If Robert Byrd had been alive and on the Senate floor last night, the Democrats would have broken the Republican filibuster of the unemployment insurance extension bill. But Ben Nelson (D-NE) stepped forward to kill the bill and put any extension off until July.
Going into an election like this, it’s in the interest of opposition leaders to keep their options open as much as possible. And the House Republican leadership had been trying to do that on Health Care Reform, verbally opposing it in general but resisting actually going on the record as backing total repeal of everything. But over the last couple days the Club for Growth and Redstate.com managed to muscle Reps. Boehner, Cantor and a few dozen others into signing on as sponsors to Rep. Steve King’s (R-IA) total repeal bill.
In a two-sentence statement released tonight, the Portland Police Bureau announced it is re-opening its investigation into sexual assault allegations made against Al Gore by a massage therapist in 2006.
The police had previously declined to pursue an investigation following an extensive interview with the woman in 2009, citing “insufficient evidence.”
After the allegations were first reported last week, Gore declined to comment. Tonight, Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider sent along this statement:
Further investigation into this matter will only benefit Mr. Gore. The Gores cannot comment on every defamatory, misleading, and inaccurate story generated by tabloids. Mr. Gore unequivocally and emphatically denied this accusation when he first learned of its existence three years ago. He stands by that denial.
Elena Kagan completed her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and there seems little doubt that she is on her way to being confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice.
No one can seriously dispute her qualifications: she discussed a wide variety of legal issues (answering more than 500 questions) with authority, confidence and good humor. Senator Sessions described her as a person of “skill and intelligence.”
And Republicans haven’t yet been able to find an issue with “traction”–something with enough resonance with the public at large to convince moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans to consider opposing the nominee. Read More
Here’s your chance to get a look inside the funding of BP’s Gulf Oil Spill response.
Anadarko is a 25% owner of the Deepwater Horizon well — the one that exploded and caused the Gulf Oil spill. And they’re now in a big dispute with the majority owner, BP, over whether Anadarko has to pay for 25% of the damages and costs related to the spill.
We’ve obtained a copy of the fairly detailed $272 million invoice BP sent to Anadarko for spill related expenses expenses for the first month or so after the blow out.
You can see itemized just what BP is spending on. Rachel Slajda has the story.
Republican Senators are focusing in on their key lines of attack in the second round of questioning. There doesn’t seem to be any thought that they will get Kagan to say something that will derail her confirmation, or even that they are plowing new ground. Rather, they appear to be trying to get Kagan to respond to specific quiestions in a way that can be used more easily in future statements regarding her confirmation.
So, which issues are getting their attention? Read More
One of the interesting aspects of a confirmation hearing is that it provides some insight into which constitutional issues a Senator finds important–or at least sufficiently important to justify a discussion with the nominee during the course of the hearing. Of course, the choreography of these discussions is always the same: the Senator raises an issue, the nominee recites the governing legal standard but says that she can’t address specific issues that might come before the Court, and the Senator moves on to the next issue. So we don’t learn much about the nominee (other than whether she has a broad knowledge of general constitutional law principles) but we do learn something about the Senator.
The list so far has been extensive. Read More
The five big hot button questions that never got asked in yesterday’s Kagan hearings. You might be surprised.
Senate Republicans are so opposed to financial reform that they voted last night to continue the TARP bailout program.