Senate Democrats unveiled earlier this afternoon a 1,924-page omnibus spending bill to fund the government through fiscal year 2011. Aides to GOP legislators on Capitol Hill have already begun poring over the $1.1 trillion package, describing the proposal as “a total mess” to Fox News. Republican lawmakers — including those in the lower chamber, like Speaker-elect John Boehner — are already vowing to help kill | Read More »
When a deeply polarizing egotist leads an already-unpopular party, the only place to go is down, as endangered Democrats will soon realize. Some, having already learned the lessons of the Pennsylvania and Colorado Senate primary contests, are politely rebuffing–while others still downright rejecting–Barack Obama’s offers to join them on the campaign trail. Instead, they’ve got another president in mind: Bill Clinton, whose presence on the | Read More »
Incumbent Democrats are desperate — increasingly aware the public’s taste for their brand of change has waned. Some, in generally conservative districts and states, are reaching for the mantle of the moderate; others, like those in reliably Democratic areas, have not yet begun backsliding on the president on the issues of health care reform and spending. But all — no matter how comfortable their lead | Read More »
A House ethics committee has launched an investigation into New York Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel for undisclosed ethics violations, the Associated Press reported Thursday. Rangel, who resigned from his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee in March following a formal admonishment for two corporately-underwritten Caribbean junkets, will appear next week before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. Composed | Read More »
While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may be reticent to drain the swamp and admonish Representative Charley Rangel for recent ethics violations, President Barack Obama has, in typical Obama fashion, thrown the scandal-plagued New York Democrat under the bus, reports the New York Daily News. In recent days, a growing choir of Democrats have begun echoing GOP demands that Rangel surrender his chairmanship of the powerful | Read More »
A joint radio appearance with Representative Michele Bachman and Senator Arlen Specter turned ugly yesterday when the Pennsylvania Republican-turned-Democrat became irate and demanded of Bachmann that she “act like a lady.” The pair were invited by Philadelphia-based conservative talker Dom Giordano for a special program marking the one-year anniversary of President Obama’s inauguration. Asked by Senator Specter to reflect on the fiscal policies she supported | Read More »
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has diverted nearly half a million in contributions from her political action committee to her son’s political consulting firm from 2001 to 2009, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings. Boxer and Associates, owned by son Douglas Boxer, has in the last 8 years profited to the tune of $497,409.17, $36,000 of which was from last year alone as the politically-vulnerable | Read More »
Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI) “categorically” pledged in September to oppose abortion coverage mandates in the health care legislation presently before Congress, but with the Hatch-Nelson amendment on the immediate horizon some now fear the Wisconsin Democrat may hedge on his promise. “We should not be using health care reform to provide government access to abortion,” said Kohl–who NARAL awarded a 100% pro-choice rating–at a health | Read More »
There is a troubling story unfolding in Queens, New York, in which school officials and local Democrats have charged College Republicans with stoking racism and xenophobia. Siraj Wahhaj, a radical Muslim cleric who authorities in 1995 identified an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was last week invited to Queens College to speak on the subject “How Islam Perfected Thanksgiving.” Wahhaj testified | Read More »
Organizing for America, the increasingly combative political operation of the White House, today unveiled a new web video targeting Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele, charging the Republican Party chief with “siding with Washington elites and insurance companies and playing political games to kill reform.” The latest installment in OfA’s “call ‘em out” campaign—a call to arms of sorts for complacent allies of President | Read More »
After Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC) rejected Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s ultimatum to offer a mea culpa on the floor of the House for his outburst during President Barack Obama’s address on Wednesday evening or face a formal admonishment, Democratic leaders are now moving to introduce a resolution to censure Wilson. But Republican responses to the pending censure might explain why some prescient Democrats, perhaps guilty of | Read More »
In the wake of the public furor over President Barack Obama’s pending speech to school children next Tuesday, defensive Democratic surrogates and administration officials have maintained the President’s address will be a valuable education tool and aims to challenge students to “work hard in school” and “meet short-term goals like behaving in class.” But the original prepatory material for Obama’s school house stump speech raised | Read More »
As Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas navigates the political minefield of health care reform, the two-term Democrat may be hewing a more conservative course in the wake of a new poll by Public Policy Polling which found her in a dead heat with three potential Republican challengers despite scant name recognition. PPP, whose sampling of voters skewed Democratic, found that only 36% of respondents | Read More »
President Barack Obama, who campaigned on the promise of changing the rigidly-partisan climate in Washington, has resigned from the prospect of bipartisan comprehensive health care reform, according to top White House aides. Declaring war on Republicans critical of the president’s proposal, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel offers a far less rosy picture of Obama’s success in fostering bipartisanship than the image the Obama | Read More »
Democratic health care strategists are calling foul today on GOP officials John Boehner, Thaddeus McCotter, Johnny Isakson, and Chuck Grassley, claiming the Republican Party leaders are guilty of partisan obstructionism of the worst kind – demagoging the same end-of-life provisions, the now-famous “death panels,” they supported in the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill. “So either Republicans were for death panels in 2003 before turning against | Read More »
After a series of unsuccessful requests to arrange a town hall over the August recess with Democratic Congresswoman Betsy Markey (CO-4), grassroots organizers opted instead to host their own health care town hall in the congresswoman’s absence – complete with an empty chair and placard for the reticent Markey. The Northern Colorado Townhall Committee, who say their objective is to “provide a forum” for the | Read More »
The scene of a Metro Atlanta town hall meeting quickly deteriorated when Democratic Congressman David Scott (GA-13) suddenly became enraged, and, in a breathtaking display of congressional machismo, began berating constituents. Scott displayed his temper during a question-and-answer period when David Hill, a local resident and doctor, questioned the congressman over his support of President Barack Obama’s proposed single-payer health care system. “Why are you | Read More »
For fear of being ‘ambushed’ by Republican “lynch-mobs,” Democratic Congressman Brian Baird (WA-3) said he refuses to hold in-person town hall meetings over the summer’s month-long Congressional recess. Citing the G.O.P.’s “Brown Shirt tactics” as the impetus for his decision, Baird told the Columbian he will instead host a telephone town hall, thereby lessening the ability for “extremists”—which ostensibly is anyone expressing legitimate dissent—to “shout | Read More »
Reminiscent of the no-bid, cost-plus contracts awarded in the Bush administration to defense contractors, ABC News reported last night the Obama Administration awarded a five-year $18 million contract to Smartronix, a Maryland-based IT firm with connections to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, for the redesign of Recovery.gov. Launched in February to track the expenditures of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Recovery.gov was | Read More »
Republican National Committee members today will vote on a resolution to rebrand the Democratic Party the “Democrat Socialist Party,” upon the urging of leading conservative members of the committee. In an email to committee members announcing the resolution, conservative stalwart James Bopp, Jr., said President Obama’s foremost intention is to reengineer the American way of life, and will stop at nothing short of restructuring our | Read More »
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