Something interesting has happened since Byron Dorgan announced his retirement from the Senate Tuesday night. We now see a movement developing to get Ed Schultz to hang up the microphone and hit the campaign trail. Today Bob Fertik over at democrats.com started an online petition to draft Ed. I have been critical of some of […]
Given the big news of the day, that Democrats plan to forgo the formal conference and instead ping-pong the health care bill into final legislation, I am now stuck turning to Michelle Malkin, who is citing the 2006 report from Democrats on the “death of deliberative democracy”: The conference process in the 108th Congress is […]
Ben Nelson’s deal to get the federal government to foot the bill for Nebraska’s Medicaid costs isn’t sitting well with many people, including Nebraskans: Just 17 percent of Nebraska voters said they support the deal their senator cut in the last round of health care negotiations, in which the federal government will pick up the […]
Erroll Southers, the nominee to head the TSA, has been in the news a lot lately because of the attempted airline bombing on Christmas Day. As I pointed out yesterday, Southers nomination has been held up in the Senate because of Jim DeMint. But DeMint isn’t the only one to blame here. We also must […]
To keep the record straight on the details about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, I want to do a quick recap: In 2007, under Bush, two of Abdulmutallab co-conspirators were released from Gitmo and sent to Saudi Arabia. (source) Abdulmutallab was given a visa to the United States in June 2008, despite being on the terrorist watch […]
Dave Waldman has a great rundown of what lies ahead for the health care bill as both chambers of Congress attempt to merge two very different bills into one. Sadly the quickest path is once again meeting Republican obstructionism, this time by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) objecting to the appointment of conferees and forcing a […]
With Obama claiming that he never campaigned for the public option a new probelm is presented – the “fix it later” argument. This comment by Obama has taken a lot of people by surprise. Even Ezra Klein, a strong bill backer, is calling the President’s bluff on this: Oy. I’ll defend the argument that the […]
It’s looking like the health care bill may not hit the President’s desk until after the State of the Union address: The White House privately anticipates health care talks to slip into February — past President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union address — and then plans to make a “very hard pivot” to […]
Well everything except for minor things like trying to pressure Joe Lieberman into it: White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs insisted once more that President Obama did everything he could to get a public option through the Senate, even if the administration never talked to Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) about his opposition to the provision. […]
When the Democrats regained control of the Senate on a wave of “anti-corruption” one of the first things they did was pass something now known as “rule 44”. In a nutshell what rule 44 says is that any earmarks/congressionally directed spending must be reported before a vote can proceed. Last night John Cornyn asked if […]