This hasn’t gotten much attention yet. But after calling for dialog and meetings and all the rest for months, House Minority Leader John Boehner now seems to be saying he won’t attend the White House Health Care Reform summit until President Obama essentially disavows the Democratic plan currently in Congress.
Evan Bayh will announce today he’s retiring from Congress. Which is a huge blow for the Democrats and a big, big surprise.
Seems like the very effective political knee-capping of Dan Coats was all for naught. And that raises something questions in itself, since I’d heard that Bayh’s people played a big role in that.
Says the Indy Star …
Only days ago, Bayh’s staff, close associates and Indiana Democratic Party Chairman Dan Parker, who was manager of Bayh’s re-election campaign, had assured an Indianapolis Star reporter hat he would definitely seek a third term in the U.S. Senate. And Democrats recently released a poll showing Bayh easily ahead of both former Sen. Dan Coats and former U.S. Rep. John Hostettler, two of the four Republicans seeking the GOP nomination.
What seems very odd about this is that Bayh and his political team were making active preparations for a run as recently as mid-late last week. And not just the kind of public, optics stuff that you need to be sure to do to keep your options open. We’re looking into it.
If there’s one thing that can tempt me to take John McCain’s side in a dispute, it’s Joe the Plumber blaming McCain for having “screwed up his life.”
Valentine’s Day and President’s Day have always been in a quiet conspiracy against a full and just celebration of my birthday. But in case you’re wondering, today’s my birthday. And I’m 41. My mother-in-law told me over the weekend that this was a ‘serious’ birthday. And noted that in a mere nine years I’ll be 50. But despite my tendency to fret about age, I decided this was not a good way to look at the situation. Today I’m very thankful for my wife, my two beautiful sons and my dog Simon who I fear does not get the attention he did before we allowed these two crazy ruffians into our household but is no less excellent than he was when he came into our lives 6+ years ago. I’m also thankful for you because you and a lot of other TPM Readers have made it possible for me for almost ten years now to do what I wanted to do each day when I got up in the morning. So thank you.
The tide may finally be starting to turn on this whole nonsense story drummed up by Dick Cheney that trying the Christmas bomber Umar Abdulmutallab in civilian courts (and by necessity reading him his Miranda rights) is a dramatic departure from how we’ve handled terrorist arrests in the past.
Rachel Maddow shut down Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) when he tried to pull that rabbit out of the hat again yesterday on Meet the Press. Watch.
The White House discovers that leaving things to Congress doesn’t amount to much of a communications strategy. That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
This little oddity has come up a few times recently when we’ve had to create email addresses for new staffers. But I just did a tally. And even though TPM is still a pretty small organization and has only had paid staffers for a few years, we’ve managed to have two employees named Kate, Laura, Ben, Eric, Justin, Andrew and Rachel. With 14 double-name staffers, that’s got to be more than half the people who’ve ever worked for TPM. Presumably these were very popular names in the 1980s and very late 1970s. But it still strikes me as uncanny.
TPM Reader TW is out of patience …
Let’s put the blame for this lack of action and acomplishment squarely
where it belongs: Obama. He has noble intentions of “changing the tone” in
Washington, but sometimes high-mindedness is simply naiveté. Enough with
the Gandhi-esque s–t – it’s time to pass some bills that will make a
positive impact in the lives of millions of Americans.
TPM Reader CB adds some more thoughts …
Why do you think Congressional Democrats have had such a hard time dealing with Republican obstructionism? It’s been apparent for months that Republicans are unwilling to compromise on legislative initiatives, unless by compromise you mean that they will allow Democrats to agree with their proposals. In such an environment, it is pointless for Democratic lawmakers to ask themselves whether there is a way they can craft legislation so that some Republicans will be willing to vote for their proposal – there is simply no provision that Democrats can add or remove from a bill that will make Republicans want to vote for a Democratic proposal. And yet we keep seeing efforts – like the Baucus jobs bill – in which leading Democrats tinker with or even gut their own proposals in a fruitless effort to get Republicans to sign on to the legislation.