Editors’ Blog - 2013
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Your subscription has been successful.
07.15.13 | 6:31 pm
No Dice

Hours-long Senate meeting adjourns with no deal on nominations or filibuster rules. Sahil Kapur was there as the meeting broke up. Here’s what senators had to say.

07.16.13 | 3:01 am
No Book After All

Zimmerman juror decides not to write book after all because it was too soon, gross and unseemly.

07.16.13 | 6:26 am
Deal?

Harry Reid was just on the Senate floor and credited John McCain with helping to arrange a deal on the pending presidential nominations that have had Senate Democrats on the verge of changing the filibuster rules. Not clear what the parameters of that deal are yet.

The key line from Reid: “It is a compromise. I think we get what we want, they get what they want.”

The first of the votes on the seven pending nominations at issue is scheduled for 11 a.m. ET, so we should know more soon.

07.16.13 | 6:47 am
Who Gave Up What

Sahil Kapur has the rundown on the deal Harry Reid has struck to avoid a showdown over the filibuster rules of the Senate.

07.16.13 | 7:10 am
Cordray Vote Underway

Richard Cordray’s nomination seems set to sail through the Senate now. Voting is underway on cloture, which is where we’ll see if Cordray can overcome the filibuster that has already derailed his nomination once and has delayed his confirmation for years and denied a permanent director for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since its creation. So far, he’s on track to easily beat the filibuster, as per the deal struck to break the GOP-created logjam.

07.16.13 | 7:22 am
Today’s Sacrificial Lambs

The odd ones out in today’s Senate deal are Sharon Block and Richard Griffin. Those are the two Obama appointees to the NLRB who are now going to be withdrawn and will not even get a Senate vote. They will be replaced by new nominees who are guaranteed, under the terms of the deal between Senate Democrats and Republicans, to win confirmation before the end of the summer.

Block and Griffin, who were recess-appointed to the NLRB by Obama previously, are left on the outside looking in, after a long battle to win confirmation. Obama pulls the plug on their nominations and they go home.

Cordray was also recess-appointed, so it’s not clear why he gets to proceed and the two NLRB nominees do not. The idea is that they were somehow tainted by the recess appointments (and the subsequent court decision that charted new ground in declaring their recess appointments unconstitutional, along with most of the recess appointment ever made). But so was Cordray. Compromises, though, often abide only by their own logic.

07.16.13 | 7:43 am
Cordray On Track For Confirmation

In the end, Richard Cordray won 71 votes to thwart the GOP filibuster of his nomination. A final vote to confirm him is expected later today.

07.16.13 | 8:16 am
Oy, Bob Filner Edition

Bob Filner, San Diego Mayor struggling to hold on to his job, has backtracked, said he didn’t sexually harass anyone and won’t resign. Now he’s accused of telling female workers in his office that they’d do better “if they worked without their panties on.”

07.16.13 | 8:43 am
23 Mass Shootings Since Aurora

There have been 23 mass shootings since the Aurora, Colorado massacre. Total body count 126 people.

07.16.13 | 9:37 am
Gay Rights Activist Murdered in Cameroon.

Weeks after issuing a public warning about the danger of bands ‘anti-gay thugs’, Eric Ohena Lembembe, a prominent gay rights activist in Cameroon, was found dead in his home, apparently tortured before being killed.