Named for Lenny Skutnik, the savior of a drowning jetliner passenger whose aircraft crashed into the Potomac River in 1982, these (mostly) heroic folks have been mainstays of the annual State of the Union address since Ronald Reagan started the tradition with Skutnik three decades ago.
Just over a year after being shot in the head by a crazed constituent at a Congress-on-your-corner event at a Tuscon super market, Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords on Sunday announced via Facebook that she is resigning her office.
Hollywood loves a good yarn about pirates on the high seas. Piracy online? Not so much. Every day, people around the world effectively steal countless movies, songs and other copyrighted content through websites offering illegal downloads. The big movie and music studios have fought this thievery for years, with some success. They hounded Napster out [...]
Somewhere in the bowels of the White House there is an aide whose sole job is to make a list of popular measures President Obama can propose that Congress is guaranteed not to pass this year. To judge by the number of Going-Nowhere Good-Governance suggestions Obama has made recently (remember the Jobs Act?) maybe there’s [...]
Updated: 10:13 a.m. Friday On the fifth day since rank-and-file Republicans bucked a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut, the House GOP finally gave way under pressure. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gave the last push Thursday, calling on his House colleagues to pass a short-term measure and move on to separately negotiating a [...]
Just so we’re all caught up, here’s what’s happened in the 2011 episode of Congress’s December Debacle so far: Everyone wants to extend the payroll-tax cut through next year. Democrats and Republicans disagree on the particulars. The Senate overwhelmingly passed an undesirable two-month extension so they could get out of Dodge and spend Christmas with [...]
Congress is an institution built on traditions: bean soup in the Senate cafeteria; two-century-old desks; strict legislative procedures. But during the presidency of Barack Obama, Congress has added one more, less beloved ritual: the annual yuletide negotiating meltdown that leaves its members stranded in Washington in late December.
For what feels like the 624th time this year, the federal government on Friday will run out of money unless Congress acts. This deadline hasn’t gotten much ink because a) we’re all tired of writing the same fishbowl, government shutdown story, and b) congressional negotiators for once in their lives are on track to sign [...]
The reactionary socialists over at the Congressional Budget Office have created a fantastic infographic for understanding federal spending, debt and taxation right now in the U.S.:
On Friday morning, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint sent a blast email to his Senate Conservatives Fund list blasting former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson as a RINO (Republican In Name Only) and endorsing his Tea Party challenger Mark Neumann. In 2010, DeMint made himself no favorite of the leadership by using his PAC to support [...]
