Did Nancy Pelosi Speak Too Long During Boehners Ceremony? Brit Hume Thinks So

Brit Hume on Gavel Transfer: Pelosi Could Not Quite Believe that Today was Not About Her Video 1/5/11
Here is video of Brit Hume delivering a commentary last night on the first day of the 112th Congress. He summed it up perfectly when it comes to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “It was perhaps fitting that it took Nancy Pelosi longer to say her peace in surrendering her gavel to John Boehner than it took Boehner to say his. It was as if the nation’s first woman Speaker could not quite believe that today was not about her . . . “ Perfectly said. ...

Could John Boehner be a Great Speaker?
I have long been Bullish on the man who is now Speaker of the House.  Perhaps, it’s that John Boehner and I grew up not far from one another, he in the Working Class Cincinnati suburb of Reading, I in the more affluent enclave Wyoming just west of the Republican leader’s hometown. Cincinnati folk have always struck me as hard-working, decent Americans, largely respectful of their peers and generally treating people from different backgrounds with dignity.  It is no wonder that th...

Pelosi's Final Debt Tab: $5.3 Trillion Added During Speakership -- $3.67 Billion/Day...
(CNSNews.com) - In the 1,461 days that Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) served as speaker of the House, the National Debt increased by a total of $5.343 Trillion ($5,343,452,800,321.37) or $3.66 billion per day ($3.657,394,113.84), according to official Debt numbers published by the U.S. Treasury. Pelosi was the 52nd speaker of the House. During her tenure, she amassed more Debt than the first 49 speakers combined. The total National Debt did not climb above $5.343 Trillion (the amount amassed duri...

What Do You Know? Nancy Pelosi Was A Historic Speaker!
This seems like the perfect punctuation mark to close out the reign of the hands-wodn worst Speaker of the House in our nation’s history. With 19 Democrats withholding support from Nancy Pelosi for House Speaker on Wednesday, it represented the largest defection from a party’s speaker nominee in nearly a century. The resistance in the Democratic Party to back now-former Speaker Pelosi (D-Calif.) in the ceremonial first vote of the 112th Congress registered higher than at any poi...

Nancy Pelosi once again makes history
Via WaPo’s The Fix blog : With 19 Democrats withholding support from Nancy Pelosi for House Speaker on Wednesday, it represented the largest defection from a party’s speaker nominee in nearly a century. The resistance in the Democratic Party to back now-former Speaker Pelosi (D-Calif.) in the ceremonial first vote of the 112th Congress registered higher than at any point since 1913, according to data from the Congressional Research Service. That year, which happens to be the last year fo...

Democrats Turned Away From Pelosi in Record Numbers in Ceremonial Vote
The abandonment of Rep. Nancy Pelosi by 19 Democrats in the pro-forma vote for speaker of the House marked a breakdown in party loyalty of historic measure, according to the Washington Post. Not since 1913, when 23 Republicans bolted from the GOP's speaker nominee, has a Party Leader suffered so many defections, Congressional Research Service records show. Of the 19 Democrats who didn't support Pelosi, one voted "present" and the other 18 cast Protest ballots for some other Democratic House memb...

DCCC chair: Our 2012 agenda will be making Pelosi Speaker again
The reknowned political satirist Tom Lehrer once declared that Henry Kissinger’s Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 made political satire redundant.  After reading about the DCCC’s new strategy to win back the House in 2012, I must admit that for the first time in my life I feel a bit of sympathy with the general sentiment.  Guess who Rep. Steve Israel, the DCCC chair, wants to make as his poster girl for 2012? House Democrats’ goal is to make Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) the Speaker of ...

One Week In...How Motivated are You NOW?
Hi Everyone! We are almost one week into the New Year, and there are lots of things to be happy about, if you think about them. There are also many ways to be motivated to make this year your best ever! Even if you blew all your resolutions in the first 12 hours of 2011, don't let that bum you out. Never give up! I will post some great video's that will hopefully motivate you for the rest of the year. If these don't work, well, don't get stuck in the cute kitteh's predicament above. If that vide...

Hume on Pelosi: It was as if the nations first woman speaker could not quite believe today was not about her
Jeff Poor covers the media for The Daily Caller. He covered business news at the Media Research Center prior to coming to The Daily Caller. Jeff is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Alabama. He is also a political columnist for Mobile, Ala.-based Lagniappe. On the opening day of the new Congress, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi spoke longer than the newly minted Speaker of the House John Boehner. What should one make of that? On Wednesday’s “Special Repor...

GOP fundraises off specter of another term of 'Speaker Pelosi'
House Republicans' campaign arm sought on Thursday to raise money off of the possibility that Nancy Pelosi could become House Speaker again someday. In an email sent out to supporters, National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) Executive Director Guy Harrison "urgently" warns readers about a comment Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Chairman Steve Israel (N.Y.) made on Wednesday. "The new Chairman of the DCCC, Rep. Steve Israel, has decided to take a page from the NRCC...

Final Tab for Pelosis Speakership: $5.34 Trillion in New DebtOr $3.66 Billion Per Day
Thursday, January 06, 2011 By Terence P. Jeffrey Outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif. speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2011. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) (CNSNews.com) - In the 1,461 days that Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) served as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the National Debt increased by a total of $5.343 Trillion ($5,343,452,800,321.37) or $3.66 billion per day ($3.657,394,113.84), according to official Debt number...

How Pelosi handed the gavel to Boehner compared to how Boehner handed the gavel to Pelosi.
Byron York points out the difference. One thing I noticed (and York doesn't mention) is that Pelosi made a snide remark about the size of the gavel Boehner picked out for the gavel-passing ritual: I now pass this gavel, which is larger than most gavels here but the gavel of choice of Mr. Speaker Boehner…Now, my ears have been tuned by decades of immersion in Feminism and Freudianism, and I say that's an intentional reference to the phallus and the will toward domination it symbolizes. Nan...

Megyn Kelly Fear Mongers About Public Employees Causing Deaths Across The Country
As we’ve previously reported, there’s a concerted effort to attack Public Employees, especially public employee Unions, afoot among the Right Wing - with Fox News right alongside in the trenches. Yesterday (1/5/11), America Live’s Megyn Kelly did her part for the effort with a segment designed to demonize New York City sanitation workers in which Kelly “asked,” “So now you’ve got CRIMINAL (her emphasis) potential Probes going on here into whether t...

Republicans take control of the House
The results of the mid-term election became a reality for Democrats yesterday as Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, and more than 90 new members were seated. John Boehner (R-OH) defeated Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in the election for Speaker. In fact, 19 members of her own Caucus voted for someone else (11 voted for Heath Shuler), voted present or did not vote at all; the most members of a Caucus to vote against their party’s nominee since 1923. The power exchange wasn̵...

Another House GOP Member Opts Out Of Congressional Health Plan
Another House GOP Member Opts Out Of Congressional Health Plan Moments ago, during a hearing in the Rules Committee, another Republican who supports repealing the Affordable Care Act announced that he would forgo the Federal Employers’ Health Benefits Plan (FEHBP) — the exchange that offers coverage at reduced rates to federal employees. Rep. Richard Nugent’s (R-FL) decision now brings the total number of Republicans who are staying out of Congressional coverage to seven, or...

Some suggested guidelines for political discourse in the New Year
Among his remarks in accepting the gavel yesterday, incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner said, “We can disagree without being disagreeable.”  Predictably, the blogosphere immediately erupted with criticism and ridicule.  On the Huffington Post and elsewhere, commentators chose to ignore this advice in favor of being disagreeable to a very high degree. This is nothing new, of course.  The anonymity of the Internet gives people the courage to say things they would ...

In House Constitutional Reading, Some Inconsistencies
Updated: 1:35PM ET House Representatives participated this morning in a full reading of the Constitution of the United States, marking the first such occasion in American history -- though the version of the Constitution that was read varied from the original document. (Watch video of the proceedings at left.) Following initial questions regarding which Constitutional document was being read - the amended or original Constitution - Rep. Bob Goodlatte, of Virginia, who is leading the proceedi...

Obama challenges Republicans on US debt
Newly empowered US Republicans faced stiff early challenges as President Barack Obama pressed them to raise the US Debt Limit and his Democratic Senate allies vowed to defend his policies. One day after Republicans took over the House of Representatives, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner formally asked politicians to let the US government to borrow more money, the opening shot in a political war over the giant US Debt. Geithner warned in a letter to senior members of Congress that failure to r...

Extra Bonus Quote of the Day
"The state of Hawaii has said that President Obama was born there. That's good enough for me." -- House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), in an interview with NBC News, reacting to today's outburst by a birther in the House gallery. ...

Conservative leader urges House to follow through on spending
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Influential conservative Dick Armey on Thursday urged the new House to take leadership in reducing the size of government and reining in spending by cutting "obnoxious programs" out of the Budget. Armey, a Republican and Veteran Washington insider who was the House Majority Leader in the late 1990's, has emerged as a force within the Tea Party movement. His FreedomWorks political action group has given direction, know-how, and financial support to many within Congress' rec...

House Republicans Stage a Mighty Expensive Opening Scene
We can get used to a daily dose of hypocrisy from newly minted Speaker of the House John Boehner. Already, House Republicans have spent most of the new year hammering the two themes we can expect to hear constantly over the next two years—Fiscal Responsibility and reverence for the Constitution—while vowing laws that flout both principles. They’ve passed rules saying any spending bill must identify a matching Budget Cut, but have exempted their massively expensive (and purely t...

Congressional Hostages
One of the things new House Speaker John Boehner said he intended to do was to give up some of the power the majority holds in the House, to spread around some of the power he and his party holds. He didn't give out too many details, but the general idea was to make the House a bit less of a pure Democracy, and more of a republic -- majority rule, but recognition of the rights of the minority. Kind of like the Senate, in a sense, where a simple majority isn't enough to do much, but needs a sup...

A Day Later, House Swears-in DeFazio
A rather bizarre scene unfolded Thursday morning in the Capitol as the House of Representatives interrupted its live quorum call to swear-in Rep. Peter Defazio, D-Ore. DeFazio was nowhere to be found Wednesday when the House came to order for the 112th Congress. Multiple calls, emails and a visit to his office failed to yield any explanation as to why he was absent. Now that DeFazio has been sworn-in, the House is now at full membership with 435 members. It was an uncommon move when House Speake...

GOP first order of business: strip D.C. residents of a vote
Any illusions of a non-partisan 112th Congress were wiped away yesterday with passage of new House rules. In a 225-188 vote along party lines, House Republicans made sweeping changes to how business will be conducted this year. Of particular interest to Taxpayers of Washington, D.C. should be the loss yesterday of representation in Congress. Being that the District of Columbia is not a state, it has never had a floor vote on the final passage of any Legislation. But like Puerto Rico, and the ter...

Democrat to challenge Rep. McIntyre from the left
A North Carolina Democratic Activist is set to challenge Rep. Mike Mcintyre (D-N.C.) from the left in 2012. Citing McIntyre's Centrist voting record and opposition to the healthcare law, Democrat Del Pietro announced the primary challenge Wednesday.  "Democrats are just furious with McIntyre and I really think this is going to be his last term," said Pietro, who accused McIntyre of abandoning the core principles of his party. "A lot of Democrats in this state are furious with the Blue Dogs in...