For all the political disagreements and (on some parts) preening involved, this episode turned out to be a great Senate moment — see my post below for a sense of why I think that. But now I’m seeing some people say, See how bad it is that all these people were trying to reform the filibuster? This is what you’d destroy! Read More
It started with a quixotic effort by the libertarian Sen. Rand Paul blocking a vote on John Brennan’s nomination for CIA Director focused on questions about whether the White House thinks it is permissible under any circumstances to order drone strikes within the United States. (Much of the furor centers on this exchange from earlier in the day between AG Holder and Sen. Cruz.) Over the first few hours, it was just Sens. Paul and then Cruz and Lee. But if you haven’t been watching through the night, at a certain point it morphed into a litmus test issue for Republican Senators. Read More
It’s only four months since he was the next President of the United States. But already, Mitt Romney is like something dug up in a GOP time capsule because immigration reform and immigrants became AWESOME.
An Alitalia jet reportedly had a near miss (200 feet) with a drone on approach to JFK on Monday. The FBI is investigating.
Harry Reid fails to break RandPaulibuster, tells Rand, Fine, Keep talking.
Cable news tried to report on the death of a world leader, but apparently it’s hard when there’s snow falling from the sky.
I can’t say I’m terribly surprised by any sludge from Roger Ailes, chief of Fox News and former Republican operative. But this was a pretty revealing passage from Ailes in the excerpt of the new bio which was just published in Vanity Fair … Read More
As I noted below, Rand Paul (and now a handful of his colleagues) are doing a real talking filibuster this afternoon in what is almost certainly a futile effort to block the nomination of John Brennan to serve as CIA Director. I just noticed a fellow reporter snarking on Twitter that, ‘well, Dems wanted to bring back the talking filibuster and now they’ve got it!’ Read More
TPM Reader TA was kinda impressed …
I sent a quick email as it was happening, but I was watching the Holder hearing today live and was really struck by Sen. Cruz’ questioning of Holder. He was trying to pin him down on whether it was constitutionally permissible for us to use a drone strike to kill an American citizen on U.S. soil when there was NO danger of imminent threat (as opposed to the “imminent threat to stop another 9/11” that he referred to in his letter to Paul).
A bunch of readers have asked us: What’s up with Rand Paul doing an actual filibuster this afternoon on the Senate floor? And why aren’t you guys all over it? Read More