Over the weekend I was looking over the slideshows we published in 2010 to see which were the best photos, which were the most popular and so forth. But as I looked I realized that by any real standard, there’s wasn’t much competition. Not long into the BP Deep Horizon disaster, we got some photos from a source inside the Department of Energy. I’m sure these photos or ones like them later became public. But at the time they were literally breathtaking. Click through the images to see the whole slideshow.
Gingrich back again soliciting strip clubs for political donations.
Senate passes bill to repeal DADT by a vote of 65-31. President will sign next week.
Freshman Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) skipped today’s votes for a holiday party, “a family obligation that he just could not break.”
I get that Manchin did not find this a helpful vote for 2012. But I’m not sure this approach is helpful even in political terms.
The final vote on the DADT Repeal bill is underway now. More soon …
Fresh off the vote, Sen. Reid sends a tweet to Lady Gaga. “@ladygaga #DADT on it’s way to becoming history.”
It’s a reference to this earlier tweet/promise Reid sent to Gaga.
We’ve just confirmed that the Senate will hold the final vote on the DADT repeal bill at 3pm today.
Here’s what happened. The bill was scheduled to come up for a vote tomorrow because under the rules of modern filibusters, even after a successful cloture vote, the majority must wait another thirty hours to hold the actual vote. However, the minority can waive that requirement. And Sens. McConnell and Reid have now come to agreement to do that.
As you know, the attempt to break the filibuster on the DREAM Act failed just before the successful vote on DADT. There’s an interesting little tell though in the numbers. Three Republicans voted to end the filibuster — Lugar, Murkowski and Bennett. What’s revealing there is that there’s not really a clear ideological pattern to those four. The pattern is that they’re Republicans who for various reasons don’t have to face GOP voters anymore. Bennett got defenestrated earlier this year. Murkowski just won as a write-in. The exception is Lugar, who is up for reelection in 2012. He’s been a permanent fixture of Indiana politics. But that was in the pre-Tea Party era.
(ed.note: This post originally and incorrectly reported that Sen. Bond had voted for cloture.)