This morning Ben Smith over at Politico floated the idea that billionaire Mort Zuckerman might challenge Kirsten Gillibrand for Hillary Clinton’s old Senate seat in New York. This evening in a post on the New York Daily News, a paper he owns, he says he’s not gonna run. With Harold Ford out as well, this [...]
More than five days after he began but two days too late to prevent a cut off in services that will now have to be fixed retroactively, Senator Jim Bunning gave up his one-man filibuster of a $10 billion bill to extend unemployment benefits for 30 days. The measure passed with large bipartisan support 78-19. [...]
Five days after he was admonished by the Ethics Committee for two corporate-sponsored trips to the Caribbean, ABC News and NBC News are reporting that New York Democrat Charlie Rangel will “temporarily” give up the gavel of the Ways and Means Committee. Rangel tonight denied the reports, telling reporters on Capitol Hill that he remains [...]
How could I have missed this? The ultimate master of Senate procedure is now arguing the case: “Senators are obliged to exercise their best judgment when invoking their right to extended debate,” Byrd said. ” They should also be obliged to actually filibuster — that is, go to the floor and talk, instead of finding [...]
As Adam noted earlier, President Obama sent a letter to House and Senate leadership today outlining four GOP ideas he wants to integrate into Democratic health reform legislation. In his letter, the President called out some Republicans senators by name, describing which ideas came from whom. But this too is political theater – no Republicans [...]
Meanwhile, on the other side of Capitol Hill, Dennis Kucinich introduces legislation to end the war in Afghanistan:
Senate Democrats are looking to force Jim Bunning, who has single handedly blocked a bill extending unemployment insurance benefits (amongst other provisions) causing them to lapse on Sunday, into an actual filibuster. Well, sort of. Roll Call reports that Dems are lining up a series of senators who will attempt to move for a vote [...]
Even if they still face an uphill climb on health care reform, Democrats have regained their footing since Scott Brown’s Senate victory in Massachusetts. Shortly after the election, it seems as though comprehensive reform was dead, at least for 2010. And now here we are talking about the not totally unrealistic Democratic strategy for getting [...]
From our White House Photo Blog:
Okay, I’m switching to decaf. Our colleague Sophia Yan files this dispatch about a new online phenom:
