The 89-year-old Democratic senator from New Jersey decides not to seek re-election.
Obama meets oppo researcher who unearthed ’47 percent’ video.
NRA chief Wayne LaPierre plans at 5:15 p.m. ET to respond to Obama’s State of the Union address. Watch it live here.
Former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) fell one vote shy of the 60 he needed to break a filibuster of his nomination to be secretary of defense. The final vote in the Senate a few moments ago was 58-40 (with one senator voting present). It was 59 ayes before Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) changed his vote to no for procedural reasons.
As a coda to these two pieces, here’s a straightforward way to ignore all the noise about whether Republicans did or didn’t filibuster Chuck Hagel and sort out what really happened on the Senate floor this evening.
Yes, in every technical sense, this was a filibuster. Republicans objected to an up-or-down vote, then withheld their votes to prevent Democrats from forcing an up-or-down vote, which means Hagel isn’t on a glide path to getting an up-or-down vote. Filibuster.
But in a spirit-not-letter sense, what Republicans are doing is much more like a traditionally defined filibuster than what we’ve all come to describe as a filibuster over the past few years. Read More
Multiple reports say there’s been a major meteorite impact in Chelyabinsk Russia. Videos and more after the jump. Read More
On the heels of Thursday’s report that the tea party group FreedomWorks scrapped plans to release a bizarre phony panda-Hillary Clinton sex video comes word that the group’s Arizona director also did away with plans to hand out “Be Mein” Hitler valentines to state lawmakers.
Congressman’s tweets during State of the Union to comely young blonde woman are totally not what you think.