Sure, the legislative implosion made the Republican majority look pretty inept yesterday, but if you’re a conservative worried about the right-wing agenda, there’s a bright side. GOP lawmakers can’t pass a budget, but they can move a constitutional amendment on gay marriage. U.S. Senator Sam Brownback today applauded subcommittee passage of the Marriage Protection Amendment […]
About a month ago, Tom DeLay’s lawyer went public with a claim that Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle offered DeLay a plea bargain deal whereby the lawmaker could plead guilty to a misdemeanor and save his job as House majority leader, but DeLay and his legal team rejected the offer. The disclosure didn’t really […]
There was a flurry of activity on the Hill yesterday, most notably the breakdown in the House over the budget, but there was one vote that warrants attention and shouldn’t get lost in the shuffle. The Senate voted overwhelmingly to push the Pentagon to inform lawmakers about “black sites,” the CIA’s secret prisons in Europe […]
For all the spin that Republicans are doing fine — they’re in control, have an agenda, know how to govern, etc. — sometimes reality, no matter how inconvenient, has a way of making it to the surface. House Republican leaders were forced to abruptly pull their $54 billion budget-cutting bill off the House floor yesterday, […]
For the better part of the last six decades, the House and Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committees have held a joint hearing, before crafting their budgets, in which leaders of veterans’ groups are able to share their concerns directly with lawmakers from both chambers and both parties. It’s become an important “tradition” for everyone involved. And […]
Republicans perfected the execution of “wedge” politics. They’d find otherwise united Dems and peel off supporters using cultural wedges — affirmative action, gay rights, flag burning, etc. — to divide and conquer. Newsweek’s Howard Fineman reported today that Dems are taking a page from the GOP playbook and going with something Fineman calls “Wedge Strategy […]
This week, Bill Frist clearly suggested he was less concerned about “black sites,” the CIA’s secret prisons in Europe, than media reports about the facilities. This afternoon, Frist stopped suggesting and made it explicitly clear. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says he is more concerned about the leak of information regarding secret CIA detention centers […]
The Hill reported a couple of weeks ago that Bush couldn’t count on Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum to be an enthusiastic ally anymore, as the struggling Pennsylvania senator realized that standing by an unpopular president isn’t exactly a recipe for success. As it turns out, we’re seeing the effects of Santorum’s concerns more clearly […]
The president may be the only president of an industrialized country to reject the seriousness of global warming — Bush isn’t convinced it’s real and allows his White House to edit out references to global warming from government reports — but his constituents, fortunately, believe otherwise. Most Americans believe global warming exists and a majority […]
On Tuesday, voters in Dover, Pa. made it clear that the activists who forced intelligent-design creationism into a science class curriculum had made a mistake. Local residents voted all of school board members who backed intelligent design out of office, replacing them with a slate of candidates who backed real science. TV preacher Pat Robertson, […]