trust of some of our military customers and we know we need to work hard to earn it back, and we are deeply committed to doing that.  We want to work with the military community as partners going forward to become the best company in any industry to serve our military heroes."

"Our men and women in the military protect this country and our way of life every day," said Frank Bisignano, Chief Administrative Officer of JPMorgan Chase, responsible for Chase Home Lending.  "They deserve special status and benefits for the privilege they give us to live freely.  As part of making this right for our military customers, we will help them to own a home, pay down their debt, get training and find a job.  And that's just the beginning."

Any military borrower who has a question about a Chase loan should call our hotline numbers at:

• Mortgage questions:  877-469-0110
• Credit Card questions: 888-520-3863
• All other consumer product questions:  800-242-7399

By Michael Isikoff
NBC News National Investigative Correspondent

Now that Dick Cheney has opened the door to tighter gun restrictions, will President Barack Obama do the same?

That politically dicey question is playing out behind the scenes in the run-up to next week’s State of the Union. In the aftermath of the Tucson shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and federal Judge John Roll, gun control groups and some Democratic members of Congress are pushing to get the president to directly address the issue of gun violence in his speech to Congress next Tuesday, according to gun control advocates and congressional aides, who asked for anonymity.

Some Democratic party donors are also being urged to weigh in as part of a quiet lobbying effort to prod the president to finally speak out on an issue that he has studiously avoided since taking office, the advocates say.

“There’s a major push to get [Obama] to say something on this,” said Chad Ramsey, legislative director of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a leading gun control group. “We’ve been told he will say something, but we’re not sure how strong it will be.”

There have been a number of different gun control ideas put forward since the Jan. 8 Tucson shooting. But gun control groups most of all want Obama’s endorsement of the bill introduced this week by Democratic Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of New York (with more than 40 co-sponsors so far). That bill would ban the sale or transfer of high-capacity gun magazines such as the one allegedly used by Jared L. Loughner to fire off more than 30 rounds. So far, the proposal (and a companion bill to be introduced next week by Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey) has yet to pick up a single Republican co-sponsor.

But backers were buoyed Wednesday when former vice president Dick Cheney, long a stalwart supporter of gun rights, appeared open to the idea, telling NBC’s Jamie Gangel in an interview, “maybe it's appropriate to re-establish that kind of thing.” (See the video of Cheney below.)

A White House official said that aides won't publicly comment on what Obama might or might not say in the Jan. 25 State of the Union. Asked specifically about the McCarthy-Lautenberg proposal to ban high-capacity magazines, Reid Cherlin, a White House press spokesman, said in an e-mail: “A number of proposals have been put forward in the days since these tragic shootings, and we’re going to be taking a close look at all of them.”

As a sign of just how tough a fight this issue would be, the National Rifle Association on Wednesday sent a letter to members of Congress criticizing "anti-gun activists" for pushing several "schemes" after Tucson. Referring specifically to the McCarthy-Lautenberg proposal to ban clips of more than 10 rounds, Chris Cox, the group's chief lobbyist, wrote: "These magazines are standard equipment for self-defense handguns and other firearms owned by tens of millions of Americans. Law-abiding private citizens choose them for many reasons, including the same reason police officers do: to improve their odds in defensive situations." (The NRA did not respond to a request to comment on Cheney's remarks to NBC.)

Until now, the entire subject of guns has been anathema at the White House. Obama during his 2008 campaign had pledged to push to reinstate the ban on semi-automatic assault weapons. The ban, which was enacted under President Clinton in 1994 and which lapsed under President Bush 10 years later, had included a provision that prohibited the manufacture of high-capacity detachable magazines.

But White House officials pretty much dropped the issue after Obama took office, going so far as to remove the campaign pledge from the White House website. Obama, who stopped talking about guns entirely, also waited nearly two years before nominating a director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, fearing that any candidate it sent up to the Senate would incur the wrath of the formidable National Rifle Association, according to administration sources. (Sure enough, its nominee, Andrew Traver, the ATF special agent in charge in Chicago, is the target of an NRA lobbying campaign. It remains far from clear he will ever get confirmed.)

Still, advocates say that the Tucson shooting was such a searing national tragedy that it may now be impossible for Obama to duck the subject. According to gun control groups, and some law enforcement officials, a ban on high-capacity magazines is the one specific proposal that might have made a difference in Tucson, at least in lowering the body count of six killed and 13 wounded. Because of the high-capacity magazine he had attached to his Glock 19 semi-automatic, Loughner was able to get off 31 or 32 shots before he had to reload. It was only when he did so that he was wrestled to the ground.

One prong of the gun control lobbying campaign is to try to line up law enforcement backing for the McCarthy proposal, starting with the Justice Department. Thanks to the intervention of a plugged-in donor, the group has secured a meeting on Jan. 25 with Attorney General Eric Holder — the same day as the State of the Union. (Holder is on record as supporting the assault weapons ban, but like other administration officials rarely talks about it anymore. ) The groups are also hoping that McCarthy may yet have some pull with her former chief of staff, Jim Messina, now the deputy White House chief of staff and one of Obama’s most influential aides. A McCarthy spokesman said that the congresswoman has been attempting to raise the subject of the magazine ban with Messina, but said he didn’t believe the two had spoken yet.)

But skeptics wonder how far the Messina connection will get the gun control advocates. One former senior law enforcement official who follows the gun issue closely, and who asked for anonymity, noted that after Messina worked for McCarthy he served as chief of staff to Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, a strong gun rights advocate. And Messina at times has served as a White House conduit to the NRA, the former official said.

In any case, this former official predicted that, for all the outside pressure it has been getting, the White House in the end will avoid the subject, concluding it's simply not worth taking on the NRA and that it's likely to lose in the end. “As a matter of political strategy, it would be as bad for him take this on as health care was,” said this former official. “It would become a distraction from everything else.”

By Michael Isikoff
NBC News National Investigative Correspondent

A leading gun rights advocate says there is no constitutional barrier to restricting the sale of high-capacity gun magazines such as the one used by accused Tucson shooter Jared Loughner and that such proposals are justified to prevent “looney tunes” from committing more gun massacres.

Robert A. Levy, who served as co-counsel in the landmark 2008 Supreme Court case that established a Second Amendment right to bear arms, said there was no reason the court’s decision in that case should apply to the purchase of high-capacity gun magazines.

“I don’t see any constitutional bar to regulating high-capacity magazines,” Levy said in an interview with NBC. “Justice (Antonin) Scalia made it quite clear some regulations are permitted. The Second Amendment is not absolute.”

The comments by Levy, chairman of the board of the libertarian Cato Institute, come as Democratic Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of New York is preparing to circulate a bill Thursday to ban the sale or transfer of high-capacity magazines. Supporters took Levy’s comments as a sign that at least one gun rights advocates might be open to the idea. 

“For somebody like him to say this is significant,” said Kristen Rand, legislative director of the Violence Policy Center, a leading gun control group. Levy had been one of the lead lawyers for gun rights advocates in  District of Columbia v. Heller, the 2008 case in which the Supreme Court overturned a Washington, D.C., ban on handgun ownership and affirmed for the first time that the Second Amendment encompassed an individual right to own firearms.

There is little doubt that any gun control proposal will face tough sledding in the Congress. A spokesman said today that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is against the idea. One leading gun rights group, Gun Owners of America, posted a statement on its website this week denouncing “liberal politicians flocking like vultures” to gain political advantage from the Tucson tragedy by proposing gun control measures.

But gun control groups argue that measures like one being proposed by McCarthy in the House (and Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who is sponsoring a similar bill in the Senate) are so modest and reasonable that they could gain traction. Law enforcement officials have noted that Loughner’s high-capacity magazine substantially increased the lethality of his rampage. Witnesses said he was able to get off at least 31 shots without reloading and was only wrestled to the ground when he tried to reload with another high-capacity magazine. The manufacture of such magazines were prohibited under the 1994 federal assault weapons ban, but that law lapsed in 2004, and gun experts say the sale of such magazines have since proliferated.

President Obama, during his 2008 campaign, supporting reinstating the assault weapons ban, but abandoned the idea as politically impractical after taking office. This week, the White House has declined to respond to requests for comment on whether the president would support a restriction on high-capacity magazines.

Although he is strongly opposed to most gun control measures, Levy said in this case “as a policy matter”  restricting access to high-capacity magazines such as the 33-round one used by Loughner makes sense. 

“It may stop a few of these looney tunes,” Levy said. While saying that he saw it as a “close call," he said that a restriction of “10 to 15 rounds makes sense.”

By Michael Isikoff
NBC News National Investigative Correspondent

Accused Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughner was rejected by the U.S. Army in Dec. 2008 after he admitted that he was a drug user, not because he failed a drug test, an Army official said on Monday.

Loughner was questioned by an Army recruiter as part of a standard screening process for all recruits, said U.S. Army spokesman Gary Tallman. When he admitted being a drug user, Loughner was turned down and never underwent a urinalysis or other drug test, contrary to published reports.

"It never got that far," Tallman said. "He was denied entry and was never a recruit." Tallman said he had no information on whether Loughner admitted what kinds of drugs he used.

Loughner's past drug use as well as his mental health are getting attention from gun control proponents, who are questioning his ability to legally purchase the semi-automatic Glock 19 purchase that he allegedly used to shoot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and U.S. District Judge John Roll on Saturday. An aide to New York City Michael Bloomberg, who organized a group called Mayors Against Illegal Guns, said the group is examining ways to tighten federal gun laws to prohibit drug abusers and individuals with mental health problems from legally purchasing weapons.

Although drug "addicts" or "unlawful" drug users are currently barred by law from buying a gun, the standards are vague and enforcement sporadic. The number of persons denied purchases on those grounds are tiny. Among states such as Arizona that conduct their own background checks, only four people were specifically turned down for drug use between 2001 and 2008, according to FBI figures. (Thousands more were turned down for criminal convictions, which may have included drug sales or possession.)

Arizona court records show that Loughner was arrested on a misdemeanor drug paraphernalia charge in 2007, but the charges were dropped after he underwent a diversion program. He has also been described by former friends and classmates as a "pot smoker," although there are no indications he used other drugs. He had a later charge in 2008 for graffiti, the Arizona Republic reported.

NBC's chief Pentagon correspondent, Jim Miklaszewski, has more in the interview below:

(Updated at 3:45 p.m. Eastern to add comment from Lautenberg's and McCarthy's offices.)

By Michael Isikoff
NBC News National Investigative Correspondent

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., with the backing of gun control groups, are drafting a bill that would ban the sale of high-capacity magazines such as the one that was used allegedly Saturday by Jared Lee Loughner, the man accused of murdering federal Judge John Roll and trying to assassinate Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., according to two gun control activists working with McCarthy's staff.

Gun control proponents are hoping to move rapidly on the measure in the wake of reports that Loughner's access to high-capacity, 33-round magazines substantially increased the lethality of his attack, the activists said. An Arizona law enforcement official confirmed to NBC News on Monday that Loughner had actually gotten off at least 31 shots during the Saturday shooting, not the 20 that were first reported. He was emptying his first high-capacity magazine and was trying to reload with another high-capacity magazine (with another 30 rounds) when he was wrestled to the ground, the official said.

"In the wake of these kind of incidents, the trick is to move quickly," said Kristen Rand, legislative director of the Violence Policy Center, one of the gun control groups working with McCarthy's office.

McCarthy, one of the House's strongest gun control proponents, whose husband was killed in a mass shooting on the Long Island Railroad in 1993, confirmed Sunday that she was drafting a new bill in the aftermath of Tuscon .an aide said her office was consulting with other members, including House Speaker John Boehner's office, and that she hoped to have draft language as early as this week. A Lautenberg aide said Lautenberg was working on a similar version in the Senate. 

"The only reason to have 33 bullets loaded in a handgun is to kill a lot of people very quickly. These high-capacity clips simply should not be on the market," Lautenberg said. "Before 2004, these ammunition clips were banned, and they must be banned again. When the Senate returns to Washington, I will introduce legislation to prohibit this type of high-capacity clip." 

Lautenberg was referring to an issue that has been highlighted in recent days by senior federal law enforcement officials: the manufacture of the kind of high-capacity magazines the suspect had with him at the Tucson shopping mall was barred under a federal assault weapons ban that was passed by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1994.

By Michael Isikoff
NBC News National Investigative Correspondent

When he began shooting outside the Tucson supermarket, Jared Lee Loughner had a Glock 19 pistol that he purchased for $500 and two high capacity 33-round magazines whose manufacture had once been banned under federal law, federal law enforcement officials said Sunday.

But that law, part of a broader 1994 assault weapons ban, expired seven years ago under President Bush. As a result, the 22-year-old Loughner was able to legally acquire high-capacity clips that substantially enhanced the lethality of his attack, officials said. Loughner was charged Sunday with the incidents involving federal employees: two counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder. (A copy of the charges is here, in a PDF file.)

“It gave him a tactical advantage,” said one federal law enforcement official who asked for anonymity. Referring to high-capacity magazines, the official said, “There’s absolutely no doubt the magazines increased the lethality and the body count of this attack.”

Some federal law enforcement officials — and gun control groups — pointed to Loughner’s lawful access to the magazines, as well as the semi-automatic Glock pistol despite an apparent history of mental troubles, as further evidence of the weakness of federal gun laws. There were already signs Sunday that, as with past shooting massacres, such as the ones at Virginia Tech or at Columbine High School in Colorado, the Tuscon assassination was reigniting the perennial debate over federal gun laws.

 “The 22-year-old shooter in Tucson was not allowed to enlist in the military, was asked to leave school, and was considered ‘very disturbed,’” according to former classmates, "but that’s not enough to keep someone from legally buying as many guns as they want in America,” said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

The porous nature of the gun laws  are even greater in Arizona, where the state’s governor, Jan Brewer, a gun rights champion, last year signed a law striking down a permit requirement for carrying a concealed weapon. Two years ago, she signed a law permitting guns to be carried into bars and restaurants that sell alcohol.

Loughner legally purchased the Glock pistol at a Sportsman’s Warehouse store in Tuscson on Nov. 30, filling out a standard federal form that, among other questions, affirmed  he had never been convicted of a felony or been “adjudicated” as "mentally defective.” Although he had been charged with a misdemeanor drug offense in 2008 and had been suspended in September from Pima Community College until a mental health professional certified he was not a danger to himself or others, neither disqualified him from legally purchasing the weapon.

But one federal law enforcement official involved in the case pointed to the high-capacity magazines as an even bigger issue in the attack. The Glock pistol as advertised comes with a standard clip of 15 rounds. The shooter on Saturday had four magazines with his Glock: two high-capacity magazines of more than 30 rounds, and two standard rounds, giving him combined firepower of more than 90 rounds. "He had emptied the first magazine and was trying to reload when he was tackled," said one law enforcement official.

As part of the broader 1994 assault weapons ban, Congress prohibited the manufacture of high-capacity magazines that would enable a shooter to repeatedly fire more rounds without reloading. That law drew stiff opposition from the National  Rifle Association and other gun rights groups — and was allowed to expire under President George W. Bush in 2004.

President Obama, during his 2008 campaign, pledged to restore the ban, and in its early days the Obama White House even had language on its website affirming that the administration supported making “the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent.”

But White House officials have long since dropped the issue as politically impractical, especially in light of the opposition of Blue Dog Democrats. (Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the target of Saturday’s tactic, was among them.) The  language about the assault weapons ban since has been dropped from the White House site.

How much of a difference a reinstatement of the ban would have made in the Tucson shooting is open to dispute. James Cavanaugh, a former senior official of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, noted that the assault weapons ban only barred the manufacture of new high-capacity magazines; those already on the market were “grandfathered” in and could still be sold. Even without the two high-capacity magazines he had on him, the shooter could have used the Glock’s standard click to fire off 15 rounds—enough to have hit most, if not all, of the targets in the Saturday shooting, he said.

A more relevant issue, Cavanaugh said, was the exceedingly high standard for denying mentally unstable gun purchasers from acquiring weapons. The current standard — they must be “adjudicated” mentally unstable by a court — is very difficult to meet and results in very few denials, he said. While there are unquestionably civil liberties issues at stake, Cavanaugh said, “when people are psychotic, they shouldn’t be able to just walk in and purchase a gun at a gun store like he did.” 

What if a member of Congress pulls strings to make sure that a state gets money for a road project, but that road never gets built? The state loses the money, which it could have used for another project.

USA Today investigative writer Gregory Korte and NBC's Tom Costello found that this sort of careless good intentions are commonplace. One out of every three dollars that Congress has earmarked for highway projects over the past 20 years has gone unspent. It adds up to $13 billion of unspent money, in effect trapped in projects that never got built.

Here's a link to Korte's original article, which gives the amount each state has lost to these “orphan earmarks.”

As Korte describes one example:

Almost 13 years ago, Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind., directed $375,000 in federal funding "to improve State Road 31" in Columbus, Ind., a city at the edge of his district.

The McIntosh "earmark" seemed routine at the time, like almost 2,000 other congressional pet projects that lawmakers inserted into the 1998 highway bill. But there was a problem: "There is no State Road 31 that travels through Columbus, only U.S. 31," says Will Wingfield, a spokesman for the Indiana Department of Transportation.

The cost?

The money not only remains unspent, but because Congress counts money earmarked for highway projects against a state's share of federal gas tax revenue, the amount of the earmark reduced what Indiana would have received in federal funding — almost dollar for dollar.

Below are two videos, Costello's report for Nightly News as well as Korte discussing his findings: