'We the people' to open next Congress

New Congress may open with reading of Constitution
When newly-elected Representative Raul Labrador takes his seat at the House of Representatives next year, he - along will all the other members of the House - may be treated to a reading of the Constitution of the United States. Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times reports the House will get a full reading of the document on January 6 if the new rules proposed this week are adopted. Robert Goodlatte, the Republican from Virginia who proposed the rule said, "It stems from the debate that we've h...

Filibuster Reform: Building for Speed
Ezra Klein did an interview with Jeff Merkley about the Filibuster, where he asked him how creating a process where the minority has to actually filibuster will actually solve the issue of needless obstruction and delay. EK: …even if Reid had the powers and the rules that you would like to see him have, he would not force the minority to hold the floor, because to him, if he can’t get the bill through and he gives them three days to argue about it so the American People can see tha...

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...

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...

MAY DAY! Harry Reid Changes Senate Rules to Stifle GOP in New Congress
Sen. Reid salutes the GOP Senate and American voting public Understanding the business of politics is roughly equivalent to memorizing the text of ‘War and Peace’.  It’s a highly sophisticated business with every move mired in legal terminology specifically designed to prevent even legal scholars to fully understand its intent, say nothing of its meaning.  If you don’t believe me, just try reading a political definition that was authored by a handful of lawyers....

Gullible media falls for Obama comeback meme
Obama fluffers in the media call it a comeback. Obama extended Tax Cuts for the rich, sold America’s nuclear deterrent to Russia, and almost thwarted the push to end homophobic Discrimination by the Military. Most Americans still do not approve of Obama’s job performance, but inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom has it that Obama - incompetent and wounded a month ago - has emerged hunky-dory historic once more. The media loves an underdog narrative, so once d...

Reid: My job will be 'easier' next year
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says his job will be “easier” in the 112th Congress, despite a slimmer Democratic majority and a Republican-controlled House of Representatives. “It’s going to be much easier than it was,” Reid told the Las Vegas Sun. He seemed to be referring, if indirectly, to the vastly lower expectations that many political observers have for the divided Congress that takes power in January, compared with the grand hopes that Democrats had enteri

Christmas Eve Prediction: Obama Easily Re-Elected
It came to me as if in a dream. A year from now, President Obama's re-election will be assured. The GOP primary battle will be amusing, but -- like the GOP primaries in 1996 -- it will be clear that they are not nominating a President. None of their potential Candidates is remotely electable. Mitch McConnell says his #1 goal is defeating Obama. Not true. In 20 years on the Hill, it was always clear that legislators (in both parties) cared infinitely less about who becomes President than about...

Democrats Seek Changes to Senate Procedures
By CARL HULSE NYT WASHINGTON — Frustrated by regular Filibusters and other procedural Blockades, Senate Democrats are urging their leadership to negotiate with Republicans to change the rules that govern how the Senate does business. The Democrats would leave intact the ability of the minority party to filibuster Legislation and nominations, meaning that in most cases it would still take 60 votes to get anything done in the Senate. But they want to require senators to be on the floor if they...

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...

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...

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...

Change!GOP-Controlled House Will Open Congress With Reading of US Constitution
As soon as Speaker Pelosi hands over her gavel to GOP leader John Boehner the 112th Congress of the United States will open with a reading of the US Constitution, a document often ignored by the Far Left Extremists of the current Obama-Pelosi regime. The Constitution frequently gets lip service in Congress, but House Republicans next year will make sure it gets a lot more than that - the new rules the incoming majority party proposed this week call for a full reading of the country’s...

Top 5 Lame Duck Winners For 2010
Republicans attacked it as a perversion of Democracy, and used it as an excuse to continue to vote against Dem priorities. Democrats recognized it as their last chance to accomplish much of anything for the next two years. People in the media mistook it for a Barack Obama renaissance. Certainly Democrats accomplished more than most people expected they would these last several weeks. But between the victories and the Compromises and the defeats, it's hard to keep track of who came out on top. ...

True Grit
The Saint Paul Pioneer Press‘ Bill Salisbury wrote a valedictory yesterday in the Pioneer Press about the career of outgoing Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty. So far, anyway. “This is a state that was on a spending binge for a long time with a liberal-leaning political culture that goes back decades or generations, and to try to change the direction of the state was a big undertaking. But I think we did that,” Pawlenty said during an extended interview Tuesday with a group of Ca...

Government as God
While my car was getting an oil change, I buried my face in a magazine article. I was trying earnestly, albeit unsuccessfully, to drown the constant rattling of a young newscaster's pedantic discourse streaming via the flat-screen TV the shop's owner had installed to oblige customers not driven to cultivate the rare skill of introspection. I was suddenly perked to study the substance of the oft-repeated sound bite blaring in my ear, despite the fact that the frame from which it emanated betrayed...

Biden Says U.S. Is Warming to Gay Marriage
By Gary Fields Gay Marriage is gaining acceptance nationally, according to Vice President Joe Biden . Speaking in a wide-ranging interview Friday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Mr. Biden said the country’s attitude about the issue is “evolving and I think there’s an inevitability for a national consensus on gay marriage.” Mr. Biden said the recent Repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy-which will allow gays to serve openly i

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...

Crying for the Repeal of DADT on Christmas Eve, What Would Jesus Gay?
Submitted by mark karlin on Fri, 12/24/2010 - 5:00pm. It's 6:30 AM Chicago time on the morning of Christmas Eve, and I'm crying like John Boehner after getting a large donation from the tobacco lobby. No, it's not a packet of 6 figure checks (no one who is in the Internet progressive news mission field is in it for the money; after ten and 1/2 years, I'm feeling prosperous when I can afford Health Insurance of any sort) that made me well up with tears. It was this video from Rachel Maddow....

Miles Mogulescu: Holiday Cheers for DADT Repeal, 9/11 Healthcare, and START, But It's Still the Economy, Stupid
It's good to end 2010 with some progressive victories to cheer about. As a card-carrying "professional liberal" who worked to elect Barack Obama and cheered his victory, I've written increasingly critically of President Obama's generally corporatist economic policies, his cave-in on a Reaganite Tax Cut bill, his weak financial reforms, his back-room deals to trade away a public option. The Repeal of DADT, and the passage of the START Treaty and the 9/11 Healthcare Bill haven't changed those vi...

Next Years Talking Points, Today
“Smiling Dems will soon cry ‘Washington is broken,’” Byron York writes at the Washington Examiner, anticipating the next lock-step report from the MSM: “Washington, right now, is broken,” said Vice President Biden in February. “I’ve never seen it this dysfunctional.” Back then, Biden was just one of many who complained that partisan rancor and gamesmanship had brought the functioning of the Federal Government virtually to a halt, making it ...

Biden: Tax cuts for rich must end in 2012
WASHINGTON, Dec. 24 (UPI) -- U.S. Vice President Joe Biden told ABC News the recently extended Tax Cuts for the wealthiest Americans must expire in 2012. Biden, the White House's top negotiator for the tax deal, told ABC's George Stephanopoulos the incoming flux of GOP members of Congress won't stop the administration from holding the line when the extension of the Tax Cuts expires. "George, that's why I think I felt confident in being asked by the president to negotiate a deal on taxes that the...

Biden says gay marriage 'inevitable'
WASHINGTON — Vice President Joe Biden predicted Friday the evolution in thinking that will permit gays to soon serve openly in the Military eventually will bring about a national consensus for same-sex marriage. 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, Biden noted in a nationally broadcast interview on Christmas Eve. "I think the country's evolving," he said on ABC's "Good Morni...

Biden says gay marriage 'inevitable'
WASHINGTON -- Vice President Joe Biden predicted Friday the evolution in thinking that will permit gays to soon serve openly in the Military eventually will bring about a national consensus for same-sex marriage. 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, Biden noted in a nationally broadcast interview on Christmas Eve. "I think the country's evolving," he said on ABC's "Good Morning Americ...

112th Congress; Saviors we need or politicians at their worse?
When the 112th Congress is sworn in on January 5, get ready for nothing but compromises and Repeal attempts after Repeal attempts. A Republican controlled house and a smaller Democratic majority in the Senate ensure that Republicans will bring Congress to a quick and frustrating gridlock. Only one day after the mid-term Elections, Republicans were speaking about a possible Repeal of Obama’s Healthcare Bill, or at least a conservative revision of it. But with The Economy still struggling an...