Doug Hoffman says he’ll run again in New York’s 23rd district next November.
From WaPo …
Hundreds, if not thousands, of lobbyists are likely to be ejected from federal advisory panels as part of a little-noticed initiative by the Obama administration to curb K Street’s influence in Washington, according to White House officials and lobbying experts.
The new policy — issued with little fanfare this fall by the White House ethics counsel — may turn out to be the most far-reaching lobbying rule change so far from President Obama, who also has sought to restrict the ability of lobbyists to get jobs in his administration and to negotiate over stimulus contracts.
Here’s one story we’re watching closely on a Friday when there was supposed to be no news. On Wednesday, Dubai’s sovereign wealth fund asked to delay certain debt payments and then rushed to raise more money. It raised more money but the international financial community is still not confident that they’re out of the woods. Globally speaking, this sounds like one of those stories that’s no big deal unless it’s not. A member of the governing board of the European Central Bank tells Reuters, “The events in Dubai in recent days are one of the hiccups if you like, one of the difficulties, which affirms that we were right to highlight the uncertainty ahead of us and that the road ahead could be a bumpy one.”
In itself the numbers aren’t that big (measured on a global scale), only tens of billions of dollars. But if larger institutions turn out to have a lot of exposure to it, and that pushes some of them back into unstable territory and rushed liquidations of assets, the whole thing could spread. At a minimum it’s an example of the still quite risk averse international financial markets.
It’s the biggest Democratic political scandal you’ve never heard of — or at most have just a passing familiarity with — and it’s not Charlie Rangel.
Brian Beutler with the top 5 GOP distortions of this Congress.
Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina is in some serious hot water — legally and politically — over an anti-public option mailer (the existence of which was first reported by TPMmuckraker) and a robocall the company was using to persuade its customers to oppose health care reform.
The state attorney general, state insurance commissioner and state lawmakers are all looking into the political activity by the insurance giant, which scrapped a second round of robocalls once it came under scrutiny.
We’re having a bit of a debate here in the office about whether the State Dinner party crasher story is just a funny holiday weekend weirdness story or a genuine security issue. On the one hand, you’ve got Rep. Peter King (R-NY) saying that the fact that the crashers had to go through the metal detectors and conventional weapons screening was ‘incidental’. “They could have had anthrax on them. They could have grabbed a knife from the dining room table.” I’m willing to put that down as pretty standard Pete King nonsense. (I’m actually pleasantly surprised, given the climate post-Ford Hood, that there’s been no mention from the right that the male party crasher appears to have an Arabic or perhaps Turkic name. But perhaps I shouldn’t tempt fate.)
But I’m on the side of thinking that it actually is kind of a big deal. We pay a lot of money, for good reason, to keep the White House and the president’s person, super secure. And the idea that these two could just walk right in without even being on a White House wave-in list, let alone the invite list for a State Dinner. Not having weapons isn’t the only issue.
What do you think? Read More
The annual Golden Duke Awards are coming up. And the LA Times noticed that a text message Sen. John Ensign sent to his girlfriend Cindy Hampton was only one syllable off from being a bona-fide Haiku.
How wonderful it is. Can’t believe,
it’s like a kid. Scared but excited.
I’ve often thought that a lot of tweets, and probably texts too, are close to being haikus. We’ve had a lot of sex scandals this year (as we always do). So in the honor of the day, and to work off your post-turkey stupor, email us your haiku based on one of 2009’s plentiful sex scandals.
Top Ten things you didn’t know about the Obama campaign before reading David Plouffe’s Audacity to Win.