Congress
September 14, 2022 — Scott Johnson
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
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August 17, 2022 — Scott Johnson
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
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August 15, 2022 — Scott Johnson
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
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July 30, 2022 — Scott Johnson
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
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July 28, 2022 — Scott Johnson
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
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March 16, 2022 — Scott Johnson
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
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February 6, 2022 — Paul Mirengoff
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.
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January 4, 2022 — Paul Mirengoff
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
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December 15, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
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.
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October 28, 2021 — Scott Johnson
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
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October 27, 2021 — Scott Johnson
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
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September 30, 2021 — Steven Hayward
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
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September 27, 2021 — Steven Hayward
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,
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September 2, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
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
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July 28, 2021 — Scott Johnson
As the Biden administration secretly redistributes illegal aliens carrying the Covid virus around the United States, the CDC has issued a new set of “interim public health recommendations for fully vaccinated people.” The CDC has promulgated the recommendations in response to the big nothing of the Delta variant applicable to all those in K-12 schools and counties with high or substantial levels of viral transmission — regardless of vaccination status,
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March 17, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
A dozen House Republicans voted against a resolution to award Congressional Gold Medals, one of the nation’s highest civilian honors, to the Capitol Police, the D.C. police, and the Smithsonian Institution in recognition of their defense of the U.S. Capitol on January 6. To understand the votes of these Republicans one needs to look at the loaded language the Democrats smuggled into the resolution being voted on. It states: On
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March 17, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post reports that “momentum is stalling amid congressional efforts to swiftly investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.” Good. The Democrats want to use the riot for political purposes. They hope, with assistance from the always-obliging media, to present it as the tip of an insurrectionary iceberg spearheaded by hardcore Trump supporters. To this end, Nancy Pelosi favors a 9/11 style commission. She would like this
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