Families of the Newtown massacre victims were interviewed on 60 Minutes segment ahead of efforts to push for new gun control legislation in Washington, D.C.
Daily Archives
April 7, 2013
14 posts · Sunday
The Republican Party is Broken
Jonathan Bernstein: “I think the emphasis on partisan polarization is misplaced. There’s nothing about strong partisanship that makes effective government in the U.S. impossible… Indeed: I suspect the game theorists might actually find that it should be easier for two well-organized parties to cut those deals, even if their ideal points are quite distant, than it would be to reach a deal between unstructured, factionalized parties, even if there are no extremists among them… And yet: dysfunction, crises, threats of shutdown and irrational outcomes no one claims to want.”
“My conclusion? It’s not partisanship. It’s not polarization. It’s not even extremism. It’s the Republican Party. The GOP is broken.”
Wonk Wire looks at a new paper on political dysfunction from Rick Hasen.
Bonus Quote of the Day
“Democrats don’t want to fight; they just want to get behind Hillary and go on from there.”
— James Carville, quoted by Maureen Dowd.
Most Politicians Survive Scandals
Scott Bassinger finds that of the more than 250 members of the House of
Representatives have been involved in various scandals since Watergate, roughly 40% did not “survive” their scandal.
“Incumbents who stood for
reelection
lost 5 percent of the general election vote share,
on average, but the electoral repercussions vary across types of
scandals
and could be magnified in the presence of a quality
challenger. A scandal-tainted incumbent defending his or her seat does
not necessarily fare better than an untainted
open-seat candidate, a finding that provides a justification for
stronger ethics
rules.”
Former Baucus Aides Cash In
New York Times: “To make their case as Congress prepares to debate a rewrite of the nation’s tax code, this diverse set of businesses has at least one strategy in common: they have retained firms that employ lobbyists who are former aides to Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which will have a crucial role in shaping any legislation.”
“No other lawmaker on Capitol Hill has such a sizable constellation of former aides working as tax lobbyists, representing blue-chip clients that include telecommunications businesses, oil companies, retailers and financial firms… At least 28 aides who have worked for Mr. Baucus, Democrat of Montana, since he became the committee chairman in 2001 have lobbied on tax issues during the Obama administration — more than any other current member of Congress.”
How Texas Became Texas
Just published: Big, Hot, Cheap, and Right: What America Can Learn from the Strange Genius of Texas by Erica Grieder.
New York Times: “As a Texas-raised journalist, I can tell you two things with confidence about my native state. One, its economy has been humming nicely for years. Two, this appears to greatly offend a certain breed of Northern writer, several of whom have descended on the state in an attempt to rebut stories of a ‘Texas miracle.'”
The Senate as a Social Network
Chris Wilson: “To find out how united or divided both Republicans and Democrats are in the current senate, I started with a simple concept: For every member, I calculated which other senators voted the same way at least 75 percent of the time. In effect, this organizes the senate as a mini-Facebook of 100 users, in which any given pair of senators are friends if they meet this 75-percent threshold. When visualized, the picture looks like the final stages of cell division when a Paramecium reproduces, in which a formerly unified body has nearly split into two distinct creatures.”
Quote of the Day
“Running for president is like sex. No one ever did it once and forgot about it.”
— James Carville, quoted by Maureen Dowd.
Democrats Hold Near Lock on Electoral College
Mike Murphy: “The GOP’s greatest challenge is the fact that Democrats begin each presidential election with a near lock on the Electoral College. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia have given their electoral votes to the Democratic presidential nominee in at least five out of the last six elections. These states represent 257 electoral votes out of the 270 needed to win the presidency. Under current trends, the GOP nominee has to pull the equivalent of drawing an inside straight in poker to get to the White House.”
Lawmaker Recommends Bullet Proof Vests
Arizona state Rep. Bob Thorpe (R) sent an email to colleagues “inviting them to an event at the State Capitol to learn about tactical vests,” KNXV-TV reports.
Thorpe wrote that the purpose of the event is “to inform our members about the costs and options for those wishing to purchase a vest for personal use, for example at town halls, parades and other events.”
Top Clinton Aide Advising Super PAC
Harold Ickes, a top Democratic fundraiser and confidant of Bill and Hillary Clinton for more than two decades, told the London Sunday Times he is advising a new “Ready for Hillary” super PAC laying the foundations for a possible 2016 presidential bid by the former secretary of state.
Ickes said that he had held conversations with wealthy Clinton donors that have been “totally informal and have no direct relationship with Mrs Clinton” or her husband.
James Carville is backing the same group.
How the Drone War Started
The New York Times reports on a secret deal in which the CIA agreed to kill a Pakistani enemy “in exchange for access to airspace it had long sought so it could use drones to hunt down its own enemies.”
“That back-room bargain, described in detail for the first time in interviews with more than a dozen officials in Pakistan and the United States, is critical to understanding the origins of a covert drone war that began under the Bush administration, was embraced and expanded by President Obama, and is now the subject of fierce debate. The deal, a month after a blistering internal report about abuses in the C.I.A.’s network of secret prisons, paved the way for the C.I.A. to change its focus from capturing terrorists to killing them, and helped transform an agency that began as a cold war espionage service into a paramilitary organization.”
Democrats Recruit Problem Solvers for House Races
The Washington Post reports on “an emerging Democratic strategy for taking back the House from Republicans after the tea party takeover of 2010.”
“The best way to defeat the conservative, ideologically driven GOP, Democrats say, is to field non-ideological ‘problem solvers’ who can profit from the fed-up-with-partisanship mood of some suburban areas. These districts will offer some of the few competitive House campaigns in the country.”
FBI Interviews Petraeus
FBI agents interviewed former CIA Director David Petraeus at his home in Virginia on Friday, two government officials have confirmed to USA Today.
The interview was part of an ongoing investigation into whether his former mistress, Paula Broadwell, “had received classified information or whether those documents were kept in an unauthorized place… That investigation is taking considerable time to complete, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly.”
