Congress
January 11, 2023 — Scott Johnson
AP congressional reporter Farnoush Amiri report via Twitter (below) that Speaker Kevin McCarthy will follow through on his promise to remove Reps. Eric Swalwell (Intelligence), Adam Schiff (Intelligence), and Ilhan Omar (Foreign Affairs) from their committee assignments. Of the three, I think Schiff is the worst. He should be tarred and feathered and run out of town for abuse of his position as Intelligence Committee chairman to perpetuate the Russia
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January 9, 2023 — Steven Hayward
That was quite a dramatic scene on the House floor Friday night when Kevin McCarthy walked up the aisle and confronted Matt Gaetz. I’m not a good enough lip reader to know what passed between them, but fortunately we have the experts at Bad Lip Reading on the job, and they have decoded it for us: Everything changes once you know what McCarthy and Gaetz were actually saying#118thCongress #KevinMcCarthy #MattGaetz
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January 8, 2023 — Steven Hayward
The media and the left were content to munch popcorn this week as House Republicans struggled to select a Speaker, but now that the deed is done largely on terms dictated by the so-called “Chaos Caucus” (I prefer Rebel Alliance), they are starting to wring their hands about how terrible this is. Which means they are worried. Which means the outcome is probably good. There is a disturbance in The
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January 7, 2023 — Steven Hayward
I’ll ask readers to indulge a roundabout introduction, as I think it useful for setting up such a rare occasion as a substantial disagreement with what Brother John has written here about the McCarthy Question. It has become a frustrating and annoying practice of the Supreme Court to issue decisions whose summary begins as follows (in this case, Allegheny County v. Greater Pittsburgh ACLU in 1989): “BLACKMUN, J., announced the judgment of
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January 5, 2023 — Steven Hayward
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
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December 21, 2022 — Scott Johnson
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
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October 31, 2022 — Scott Johnson
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
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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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