MADISON, Wis (Reuters) – Republicans in the Wisconsin state Senate dropped a threat on Tuesday to deny 14 Democratic counterparts the right to vote in the chamber because they fled to Illinois last month.

In an e-mail sent late Monday to his 18 Republican colleagues, Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald claimed the 14 Democrats were still technically in contempt and that any votes they made in standing committees would not be counted.

"They are free to attend hearings, listen to testimony, debate legislation, introduce amendments, and cast votes to signal their support/opposition," Fitzgerald wrote, "but those votes will not count, and will not be recorded."

But on Tuesday, Fitzgerald and Senate President Mike Ellis backed off that claim, which the Democrats, who collectively represent about 2.2 million Wisconsin voters, had blasted as "the height of arrogance."

Andrew Wellhouse, a spokesman for Fitzgerald, reiterated the claim that the 14 remain in contempt, and a resolution of the Senate was needed to lift it. But because the Senate is not scheduled to reconvene in full session until early April 5, that will not happen any time soon.

So in the meantime, all the penalties the Republicans slapped on the Democrats in an effort to get them to return to the state, which included $100-a-day fines and a ban on their ability to vote, have been lifted, Wellhouse said.

In late February, the 14 Democrats fled Wisconsin to Illinois to deny their Republican counterparts the quorum they needed to pass the anti-union bill. In response, Senate Republicans held the Democrats in contempt and then used a legislative maneuver to pass the measure without a quorum.

The 14 returned to the state late last week and were greeted as heroes by the estimated crowd of up to 100,000 people who protested the measure in Madison on Saturday.

The protests came after Republican Governor Scott Walker signed into law the measure, which imposes sweeping new limits on collective bargaining for public sector workers and has sparked a national debate over labor relations.

Walker has said the bill, which sharply limits the union rights of public workers and requires them to pay more of their health insurance and pension costs, was needed to help the state close a $3.6 billion budget deficit over two years.

(Reporting by Jeff Mayers and James B. Kelleher; writing by James B. Kelleher)

SALT LAKE CITY (Reuters) – Utah's governor on Tuesday signed a package of immigration laws including one that would allow a police crackdown on illegal immigrants similar to Arizona's attempt last year.

The laws, approved by Utah's Republican-controlled legislature earlier this month, also would attempt to create a guest worker program.

Opponents of the bills rallied last week in downtown Salt Lake City in an effort to prevent their passage. Chanting and carrying signs that read "Don't Let Utah Become Another Arizona" and "Keep Families Together" the protesters urged lawmakers and the governor to stop the legislation.

"Utah did the right thing. We did the hard thing," Governor Gary Herbert said in signing the laws, which he called "the Utah solution."

The United States is struggling with 12 million illegal immigrants, many of them from Latin America, and growing anger among voters about the jobs they take.

U.S. immigration enforcement has shifted over the years, with the Obama administration choosing to crack down on employers rather than illegal workers themselves.

Herbert called on the federal government to follow Utah's model and enact reform of immigration laws.

But immigration experts said the new Utah laws, except for enforcement, are more show than substance.

"The guest worker stuff is entirely meaningless. It is like a college creating a nuclear free zone. It's meaningless. A state cannot create a guest worker program," said Steven Camarota, research director of the pro-enforcement Center for Immigration Studies think-tank in Washington.

Analysts also are skeptical the package will influence policy in Washington, where Republicans who favor enforcement-only measures have control of the House of Representatives and a stronger hand in the Senate.

Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University, said such laws put immigration back in focus.

"But the way forces are balanced in Washington, I don't think it's going to have any real effect on pushing through comprehensive immigration reform," he said.

Legal challenges are expected to a law requiring police to check the immigration status of people stopped for felonies.

That law is similar to one in Arizona that has been the target of a lawsuit by the administration of President Barack Obama.

Herbert hosted an immigration summit last year to lay the foundation for the forthcoming legislative session. The summit brought together religious, business, law enforcement and government leaders to tackle the issue.

"There are those who will say these bills may not be perfect but they are a step in the right direction and they are better than what we had," he said.

(Additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles and Tim Gaynor in Phoenix)

BOSTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration will study distribution policies for a drug to protect against the effects of radiation as part of a review of the implications of Japan's ongoing nuclear disaster, a government spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

The new review would reopen a debate sought by safety activists who have called for a greater stockpile of potassium iodide near U.S. nuclear plants.

Debate over the supply has become politically charged, even as U.S. consumers cleaned out some retailers of their stocks of the medicine in recent days with an eye on Japan's struggles to contain the damage at its Fukushima nuclear plant.

Currently 22 U.S. states have stockpiled or requested the tablets known by their chemical name "KI," to be taken by residents within 10 miles of power plants in an emergency.

Nuclear regulators and nuclear industry groups have resisted calls for stockpiles for people in a wider radius, saying planning is better focused on evacuation measures.

In a statement sent late on Tuesday, Dori Salcido, spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said the government will study "every aspect" of the disaster unfolding in Japan following Friday's massive 9.0 earthquake and tsunami, and the government's response to it.

"Policy options relating to KI distribution will be among the issues studied," she wrote.

Salcido did not immediately provide more details. The drug is intended to protect against thyroid cancer by stopping the sensitive gland from absorbing some forms of radiation.

U.S. policy was set by a 2002 law that called for distribution of KI to residents up to 20 miles away from reactors. In 2008, the Bush administration waived that requirement, saying evacuation would be a much better option.

JAPAN RECASTS DEBATE

Now critics have renewed the questions, with an eye on the severe quake and tsunami damage to nuclear reactors in Japan. One is Edward Markey, the Massachusetts congressman who wrote the 2002 law.

"We should not wait for a catastrophic accident at, or a terrorist attack on, a nuclear reactor in this country to occur to implement this common-sense emergency preparedness measure," Markey said on Monday.

Markey had previously called on President Barack Obama to expand stockpiles, but got a letter back from the White House last summer that let the Bush administration's position stand.

Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the U.S. nuclear industry's trade group, the Nuclear Energy Institute, said it supports the idea that evacuation is the best option.

"Our view quite strongly is that the science doesn't merit KI distribution beyond 10 miles," he said.

Markey spokeswoman Giselle Barry said his staff estimates U.S. agencies have purchased about 2 million KI tablets in the past decade, plus about 400,000 liquid doses for children. Some will expire soon, however.

The drug -- chemically similar to table salt -- is also sold by some pharmacies; a number of them on the West Coast have sold out in recent days, even as public health officials noted that the drug can be dangerous to people with allergies to shellfish or thyroid problems.

Some online suppliers seemed to be doing no better including Anbex.com, which calls its KI tablets "iOSAT. "As of March 14, 2011, Anbex is out of stock of iOSAT. New product expected by April 18, 2011," its website read on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Ross Kerber; editing by Todd Eastham)