“Obama Rebounding” trumpets Politico at the news the president’s job approval-disapproval rating has reached an even 48-48 percent split in the latest CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll. Their proof for this dramatic “comeback in the eyes of the American people?” The disapproval number is the lowest it’s been since May, when it was 46 percent in [...]
The conventional wisdom goes that Haley Barbour, were he to run for president, would struggle as a son of the deep south and former super-lobbyist. Matt Yglesias and Ben Smith cover some of the problems from the former category raised in Andrew Ferguson’s cover piece in the Weekly Standard today. Ferguson gets into the latter [...]
Earlier this year, congressional scholar Norm Ornstein wrote a column arguing that despite record unpopularity and minority obstinacy, the 111th Congress has been almost unprecedentedly prolific. …this Democratic Congress is on a path to become one of the most productive since the Great Society 89th Congress in 1965-66, and Obama already has the most legislative [...]
Really good piece in the Washington Post by Ezra Klein today, checking in on the Massachusetts universal health care system–better known as Romneycare, the precursor of Obamacare. Overall, the system is working well. 98% of the state’s residents are covered; 99% of the state’s children. The cost of health care continues to rise, with the [...]
The Senate today passed the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which is a good thing. It did not pass the “Dream Act,” which is a cold, cold abomination. There is a relationship between the two. Repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” will allow homosexuals–who have fought honorably in every one of America’s wars–to serve openly. [...]
A last-gasp effort to pass an immigration bill that has long languished in Congress failed Saturday morning, with Democrats failing to muster the 60 votes required to bring the DREAM Act to the floor for a final vote. The push to resuscitate the bill, which would have created a path to citizenship for young illegal [...]
Well, not exactly. But it will become evident in the post-mortem reporting that the repeal of the ban on gays serving in the military, which cleared its last real hurdle with a 63-33 cloture vote in the Senate this morning, could not have happened without the senior Senator from Connecticut. It was Lieberman who rallied [...]
Yesterday the White House rolled out the president and senior cabinet officials to update America on the long war in Afghanistan. It was with far less fanfare that Obama’s top counter terrorism advisor, John Brennan, gave a speech today at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace about U.S. policy in a country sometimes called the [...]
The end of the lame duck is in sight. The House late last night passed the tax bill after progressives gave up their demands to strengthen the estate tax provision — demands that nearly brought down the bill. Members are sticking around Washington now, waiting until how the government is funded the next few months [...]
