The Senate is still voting this evening on amendments to the financial reform bill. However, the “audit the Fed” amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) that we were expecting to see passed tonight has been delayed after some last-minute maneuvering.
Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) wanted to be present for the vote, but he’s back in Utah fighting for his political life in advance of this weekend’s state GOP convention where he may very well lose his party’s nomination. Apparently Bennett didn’t want to miss this vote and have that used against him by his opponent in the closing hours of their campaign.
Despite that delay, the politics of financial reform have shifted significantly in recent days, and the Senate is now expected to pass a series of amendments that will significantly strengthen the bill’s reforms.
Late Update: A long-shot to pass, the amendment by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Ted Kaufman (D-DE) to put absolute limits on the size of financial institutions just went down to defeat, 33-61.
It looks like the White House is learning to love Sen. Sanders’ audit of the Fed amendment.
Statement of support from Dep. Secretary of Treasury Neal Wolin after the jump … Read More
The BBC has released its exit poll and they’re predicting a hung parliament with Tories: 307 seats; Labour 255 and LibDems 59. If this exit poll proved accurate (and that’s a big ‘if’) the LibDems would actually have fewer seats in the new parliament than the current one.
We’ve gotten a lot of good answers to our definitional question about birtherism. (And don’t tell Zack but I seem to be coming out on top.) But the most nuanced grasp of the question seems to come from TPM Reader CC …
I disagree with Zack’s assessment of natural-born-citizen Birthers vs. Kenyan-born Birthers being different entities. I read the freerepublic birther threads with great relish, and I can assure you that NBC-obsessed and Kenyan-born Birthers freely collaborate and trade ideas.
In writing today about the folks from the American Grand Jury movement who managed to get themselves arrested in their pursuit of impanelling a grand jury to indict President Obama for treason, we’ve come up against a definitional question. Here it is. Are these folks ‘birthers.’
Unlike mainstream birthers, the folks from the AGJ don’t really care or dispute where President Obama was born. They’re happy to say he was born in Hawaii. Their theory is that because his father was a subject of the British Empire at the time of Obama’s birth, that Obama is in fact a dual citizen and not eligible to serve as president. Now, I think I’ve actually heard this from more mainstream birthers. They basically say that even if it turns out that Obama was born in Hawaii that still doesn’t get you around the implications of his parentage by one foreign national. I’ve even heard that Obama’s mother’s age plays into it. Read More
On second thought, the gay prostitute who Family Research Council co-founder George Rekers took with him to Europe says they did have sex. In fact Rekers was a particular fan of something called the “long stroke.”
The federal agency responsible for regulating off-shore drilling is the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service. You’d think with a name like that it would be a pretty sleepy sort of place. But as longtime TPM readers know, far from it.
Back during the Bush administration the MMS had a series of big scandals tied to rampant drug use, orgies, lax or non-existent auditing and oversight. Sex for oil. When you think about it, who’s got time for auditing when there’s so much drugs and so many orgies going on at the office?
Anyway, it’s not immediately clear whether all this shagging and drugging on the job contributed to the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon. But we thought we’d run through the agency’s recent history and try to see whether that had anything to do with their apparently not considering the possibility that Deepwater Horizon could be the site of a major spill.
National Democrats are hoping that Arizona’s egregious new immigration law will gin up support for Democratic candidates around the country and solidify already strong Hispanic support for the Dems. Arizona’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate calls the law a “tragic mistake.” But we’ve made repeated calls to Goddard and his campaign manager to try to find out whether he’d try to repeal the law if elected. But we haven’t gotten any reply.
This may be my favorite story of the day. Sort of like “Homespun Con Law Experts Have Head-on Collision with Leviathan Known as Local Law Enforcement.”
You may or may not have heard of the American Grand Jury movement. I confess I had not. Their main point of activism is convening a citizens grand jury to indict President Obama for treason for not being a natural born citizen. Which sounds reasonable enough.
Well, things started to go wrong when Walter Fitzpatrick, a leader of the movement, headed over to the county courthouse to effect a citizen’s arrest of Grand Jury foreman Gary Pettway, for abetting Obama’s treason.
Zack Roth has the story from there.
Both Alaska senators sign on as co-sponsors for Bernie Sanders Fed Audit amendment