Congress

The Impasse in the House

Featured image Unless I am mistaken about the order of things, the impasse over selecting the next Speaker of the House will end very soon for a simple reason: since no members can be officially sworn in until there is a Speaker, it means none of them can draw a paycheck. That will tend to concentrate the mind of many House members. I am not as averse to the current general scene »

Thrown under the omnibus

Featured image What are we to make of the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill that is speeding its way through Congress? If you check out FOX News every once in while, or keep up with Bill Melugin’s Twitter feed, you may have heard that we have something worse than a crisis at our southern border. Here is one “surprise” that we were probably not meant to find buried in the bill any »

She who must not be mentioned

Featured image This Washington Free Beacon editorial includes Nancy Pelosi’s fundraising appeal on the back of the attack on her husband. The Free Beacon editorial responds to the call for Republicans to “spend the final week of the campaign sitting on the bench, reflecting, atoning” for the attack on Paul Pelosi. Minnesota 6h District Rep. and NRCC chairman Tom Emmer received the impassioned instruction of Margaret Brennan for Republicans to quit their »

After last night

Featured image New Hampshire held its late party primaries yesterday. The only interesting races were on the Republican side and Democrats had a hand in two of them. In the Senate contest to pick a challenger to vulnerable incumbent Maggie Hassan, Don Bolduc faced off against Chuck Morse. Democrats supported Bolduc because he is the less viable candidate. With 87 percent of the vote tabulated, Bolduc leads Morse by about 1300 votes »

After last night

Featured image Wyoming and Alaska held primaries yesterday. Pollsters in Wyoming had the direction of the Liz Cheney-Harriet Hageman race for Wyoming’s at-large House seat right. Cheney was going to lose. But was she going to lose by nearly 40 points? Pollsters vastly understated the magnitude of Cheney’s pending loss. She was not merely repudiated. She was crushed. Hageman beat her by more than a 2-1 margin (below, via RealClearPolitics). Cheney was »

The coveted Franken endorsement

Featured image Former Minnesota Senator Al Franken waited until the last minute to bestow his coveted endorsement on Rep. Liz Cheney via Twitter (below). Cheney is of course contending for the Republican nomination to stand for reelection to Wyoming’s single seat in the House. I’m sure Rep. Cheney appreciates Franken’s confidence as she seeks to persuade Wyoming conservatives that she is deserving of their continued support to represent them in Congress. It’s »

The Chuy truth

Featured image FOX News media reporter Joseph Wulfsohn picked up Rep. Jesús “Chuy” Garcia’s vulgar tweet below before it was deleted two hours later. I assume Garcia composed it. I can’t believe a staffer would have the nerve to speak this way under Garcia’s name. Warning: If you click on the tweet you will see the whole thing. Garcia is (over)sensitive to criticism. The sensitivity also makes me think it is Garcia »

Nancy Pelosi explains

Featured image Nancy Pelosi explains the legislative bigthink behind one of the bills making its way through Congress. Someone with a sense of humor has added the perfect soundtrack to the audio. Buried in the babble is the comment: “If they’re putting things in, then we can put something out, even if Manchin doesn’t like it.” I hope Manchin is listening and spends some time decoding Pelosi’s explication. It’s a little scary »

Zelensky speaks…to Congress

Featured image Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will speak to Congress later this morning. The AP has just published Lisa Mascaro’s preview of Zelensky’s remarks in “Zelenskyy center stage: Facing Congress, pleading for help.” In “Zelensky speaks” on March 4 I observed (forgive me for quoting myself): “As the fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance Zelensky is the man of the hour. He harks back to the old-fashioned virtues. In the battle »

A congressional covid committee? No thanks.

Featured image According to this report, there is bipartisan support for creating a congressional Covid-19 Commission. It would be modeled after the one that, for better or (in my view) worse, examined the 9/11 attacks. The proposed commission would investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic and the responses of the Trump and Biden administrations. The plan is proposed by the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Health Committee — Sens. »

Polls: Dems are less accepting than Republicans of election defeat

Featured image Democrats and their mainstream media allies express dismay, if not alarm, over a poll that shows 58 percent of Republicans don’t believe Joe Biden was elected legitimately. However, Byron York points out that in the Fall of 2017, the same pollster found that 67 percent of Democrats said Trump was not legitimately elected. Given the drumbeat of unfounded claims by mainstream media outlets of Russian collusion in the election of »

Congress probes alleged sex harassment at football team. Why?

Featured image Daniel Snyder owns the Washington Football Team. In response to allegations that he and others at the team indulged in sexual harassment of female employees, the NFL hired a prominent lawyer, Beth Wilkinson, to investigate. Based on the results of the investigation, the NFL fined the team $10 million and announced that Snyder’s wife, not Snyder, will run the day-to-day affairs of the team for an unspecified period of time. »

Give the works to Deborah Birx

Featured image Deborah Birx returned in mainstream media stories yesterday with an indictment of the Trump administration’s handling of the epidemic. The October 26 New York Times story, for example, is here. The Times quotes Birx telling a select congressional committee on the epidemic: “I believe if we had fully implemented the mask mandates, the reduction in indoor dining, the getting friends and family to understand the risk of gathering in private »

Call me Ishmale

Featured image The cultural transformation of the United States proceeds at an astonishing pace. It is assisted by the titans of Big Tech, of course, against whom a president and lowly congressman are powerless. In what should be another installment of my Shapes of things series, Rep. Jim Banks has been suspended by Twitter for allegedly “misgendering [Biden administration] trans health official” Rachel Levine (per the CBS News tweet below). The AP »

The House Does Not Have Many Manchins

Featured image Scott has noted that Sen. Joe Manchin has “named his price point” on the spendapalooza bill: $1.5 trillion. Scott is right that this is still very bad, but it requires the progressives to shrink their wish list by more than half—by a full $2 trillion. I’d love to be a fly on the wall in the House Democratic caucus meetings and sub-meetings right now, because if there is no honor »

Make or Break Week for Biden

Featured image This is likely the make-or-break week for President Biden’s progressive domestic agenda, and he’s looking more and more like Jimmy Carter II with every passing day. The House is supposed to vote today on the $1 trillion “bi-partisan” infrastructure bill, but the “progressive” Democrats are still holding it hostage until they get their $5 trillion wish-list passed first. I’m not sure the complete bill is even written down fully yet, »

Manchin calls time out on reconciliation

Featured image Sen. Joe Manchin has thrown a monkey wrench into Democrats’ plan to pass, via reconciliation, a $3.5 trillion spending package on top of the trillion dollar (or so) bipartisan “infrastructure” bill. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed called “Why I Won’t Support Spending Another $3.5 Trillion,” Manchin states: The nation faces an unprecedented array of challenges and will inevitably encounter additional crises in the future. Yet some in Congress have »