Please Don't Call It A Lame Duck Miracle

Twas the lame duck session that wasnt
Before I get too swamped with Christmas gatherings and events, I just thought that I’d take an opportunity to recognize the momentous conclusion of the so-called “Lame Duck” session of this Congress and its most significant accomplishments and why it’s making some Conservatives seeing red (and not just because it’s Christmastime). ·         “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell got repealed by Congress and the Repeal w...

If Senate Dems had been this productive before lame duck session...
Let's see ... DADT was repealed, tax deal was passed, New START was ratified, the 9/11 responder bill has had GOP on the defensive, the DREAM vote reminded Latinos which party stands by them, and big Food Safety bill was passed. What did I forget? While not all of this was ideal (particularly the tax bill), it's amazing what even the broken Senate can accomplish in less than three weeks once Democrats and the White House decided to tighten the screws. Rather than look lost and ineffective, Demo...

'Lame duck' Congress morphed into Energizer Bunny
Shaken by a historic election in which angry voters canceled Democratic control of the House, lawmakers of both parties and President Barack Obama tried something new: They consulted each other. They cooperated. And finally, they compromised. Updated 4 minutes ago 12/24/2010 6:09:01 PM +00:00 A man fleeing from local police drove through an outer perimeter checkpoint set up near President Barack Obama's Hawaii Vacation Home Friday, officials said. From Tax Cuts to a nuclear arms treaty and...

Recent Accomplishments for your Dinner Table
Posted by JM Ashby The festivities begin for me tonight at 6 p.m. with a bottle of Saki and a roll of Eel, but before the debauchery is kicked off, I would just like to take a moment to remind everyone of what has been accomplished by this administration in just the last two weeks. If you encounter family members over the holidays who are unsure about President Obama, Harry Reid, or Nancy Pelosi, you can point out to them that during this Lame Duck session of Congress, they have accomplished m...

Obama's New START
WASHINGTON -- Riding the lamest of ducks, President Obama just won the Triple Crown. He fulfilled (1) his most important economic priority, passage of Stimulus II, aka the Tax Cut deal (the perfect pre-re-election fiscal sugar high -- the piper gets paid in 2013 and beyond); (2) his most important social policy objective, Repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"; and (3) his most cherished (achievable) Foreign Policy goal, ratification of the New START Treaty with Russia. Politically, these are all sy...

Obama's new start
By Charles Krauthammer WashingtonPost Thursday, December 23, 2010 Riding the lamest of ducks, President Obama just won the Triple Crown. He fulfilled (1) his most important economic priority, passage of Stimulus II, a.k.a. the tax cut deal (the perfect pre-re-election fiscal sugar high - the piper gets paid in 2013 and beyond); (2) his most important social policy objective, Repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"; and (3) his most cherished (achievable) foreign policy goal, ratification of the New ...

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Lisa?
She's "Going Rogue." She's broken Mitch McConnell's "iron grip" on his Caucus. In the Lame Duck, she was Obama's best friend. She was permitted to keep her committee assignments and seniority when she lost the Republican primary and ran in the General Election as an independent, in exchange for her promise to continue caucusing with Republicans. She has said she will caucus with Republicans in the next Congress. So what to do about a problem like Lisa Murkowski? We don't need her vote to mainta...

Lame duck fail: 19 judicial nominations left hanging
While an amazing amount of work got accomplished in this Lame Duck session, and the Senate did manage to work through half of the 38 Judicial Nominations awaiting floor action, 19 nominations died. Alliance for Justice President Nan Aron writes: Three Circuit Court and 16 District Court nominees approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee were prevented from receiving votes, including even the most noncontroversial individuals, many of whom are actually supported by Republican Senators. Here is ...

Early Morning Swim: Jane Hamsher Explains Progressive Lame Duck Successes on Lawrence ODonnell
Makes you wonder what might have been. If you had somehow managed to filter out all the news of November’s Midterm Elections, you could be forgiven for thinking in the past few weeks that perhaps Congress had finally buckled down, stopped posturing and gotten to work - maybe started early on some new year’s resolutions. Look at all that was passed: a huge Compromise tax bill, the Repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a major Food Safety bill, the New STA...

Russian lawmakers say 'not so fast' on START treaty ratification
Russia's lower house of parliament gave tentative approval to the nuclear arms treaty that President Obama worked so hard to push through the lame-duck session, but the Duma signaled that full ratification wouldn't be until January "at the earliest." Russian lawmakers signaled apprehension at two amendments to the New START Treaty passed this week by the Senate in its final ratification of the arms pact. One amendment stresses that the U.S. will advance its Missile Defense, and the other requi...

Biden Says Gay Marriage 'Inevitable'
WASHINGTON - Vice President Joe Biden said Friday that the country is evolving on the issue of Gay Marriage and he thinks it's inevitable there will be national consensus. He said on ABC's "Good Morning America" the same thing is happening with the issue of marriage that happened with gays' service in the Military. Changes in attitudes by military leaders, those in the service and the public allowed the Repeal by Congress of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that will eventually allow gays to...

House Will Stay to Pass 9/11 Bill (Updated)
The House will stay in session tomorrow to pass the 9/11 health bill, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) declared this afternoon, removing one more potential obstacle to passing the measure that woudl help ailing First Responders. “My expectation is there is a high likelihood of a vote on 9/11 sometime tomorrow," Hoyer said of the ongoing effort in the Senate to pass the $6.2 billion James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act. "As a result, I would be asking all of you to st...

9/11 Christmas Widow Wants Congress to Finish Zadroga (Updated)
Magda Ryan wants Congress to think about her last Christmas while they ponder whether to head home and celebrate this year, or stay to pass the 9/11 health bill. Because a year ago Dec. 25 is the day she lost her husband, city Firefighter Jim Ryan, to Cancer that his doctors blamed on the poisons he breathed at Ground Zero, first trying to save people, then hauling the dead from the horrifying wreckage. “I’m anxious. I'm concerned about how my kids are going to feel on that day,&...

Merry Christmas to Us (Themselves) From Your Congress
In the grand spirit of Christmas, Congress has seen fit to shower themselves with gifts from us. In continuing with their Holiday enthusiasm, and following in the footsteps of such great Christmas poetry like “‘Twas The Lame Duck Before Christmas.” By the way, read Chad Pergram’s fine report for Fox News on the final vote in the 111th Congress, to give damages to 9/11 First Responders and how it almost failed for lack of a quorum because so many of the House of Representa...

Olson, Brady, Vote Against 9-11 Healthcare Bill
Houston-area US House representatives Pete Olson and Kevin Brady voted on Wednesday against the 9-11 First Responders' Health Care bill. They were among 59 House Republicans who voted against the bill. The US Senate Republicans, fearing "embarrassment", unanimously voted to approve the bill - but without a roll call. Congressmen Ron Paul and John Culberson abstained. The bill passed after a virtual party-line Filibuster by Senate Republicans held it up for months before giving in when a host of ...

Lame Ducks overrated
Image by Getty Images via @daylife Jeniffer Rubin: I'm getting whiplash trying to follow the Democrats' talking points. First, it was a disaster when Obama agreed to extend the Bush Tax Cuts. Obama was a wimp. Then it was a horrid error to allow the omnibus spending bill to die (and with it all that funding for ObamaCare). The White House, liberals complained, also blew it on the DREAM Act. And now, presto: Obama has mounted a phenomenal comeback! Not exactly. The sources of the left's delight...

Putin pwns Obama yet again [Fritzworth]
So, explain to me again why it was so critical for US Diplomacy and Obama's standing to rush the START Treaty through the Lame Duck session? Russian lawmakers gave preliminary approval Friday to an arms agreement with the United States, but signaled they would slow progress on the so-called New START Treaty to a crawl after it was rushed through Congress earlier this week with some 11th-hour arm-twisting by President Obama.  The treaty cleared an initial hurdle through Moscow's lower house of p...

Biden: "There's an inevitability for a national consensus on gay marriage."
By Michael J.W. Stickings The Hill: Vice President Joseph Biden said in a television interview Friday that "there's an inevitability for a national consensus on Gay Marriage." The vice president, who backs Civil Unions but not same-sex marriage, weighed in on the issue two days after President Obama acknowledged his position was "evolving." "I think the country's evolving," Biden said in the interview with ABC News. His...

The Pathologies of Presidential Victory
Kevin Drum on why so many things had to wait for the Lame Duck: This year that dynamic turned pathological. There were, it turned out, quite a few issues that both sides really did want to address, but party discipline simply trumped everything. It wasn’t just one thing that got held up, it was nearly everything. Republicans didn’t want to hand Democrats a victory on DADT or New START or even a Food Safety bill, and Democrats were too cowardly to press for progressive tax legislati...

MSM: Hot Damn, That Lame-Duck Session Was Productive!
Open wide, everybody - the lame-stream media has a preposterously euphemistic but totally objective narrative to spoon-feed to us. You see, the Democrats of the 111th Congress - fresh off an unmitigated rejection at the hands of fed-up voters last month - nevertheless attempted to pass a plethora of pent-up left-wing Legislation in the traditionally uneventful lame-duck session. And with large majorities lingering in both Houses and a President who would eagerly sign a literal pile of garbage ...

The lame duck Congress is finally over: Who won and who lost?
  Well, the Lame Duck Congress is finally over and I have to admit that at times it felt like the session would go on forever. Mercifully on Wednesday the Congress adjourned and the debate began over which side actually prevailed in the Lame Duck session. Barack Obama claimed that this was the most productive Lame Duck Congress in decades, and while that may be non-quantitative hyperbole used to inflate his own self-worth, the fact is that he did manage a few victories in the...

Biden says gay marriage 'inevitable'
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Joe Biden said Friday that the country is evolving on the issue of Gay Marriage and he thinks it's inevitable there will be national consensus. He said on ABC's "Good Morning America" the same thing is happening with the issue of marriage that happened with gays' service in the Military. Changes in attitudes by military leaders, those in the service and the public allowed the Repeal by Congress of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that will event...

9/11 Deal is Struck (Updated)
The deal to pass athe 9/11 health bill is done, the Daily News has learned. Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand met with other senators' staff and staff from Rep. Carolyn Maloney's offce until well after midnight, cutting a new deal and trimming the package to care for 9/11 responders to $4.3 billion, sources close to the deal said. They reached final agreement at about 11:30 this morning after the New York Democrats met for an hour with the prime GOP opponents, Sens. Mike Enzi of...

Merry Christmas, Comrade Putin
In its Thursday edition, the Washington Times framed its report on the Senate’s ratification of the New START Treaty with two photos.  The first was of President Obama doing what he does best - talking - at his Press Conference marking the end of a lame-duck session in which he and his allies on Capitol Hill secured sufficient Republican support ram through Congress not only a deeply flawed Arms Control accord but a host of other Controversial and expensive pieces of legis...

The most productive post-election period weve had in decades
Following Congress’ legislative sprint to the finish, President Obama on Thursday conducted a Press Conference to wrap up the ambitious and largely successful "lame-duck" session. Despite setbacks, Congress was able to pass a number of important legislative priorities – ratifying the New START Treaty, repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," cutting taxes for the Middle Class, and more. As the President said: "A lot of folks in this town predicted that afte...