Even as the Department of Health and Human Services documents a growing demand for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, CQ Politics reports that lawmakers are again squabbling over renewing it: Senate Republicans have ditched last year’s cooperative tone on an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, accusing Democrats of abandoning bipartisan agreements [...]

Congressman Pete Hoekstra twittering (insert irony that this is coming from the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee) from inside a closed-door meeting with the President: First: Meeting w the President.Gave a very gracious opening statement.His speech doesn’t match the process that Pelosi and Reid are implementing. about 1 hour ago from TwitterBerry Then: President’s [...]

Apparently, this was one political argument that the White House has decided isn’t worth it. President Obama reportedly is asking House Democrats to drop the family-planning provision of the stimulus package: WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats are likely to jettison family planning funds for the low-income from an $825 billion economic stimulus bill, officials said [...]

Yesterday, in her first appearance as United Nations Ambassador SusanRice said that the Iranians would have to stop the enrichment of uranium before we began talks with them. She was repeating the Bush Administration precondition that Obama famously disputed during the campaign–his position was there should be no preconditions on talks with the Iranians. Later, [...]

Remarkable that the President gave his first major television interview to an Arabic network. My first thought was: I bet the Israel First lobby is going to find some way to be displeased about this thoughtful, if lapidary, interview. And, sure enough, first gripe goes to Eric Trager at the Commentary blog for this deeply [...]

A few days back, some Swampland commenters asked if Bill Lynn, the former Raytheon lobbyist appointed by Barack Obama to a top Pentagon job, really was “uniquely qualified” for the job, as Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs has argued in justifying Lynn’s waiver from the new Obama ethics policy. Today TIME’s national security correspondent Mark Thompson [...]

Here is the full report on the House version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which should shed some light on the debate that has been raging over the leaked version last week. Overall the CBO estimates that more than two-thirds, 64%, of the bill will be disbursed into the economy over the next [...]

There are few people who understand the intricacies of federal spending better than Scott Lilly, the former staff director of the House Appropriations Committee who is now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. (Indeed, we have quoted him here in the past.) Here’s what he has to say about the unofficial Congressional [...]

This is almost as embarrassing for the Kennedy family as Caroline’s Senate bid. A classic case of NIMBY…and very revealing to see that arch-environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who proposed himself for Environmental Protection Administrator, has also taken the family line on the project in the past. (I don’t know how his name got out [...]