The final vote was 68-32. And now all attentions turns to the House. Brian Beutler reports.
Harry Reid is wrapping up his speech on the Senate floor before the final vote on passage of the immigration reform bill. Voting should begin momentarily. Stay tuned.
John Cassidy has a piece up at The New Yorker, a sort of j’accuse directed at the media for being more critical of Edward Snowden than defending him. It’s a very interesting piece and I recommend it like most everything else Cassidy writes. But he quotes from my post on Snowden to make a point about differing attitudes toward him. So I wanted to take a moment to respond. Read More
When the Senate passes its immigration reform bill this afternoon, Republicans will be left to carry the blame if they can’t, or choose not, to move a comprehensive bill of their own with a pathway to citizenship through the House.
Given the immediacy of the situation, and every indication that they’re going to drop the ball, what they need to do is figure out a way to avoid that blame, or even better to turn it back on Democrats. The problem for them is, see paragraph one. And paragraph one is leading them into amazing displays of public reasoning like this from deputy whip Pete Roskam. Read More
Gov. Perry (R-TX) says it’s “unfortunate” Wendy Davis “hasn’t learned from her own example” of being a teenage mom.
Perry followed up by petitioning the federal government to allow Texas to rename itself the ‘state of Mansplainia’.
I’m confused by the responses from Russell George, Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, to Rep. Levin’s questions about recent developments in the IRS controversy – specifically news that progressive keywords were apparently also flagged as Tea Party ones were.
On the one hand, George has stated that this didn’t come up because he was instructed to look narrowly at the treatment of Tea Party groups. So these other questions were beyond the scope of his review. On the other hand, he’s saying these left-leaning groups and their keywords were not flagged for the sort of heightened scrutiny applied to Tea Party groups. These two answers seems to be in some level of contradiction, no?
Last we heard from WSJ columnist James Taranto he was letting us know that it takes two to have a sexual assault and that Sen. Claire McCaskill was trying to “criminalize male sexuality.” Now McCaskill responds.
I want your take on this. House Democrats seem to be getting emboldened about challenging the apparently collapsing IRS scandal. Rep. Levin (D-MI) sent this sharply worded letter to the Treasury IG which I could summarize as basically, WTF? How did you manage to write out that IG report without noticing or mentioning that progressive groups were also targeted. Read More
When the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to gut the Voting Rights Act, they said, in so many words, Congress, please rework the Act in a way that passes muster. To which, Sen. Schumer basically said, Yeah, good luck with that! As long as Democrats need 60 votes in the Senate and Republicans control the House, pre-clearance is done. And yet, I’m not so sure that’s how this plays out. Or at least not so simply. Read More