Tag: Washington DC

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar blasted Republican senators Wednesday for voting down his pick for deputy secretary. The Senate's 57-39 vote fell three votes shy of the 60 votes required to thwart a threatened Republican filibuster against the nomination of David Hayes, an environmental lawyer who served as Interior's No. 2 for the last three years of the Clinton administration. It was the first time the Senate has blocked an Obama nomination.

Here’s a good game for a rainy Sunday. Several credit card companies have launched a new Web site designed to help struggling card users manage their debts amid the economic downturn. The site includes tips to avoid penalties and links to access counseling services. But the fan favorite has to be an interactive tool allowing consumers to calculate the minimum installment required to pay off balances within a given time frame. It’s worth a whirl.

At the Senate Judiciary Committee’s oversight hearing this morning, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano carefully skirted repeated questions about her views of whether longtime undocumented immigrants living in the United States ought to get a chance at legalization.

The dean of Colorado's Republican congressional delegation flexed his political muscle today with a strongly worded letter to President Barack Obama urging him to reject his own HHS secretary nominee Kathleen Sebelius.

President Barack Obama's sheer popularity will make it harder for members of Congress to water down banking and finance regulations, but his willingness to play legislative hardball has already score a major victory over another key bank lobby priority: student loan subsidies.

The New York Times and Sunday morning political talk shows are contorting themselves into linguistically-torturous positions in a feeble attempt to avoid using the word "torture" to describe the immoral and criminal techniques employed at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and CIA black sites against suspected al Qaeda-linked prisoners. Now, Foreign Policy magazine has produced the euphemism-free "ultimate guide to the Bush Administration's journey to the dark side."

There are reasons to dismiss earmark-reform crusader and Arizona Republican Rep. Jeff Flake. For one, his name is Jeff Flake. He also has biggish blond hair and every couple of weeks he introduces another resolution calling for investigation into earmark corruption, each one killed the moment it hits the floor. He trotted out his last one on April Fool's Day. It too died straight away. Speaker Pelosi has basically mocked him as an unserious reformer or showboater or both. But Flake and his growing list of lawmaker-supporters won’t go away, partly because he's right on this.

Some of the largest U.S. banks may be on the ropes these days, but the disparity between the plight of financial executives and ordinary Americans has never been starker. Over the past two decades, the banking system has grown accustomed to scoring massive profits by preying on its own customers, making 2009's transition to pilfering taxpayer wallets an easy one. After burying the economy under a mountain of unaffordable debt, bank CEOs are now finding ways to subsidize their own paychecks with taxpayer bailout funds.

If Capitol Hill lawmakers were playing a high stakes game of chicken with the banking industry over your credit score, guess who just blinked? Mike Lillis, congressional reporter for our sister site The Washington Independent, examines the winners and losers in the latest setback on credit card reform to rein in outrageous rate hikes and hidden fees.

In recent weeks more than 60 people — including seven police officers — have been killed in multiple-death shootings from coast to coast.