This morning Washington woke up to reports on how the White House was going to go after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s opposition to the financial reregulation bill. “McConnell’s arguments that the Democrat’s plan for Wall Street reform will perpetuate bailouts is pure fantasy cooked up by Frank Luntz in a right wing focus …
Yesterday, I traveled out to Staten Island to catch up with Rep. Michael McMahon, a freshman Democrat who voted against health care reform. McMahon seems pretty happy with how his vote is being perceived at home, even though Moveon.org and the SEIU are now actively searching for a Dem to primary him. He’s raised more than $1.1 million …
Not so much. Today, I look at five reasons why this cycle is different from 1994… so far.
As most of our readers know, every year we do a big dead tree edition on the 100 people that mattered most in the past 12 months. Today, the 200 nominees are up. Let the voting for the most influential person of 2009 begin. Will it be President Obama? Sarah Palin? Nancy Pelosi? Katheryn Bigelow? Rahul Singh? Sandra Bullock? And, yes, as …
Allison Lefrak is a Washington lawyer who represents the last of the Russian detainees, Ravil Mingazov, 43, in the Guantanamo Bay detention center. Her client’s habeas corpus hearing is in two weeks and Lefrak was on the phone with him last week when he told her that inmates in his block – Camp 4, the most compliant detainees – …
Like Politico’s Ben Smith, I was sent by Republican National Committee Spokesman Doug Heye a long list of Democratic National Committee expenditures. I was hesitant to post them (they are below) because the RNC couldn’t provide the Federal Election Commission links to each of the searches and the DNC disputed at least one item: the …
Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson had pledged to resign her Senate seat in her bid for Rick Perry’s governor’s mansion. She lost the GOP gubernatorial primary last month to Perry and today announced that, in fact, she will not resign — as first reported by Reid Wilson over at Hotline. She intends to serve out her term which expires in …
President Barack Obama today announced his intention to make 15 recess appointments, signaling his frustration with the Senate’s foot dragging. The White House pointedly noted that these nominees have been waiting an average of 214 days for confirmation. Overall, the White house said, Obama has 217 nominees before the Senate who’ve …
The Senate scattered to the four winds this afternoon, leaving unfinished work on a $9.2 billion bill to extend for one-month unemployment benefits. This will not make for a restful two-week recess for exhausted lawmakers as some of the benefits begin to run out April 5 – the day after Easter. Barring any kidnapped girls or celebrity …
If you happened to have turned on C-SPAN in the last half hour you may have noticed the Senate was full of senators but no vote going on. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid convened the upper chamber to try and get consensus on how to proceed after Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, objected to proceeding to a one-month extension …
In the middle of a meeting in the early evening Wednesday on – what else? – reconciliation, the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Terrance Gainer interrupted proceedings to speak with the Senate Parliamentarian. Though neither man would discuss what was going on, reports soon emerged: Tea Party protesters were planning to picket the …
Yesterday I reported that the GOP storm on health care seemed to be subsiding. Indeed, reconciliation looks on schedule to go through by Friday, though Senator Tom Coburn says he believes he’ll be able to successful strip out certain provisions forcing the Senate to send the bill back to the House for final passage. It seems, though, …
With the help of TIME’s Katy Steinmetz:
The last few weeks Senate Republicans were all sturm und drang. “The American people are getting tired of this crap,” Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican told ABC’s This Week. “If [Democrats do reconciliation], it’s going to poison the well for anything else they would like to …
