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Obituary: Hastert Rule by Billmon, dailykos.com | January 17, 2013
Died, after long struggle with infectious reality, Hastert Rule. Mr. Rule, caretaker at the House GOP Asylum for the Criminally Insane, is remembered by all who knew him—Democrats in particular—as an emotionally distant father, abusive husband, and hostile, litigious neighbor. However, he is also widely credited with keeping his asylum under tight control for many years, although some observers attribute much of Mr. Rule's success to his long-time pharmaceutical assistant, Nurse Ratched. More recently, Mr. Rule’s growing health problems left him largely incapacitated, making him a figure of ridicule even among the asylum’s inmates. As his mental faculties deteriorated, Mr. Rule’s increasingly bizarre orders (such as his recent call for the utter destruction of the federal government and the global financial markets) were largely ignored by his staff, including head janitor John Boehner. read more »Lots Of Smart Republicans Are Terrified Of The Debt Ceiling by Ezra Klein, The Washington Post | January 17, 2013
One dimension of the debt-ceiling debate that hasn’t gotten enough attention is how split Republicans are on the idea. While the working assumption in Washington is that the GOP will try to hold the debt-ceiling hostage in return for some (heretofore unspecified) spending cuts, quite a few influential Republicans are begging and pleading with the party to find another strategy, warning that it’s a hostage Republicans can’t shoot and that the two possible outcomes are 1) an embarrassing cave or 2) an economic disaster that the public blames on the GOP. read more »The House GOP’s Intentional-Losing Strategy by Jonathan Chait, nymag.com | January 17, 2013
On the Sandy bill, a mere 49 Republicans voted aye, against 179 nays. Now why, you might ask, would Republicans tolerate the passage of a bill they overwhelmingly oppose? They didn’t have to pass it — they could have kept it off the floor and only brought a bill that had their party’s support, or possibly no bill at all. It appears they decided the negative publicity, and the damage to the party’s brand, outweighed their own preferences. House Republicans wanted to vote no so they could signal opposition to their own base, and protect themselves against a possible primary challenge, but they didn’t care enough to actually stop the bill. The unanswered question here is whether they care at all, or how much they really care. Perhaps Republicans have been told they can’t afford to drive the party into a public confrontation, so they quietly accede to compromises, while frustration builds beneath the surface. read more »Flashback: How Republicans and the NRA Kneecapped the ATF by Tim Murphy, Mother Jones | January 17, 2013
Driven to act by last month’s massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, President Barack Obama on Wednesday called on Congress to pass new laws banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and targeting gun traffickers, and he announced 23 steps his administration is taking to better enforce existing law. With Republicans threatening to block any legislation—and some extreme GOPers calling for impeachment if Obama acts alone—reform, as could be expected, will not be easy. But should Obama gets what he wants, he'll face another major challenge: his own Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Over the last three decades, gun activists and lawmakers have purposefully hindered the BATF and carefully molded the agency that enforces gun laws to serve their own interests, stunting the ATF's budget, handicapping its regulatory authority, and keeping it effectively leaderless. The bureau Obama is counting on to lead his gun control push is a disaster...by Republican design. read more »Even The Koch Brothers Disagree With The GOP On The Debt Ceiling by Mark Gongloff, Huffington Post | January 16, 2013
When you've lost the Koch brothers, you've lost the game. Republicans intent on smashing through the debt ceiling in order to wring some spending concessions out of President Obama are finding themselves awfully lonely these days, but they've kept soldiering on. The latest ally to abandon them may be the toughest to ignore, though. The president of the group Americans For Prosperity, bankrolled by Charles G. and David H. Koch of Koch Industries, yesterday said the group wants spending cuts, but warned Republicans that screwing around with the debt ceiling "makes the messaging more difficult," the Financial Times writes. The AFP president also warned Republicans not to be seen as "hostage takers." That's a marked change from the summer of 2011, when AFP objected to a debt-ceiling deal because it didn't cut spending enough. read more »Has The NRA Lost It Entirely? by Joan Walsh, salon.com | January 16, 2013
On the eve of President Obama announcing his gun control agenda, based on Vice President Joe Biden’s task force recommendations, the National Rifle Association needed to go big: to remind Americans that the organization protects their gun rights, and to remind politicians that they’re a smart and formidable political force they’d be unwise to cross. Instead, they showed us the truth: They’re part of the vast and increasingly incompetent right-wing conspiracy that’s sacrificed its own effectiveness for the pleasure of hating Democrats generally and our first black president in particular. read more »An Uncomfortable Alliance by Brian Beutler, talkingpointsmemo.com | January 16, 2013
House Republicans contain multitudes. But in a way the story of their majority is about the deterioration of the relationship between the conference’s right-most faction and the rest of the party — and thus of the slow erosion of the party’s influence over major policy. This goes back to the early days of 2011, when House leaders would round up 218 Republican votes for big-deal bills, and use them as opening bids in negotiations with the White House and the Senate. They shifted the political center of gravity way to the right, such that even after Democrats made their demands heard, important bills would ultimately pass both chambers with the support of a majority of Republicans. If Democrats wanted to avoid a government shutdown, they had to be willing to accept legislation that was Hastert Rule compliant. That was pretty remarkable, considering the Republicans only controlled the House. But the right-hard right alliance started showing signs of instability almost immediately. read more »Why Were There Long Voting Lines in 2012? Virginia Holds Answers by Brentin Mock, colorlines.com | January 15, 2013
Virginia celebrated record high voter turnout in 2008, at 67 percent, and had similarly strong showing in 2012 with around 66 percent. Yet somehow, the state experienced much more Election Day malady last year, in terms of prohibitively long lines, than it suffered in 2008. This was particularly true in Prince William County, the only “minority-majority”—or, predominantly people of color—area in northern Virginia, where the population has increased 43.2 percent just since 2010, many of those Latino immigrants. So why the difference in performance from 2008 to 2012? This question was explored in the “Lessons from Election 2012” congressional forum in Woodbridge, Va. hosted yesterday by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), both of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. There was a tremendous amount of testimony about long lines and how this was a worse problem than 2008, despite a greater turnout rate back then. read more »The Trillion Dollar Coin Fantasy: GOP Extremism Can’t Be Wished Away by MIchael Grunwald, swampland.time.com | January 15, 2013
The idea of a trillion-dollar platinum coin was not quite as insane as it sounded. It was a response to the insanity of congressional Republicans, who have refused to raise the debt ceiling and let the U.S. pay its bills unless Democrats agree to massive cuts in Democratic priorities. The coin would have been an accounting trick designed to allow Obama to ignore the debt ceiling and keep fulfilling obligations Congress had already incurred. It was always unrealistic to imagine that Obama could sidestep Republican extremism and obstructionism through a kooky loophole in monetary regulations. Big ideological battles don’t get settled through technicalities. But especially on the left, there is still a powerful urge to believe that Republican extremism and obstructionism can be sidestepped. read more »The Cold Civil War: Economic Treason, Terrorism, or Suicide in the Age of Obama by J. Christian Watts, jackandjillpolitics.com | January 15, 2013
The GOP’s death wish, embodied in their fiscal recklessness, has created this moment in time when the full faith and credit of the Nation, of The United States of America, is called into question. This is part of a slow public suicide of the Grand Old Party. They are shrinking demographically, stagnant in terms of ideas and ideology, and now they are completely utterly mad. The GOP, in the throes of Obama Mania, a sickness that is a conflation of race hatred, school yard bullying, inferiority complexes, and simple stupidity, has decided that since they aren’t in charge nothing should get done. They have decided that if they can’t force America to its very knees and beyond, that America should die a slow tortuous death of a thousand cuts. This isn’t an ideological disagreement, this is sabotage, this is sedition — this is the opposite of economic patriotism. The GOP is committing economic treason. This conflict with the GOP has become a cold civil war. read more »
The Latest
Watchdog Digs Into Conduct At SEC, The Washington Post | May 18, 2009
A Securities and Exchange Commission official attempted "to intimidate and influence" a family member's broker on multiple occasions by invoking her position, potentially violating agency rules, according to the agency's inspector general. read more »
Rove To Be Queried On Attorney Firings, USA Today | May 15, 2009
Former top Bush White House aide Karl Rove, who has said he will cooperate with an investigation into the firing of U.S. attorneys, is scheduled to be interviewed by a special prosecutor, a lawyer familiar with the probe says. read more »
Food Companies Placing the Onus for Safety on Consumers , The New York Times | May 15, 2009
Increasingly, the corporations that supply Americans with processed foods are unable to guarantee the safety of their ingredients. ConAgra could not pinpoint which of the more than 25 ingredients in its pies was carrying salmonella. read more »
Obama To Expand Consumer Commission , Associated Press | May 5, 2009
President Barack Obama is turning to South Carolina's former school superintendent to head an expanded Consumer Product Safety Commission, an embattled agency that has been criticized by advocates for being too cozy with industry. read more »
Mobile Food-Safety Labs Get FDA up to Speed, USA Today | May 4, 2009
A month ago, three gleaming white trailers — the Food and Drug Administration's $3 million mobile food-safety lab — rolled into a major port of entry for people and goods coming from Mexico. They joined an alphabet soup of federal agencies sifting through millions of tons of goods in search of drugs, guns, invasive plants and tainted foods. read more »
Many States Lack Drug Supplies, MSNBC News | May 1, 2009
More than two dozen states, including Maryland, as well as the District, have not stocked enough of the emergency supplies of antiviral medications considered necessary to treat victims of swine flu should the outbreak become a full-blown crisis, according to federal records. read more »
Pandemic-Preparedness Money Stripped From Stimulus, USA Today | April 28, 2009
Congress stripped nearly $900 million to combat an influenza pandemic from the economic-stimulus package earlier this year as part of last-minute negotiations to gain GOP support for the plan. Now, with the spread of a potentially deadly strain of the swine flu, public-health advocates and liberal bloggers are sharply criticizing the move. Key Democratic lawmakers, including Iowa Sen. read more »
Food Inspections Vary By State, The New York Times | April 20, 2009
Congress and the Obama administration have said that more inspections and new food production rules are needed to prevent food-related diseases, but far less attention has been paid to fixing the fractured system by which officials detect and stop ongoing outbreaks. read more »
Homeland Security Chief Defends Report , USA Today | April 17, 2009
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano dismissed criticism of her agency's intelligence assessments and defended a recent report that says some military veterans could be susceptible to extremist recruiters or lone acts of violence. read more »
Spice Recall Expanded Because of Salmonella Threat, Associated Press | April 16, 2009
Union International Food Co. is expanding a spice recall to include all Lian How brand and Uncle Chen brand sauces, oil and oil blends in various size packages because the products may be contaminated with salmonella, an organism that can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections, especially in young children, the elderly and those with weakened immune systems. read more »
