Tag: Congress

As the scramble continues to plug the oil gusher a mile deep in the Gulf of Mexico — and as Senate Democrats promote their...

Solicitor General Elena Kagan will be President Obama’s second Supreme Court nominee. The emerging conventional wisdom is that Kagan, a rare nominee for the high court who hasn’t been a judge, is a very smart blank slate. On at least one category of issues that Kagan will face — the intersection of national security and law during a time of war — that conventional wisdom looks correct. But there’s a proxy for that set of issues, however inexact, that offers a few clues in advance of her confirmation hearings: Kagan’s deference to executive power.

This morning, Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, senior House Republican on the Joint Economic Committee, wondered aloud why Democrats faced with the recent recession didn’t...

The South Carolina Republican announced today that he’s hoping to amend the finance reform bill working its way (slowly) across the Senate floor with...

There were calls to close it in the wake of the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School. There were calls to close it in 2007 following the shooting massacre at Virginia Tech. So far, though, Congress has done nothing to address the so-called gun-show loophole, which allows unlicensed vendors to sell firearms without performing background checks on the buyers. That kind of lawmaker inaction hasn’t gone unnoticed by the family members of some of the gun-show loophole victims.

Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) will drop their climate change bill this month. Although success will depend on action and support from the Senate as a whole, key individuals inside and outside the halls of Congress will shape the legislation and steer it through the political and public relations minefields it will have to navigate successfully in order to pass into law. Here is a list of the ten climate legislation champions at the heart of the battle.

So says MSNBC, which reports this morning that the anti-abortion Michigan Democrat is simply worn out from all the attention (i.e., criticism) he and...

As conservatives scream from the rafters about the elimination of a business tax deduction for retiree benefits in the Democrats’ health reform law, The...

Black homeowners are roughly 50 percent less likely than whites to receive help under the largest of the administration’s anti-foreclosure programs, according to a new survey of qualified families.

Top Colorado Republican candidates running for seats in Washington have all pledged to repeal health care reform, even though practical chances of repeal are thin and the bill is growing more popular by the day. Senate candidates Ken Buck, Tom Wiens and Jane Norton have vowed to work to repeal, as has state Rep. Cory Gardner, who is running for Democrat Betsy Markey's Congressional seat. With the Tea Party activists rallied relentlessly around opposition to the bill over the course of the last 12 months, there is little room to give up the health care fight for candidates on the right in tight races, no matter how impractical.