This should not surprise us since pre-election polls showed that Republicans were even more unpopular than the increasingly unpopular Democrats. But it’s still worth noting. The public trusts President Obama to handle the problems facing the country more than they trust the Republicans. Republicans (94) and Democrats (2006) were both trusted more than the incumbent presidents by big margins when they took over Congress.
Gibbs: Sen. DeMint’s gambit of forcing the reading of the START treaty on the Senate floor is a “new low in putting political stunts ahead of our national security.”
Late Update: We’re getting early reports that DeMint has scrapped his plan to read the START treaty in its entirety on the Senate floor.
Is the federal government too scared of the gun lobby to crack down on cross-border gun running? It seems so.
Harry Reid: “I don’t need to hear the sanctimonious lectures of Sen. Kyl and DeMint to remind me of what Christmas means.”
Maybe some of our older readers can help give me a reality check here, but were the blue ribbon commissions of the 1950s through 1980s as deeply compromised and flawed as the ones today?
Even as late as the 9/11 commission earlier this decade, you could put together a group of distinguished citizens and expect they would yield a consensus that bore some relation to reality and wasn’t shamelessly partisan. Not that the 9/11 commission didn’t have its flaws, but you couldn’t dismiss its findings out of hand.
But look at the two big commissions recently charged with addressing what were arguably national crises. Read More
Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, winner of the 2008 Golden Duke for “Best Scandal–Local Venue,” just couldn’t let a second year go by without making a strong play for another Golden Duke citation.
Having already lost his office and served time in jail for obstruction of justice and lying under oath, Kilpatrick has now been indicted by the feds again, this time for a wide-ranging public corruption scandal allegedly involving kickbacks while he was mayor. Kilpatrick’s father and other former Detroit officials are also named in the indictment.
Remember: nominations for the 2010 Golden Dukes are due by this Friday. Instructions for submitting nominations can be found here.
Two new developments in the long saga of DADT repeal: The House just passed a standalone bill to repeal DADT, which was expected; the bigger news is that Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) has now committed to voting for repeal, after she voted no last week over what she said were procedural issues.
You never know with those two Maine senators, but if Snowe keeps her commitment, that gives DADT repeal 59 of the 60 votes needed to get past the Republican filibuster. Sens. Scott Brown (R-MA) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) are the key uncommitted senators at this point.
Evan McMorris-Santoro talked last night with Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who recounted how he and House Democrats moved quickly to push through a standalone DADT repeal bill after the earlier vehicle for repeal failed last week in the Senate.
Our occasional look at the people and places in Washington. At the Italian Embassy Tuesday night:
