Shots from last night’s Congressional Correspondents’ Dinner (formerly the Radio and TV Correspondents Dinner):
Two of the best comedy moments from last night’s Congressional Correspondents Dinner came from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY).
Evan McMorris-Santoro takes a look at Rep. Sean Duffy’s personal financial report and finds that the Wisconsin Republican freshman probably is struggling financially … for a congressman.
Gov. Walker finally stands down in Wisconsin and will obey court order halting implementation of his big anti-union bill.
If John Boehner cuts a deal with the Democrats on the budget impasse and the House Tea Party Caucus goes beserk, is Eric Cantor setting himself up to pick up the pieces and build his rep at Boehner’s expense? Our Brian Beutler reads the tea leaves.
Top Dem aide tells TPM there’s been a possible breakthrough on efforts to avert a government shutdown.
White House: Obama has yet to decide on whether to arm the Libyan rebels.
Hillary Clinton to Congress: Obama would ignore any of your war resolutions on Libya.
Okay, in the words of the immortal Beastie Boys, we are going to fight, for your right, to hear freshman Rep. Sean Duffy say his family is struggling to get by on his $174,000 salary. Yesterday we posted a short clip of Duffy, at a townhall in his district, telling a constituent that his family was “struggling” to get by on his $174,000 annual congressional salary.
Let’s be honest: Duffy is probably in a majority of members of Congress of both parties who feel this way. He’s in a minority of one who in this economic climate had the poor judgment to say it. In any case, the fact that Duffy said it was always secondary for us to the fact that the local Polk County Republican party was trying to prevent anyone from seeing the video after they posted it on their own website.
Then this morning, our video hosting service received a take down notice from the Polk County Republican party trying again to prevent anyone from seeing the video. We believe that it’s wrong for a political party to use copyright to prevent the public from seeing something a member of Congress said in the course of his public duties. (This was a townhall meeting.) Equally important, our legal counsel believes they have no case. So we have now reposted the video on our own site along with a news report on the Polk County GOP’s effort to prevent anyone from seeing the video. See it here.