On Wednesday, House Democrats announced they were declaring a unilateral ban on earmarks for for-profit organizations:
House Democratic leaders banned Wednesday the practice of doling out multimillion-dollar, no-bid contracts to private contractors, a move that will shake up the lobbying industry that has come to rely on securing these so-called earmarks for their corporate clients.
At a [...]
Since President Obama’s election, Senate Republicans have demonstrated an almost pathological obstructionism. They have pretty much obstructed anything and everything, including proposals they had themselves proposed or championed or supported in the past.
Now we find that many of them don’t even have the courage of their own obstructionism.
When the weak-and-watery [...]
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These days in the Senate, if a Democrat wants to see legislation pass, he or she needs a Republican BFF. Yesterday, the NYT announced the launching of a new maritime joint venture between Max Baucus — who did as much as anyone else to throttle healthcare reform in its crib, including any Republican — [...]
Science question of the day: What drops twice as fast as flies? (Hang on, we’ll get to the math too.)
We learned today of another Republican retirement in the House:
Florida Republican Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart will call it quits today, retiring after nine terms representing a heavily Cuban-American district in the Miami area, according to [...]
So now it looks like the possibility of passing a healthcare reform fix in the Senate via budget reconciliation is going down the toilet:
As it turns out, Senate Democrats may not be able to force healthcare legislation through the chamber on a simple majority vote.
Republicans say they have found a loophole in the budget reconciliation [...]
When Barack Obama assumed the presidency, exactly one year ago, many Democrats felt that yes, we can, and maybe we will.
Now, with enough voters in the Massachusetts special election having stuffed their votes into Scott Brown’s g-string, we would seem to have come to the end of that phase of Obama’s presidency. [...]
Here’s some food for thought:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will force a vote on President Barack Obama’s nominee to lead the Transportation Security Administration when the Senate reconvenes in three weeks.
Reid’s announcement Tuesday that he will file a motion for cloture, a procedural step to limit debate and lead to a roll-call vote, follows the [...]
It’s okay. We’re still a family blog. The headline does not refer to sexual congress (even if the content of the post — about no-longer-Sir Allen Stanford, and his relationships with important people in Congress — does call for a nullus).
True love is so touching, especially in Congress:
Just hours after federal agents charged [...]
The tiny Pacific island nation of Tuvalu is literally fighting for its survival. Unfortunately, its survival depends on drastic action to fight global warming. In fact, it seems to depend on a worldwide agreement on target carbon dioxide levels (350 ppm) that neither developed nor developing countries are willing to agree to.
Ian Fry, [...]
The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Can there be any doubt that if these rights were not already enshrined in our body politic, if they were being proposed for the first time by President Obama, there is no way that the Republicans (and Joe Lieberman, in all probability) would allow them to [...]
