The GOP plan to extend all the Bush tax cuts failed in the Senate on a 45-54 vote. Senators voting against their parties: Mark Pryor of Arkansas for the Democrats; Scott Brown of Massachusetts and Susan Collins of Maine for the Republicans.

Here’s our explainer of what’s happening and why.

A second vote to extend the Bush tax cuts only on incomes below $250,000 in underway. Stay tuned …

Our Polling Editor Kyle Leighton on what we can and can’t tell from presidential approval ratings.

Important, um, career advice from Rhode Island U.S. Senate candidate.

In a rare reversion to how it’s actually supposed to run, the Senate will hold old fashioned majority votes on both the Democratic and Republican bills to address the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. Today at 4 PM.

Romney campaign jumps on to the voter suppression/’vote fraud’ bandwagon.

Biden smacks back at Romney over “Anglo-Saxon” ‘advisor’ comments to the Daily Telegraph.

Sandy Weill, the former Citibank Chairman and CEO, who basically invented the mega-bank, now says the big banks should be broken up.

I think everyone assumes that Michigan is more than likely an Obama state in November. I’d be very surprised if it isn’t. But the polls continue to show a considerably closer race. Yesterday, the TPM Electoral Scoreboard moved the state back into the ‘Favors Obama’ category with a Rasmussen poll showing 6 point Obama advantage. But today we’re back with another poll by Mitchell Research showing Romney one point ahead. (Both polls were robopolls.)

The PollTracker Average currently puts the race at Obama 46%, Romney 43.4%.

I hope the girls whose boyfriends died to save them were worthy of the sacrifice.

— James Taranto (@jamestaranto) July 25, 2012

A racial subtext certainly isn’t foreign to the Romney campaign’s critique of Barack Obama. But putting it so front and center may raise a few eyebrows.

What the London Daily Telegraph calls one of Romney’s “advisors” told the paper that Romney was better positioned to understand and respect the ‘special relationship’ between the US and Great Britain than President Obama, whose father was from Kenya. Read More