Tag: Washington DC

As Washington policymakers screamed bloody murder last month over bonus payments for a few hundred AIG employees, another much larger scandal went virtually unnoticed on Capitol Hill: The divide between the wealth of blacks and whites — already gaping — grew again. Now, as Congress prepares to consider a series of consumer-friendly finance reforms, some minority advocates, researchers and lawmakers are pointing to that startling trend as another reason the reforms are urgently needed.

Politicians and environmentalists alike Monday were quick to sing the praises of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, which President Obama signed into law Monday afternoon at a White House ceremony. On MSNBC, Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter told anchor Contessa Brewer that Obama was going to great lengths to highlight the importance of the law to Colorado because the White House can't allow Colorado’s other Senate seat, held by Democrat Michael Bennet, to be lost in 2010. Bennet was appointed by Gov. Bill Ritter to fill the seat of Ken Salazar, whom Obama appointed as his Interior Secretary.

The Obama administration recast the seven-year-long war in Afghanistan on Friday with a deepened commitment to both Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.

Controversial last-minute changes to House legislation empowering bankruptcy judges to alter primary mortgages will do little to prevent struggling homeowners from trying to save their homes through bankruptcy, according to a number of housing advocates who are following the debate. Rather, pressures to limit the scope of a similar Senate bill, expected to be considered next week, pose a greater threat to the effectiveness of the bankruptcy provision, the advocates say.

No shoes were thrown but Ali Hasan did put his foot in his mouth last week at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C., baffling the arch-conservative crowd with some decidedly moderate views.

Tucker Carlson closed out the first day of the Conservative Political Action Conference to a chorus of boos. His crime: informing a crowd of youngish, frustrated conservatives that if they wanted to succeed, they had to copy The New York Times.

State House Majority Whip Christine Scanlan, D-Dillon, is whipping up a little beetle-mania this week in Washington, ratcheting up the rhetoric in the war for more money to battle the bug that won the West.

Not even three weeks in office and President Barack Obama is discovering that being in charge is no bed of roses, even when you have a garden of them just outside your Oval Office windows. February’s frost has bitten a bit of the bloom off the new President’s aspirations as the swamp of hypocrisy and partisan inertia that is Beltway Washington took its toll.

How’s this for absurdity? Citing unnamed Democratic officials, The Associated Press reports that there’s “pressure” on Congress to drop the executive pay limits for bailed-out banks as lawmakers reconcile the differences between the House and Senate stimulus bills. The reason? It would cost taxpayers too much.

He spends his free time having his staff quiz him with flashcards that show other members of Congress, their home states and their committees -- but don't call him "congressman," says the freshman Democrat from Boulder. "Seriously, for my sanity, just call me Jared," writes Rep. Jared Polis in his debut blog entry on CNN's "Freshman Year" feature, which will follow Polis and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, as they get their bearings in Congress.