Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) looks like a “no” vote on DADT repeal.
The clock is ticking on submitting nominations for the 4th Annual Golden Duke award extravaganza!
You know you don’t want to see your favorite scoundrel denied the ridicule and mockery he or she so richly deserves. It’s up to you!
We must receive your nomination today! Details here.
Brian Beutler has the backstory on how Republican senators became so afraid of their own shadows that they bailed last night on the spending bill a year in the making. Along the way, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was feeding their fears and offering them a way out in order to deny Democrats the votes.
Your average Fox News viewer is more misinformed about the reality-based world than your average consumer of news who doesn’t watch Fox — and the more they watch Fox the more misinformed they become, a new study finds.
The Golden Dukes have a special luster this year. Here’s why.
The inspiration for the award, former Rep. Randall “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA), has been wiling away the last few years in the federal pen, paying his debt to society for one of the most brazen bribery schemes in congressional history. Gone and on the road to being forgotten — save for this eponymous award — Cunningham reversed course this year and started proclaiming his innocence of the charges he originally pleaded guilty to.
The Duke of old was back! Read More
Nothing is ever assured in the Senate. But today seems to be the day for DADT repeal. And all signs suggest it’s going to happen. Here’s our preview.
Worth noting of course that today is the cloture vote — the vote to break the filibuster. But if that happens, it’s back to old style majority rule, i.e., 51 votes, a vote that is likely to come tomorrow night. But there have long been more than enough votes to pass that margin.
The DREAM Act — which would provide legal status for illegal immigrants who serve in the military or earn college degrees — just failed to overcome Republican obstruction in the Senate. The vote was 55-41.
The Senate just voted 63-33 to break the filibuster on the DADT repeal bill.
Late Update: Just so we’re clear. This is not the passage of the actual DADT repeal bill. This is the vote that allows a straight majority vote, which will likely come tomorrow. And since there are many more than 51 votes for repeal, that means that the actual bill will pass tomorrow and likely be signed by the president early next week. This vote means that DADT is history.
As you know, the attempt to break the filibuster on the DREAM Act failed just before the successful vote on DADT. There’s an interesting little tell though in the numbers. Three Republicans voted to end the filibuster — Lugar, Murkowski and Bennett. What’s revealing there is that there’s not really a clear ideological pattern to those four. The pattern is that they’re Republicans who for various reasons don’t have to face GOP voters anymore. Bennett got defenestrated earlier this year. Murkowski just won as a write-in. The exception is Lugar, who is up for reelection in 2012. He’s been a permanent fixture of Indiana politics. But that was in the pre-Tea Party era.
(ed.note: This post originally and incorrectly reported that Sen. Bond had voted for cloture.)