“A bipartisan group of House lawmakers has come to an agreement on immigration overhaul legislation, but one key Republican member will not sign off on it and will write his own proposal instead,” Roll Call reports.
Rep. Raúl Labrador (R-ID) “said he told the group that he would no longer work with it because language he had offered to prevent newly legalized immigrants who entered the country illegally from getting subsidized health care will not be included in the final version.”
“The CIA did not always know who it was targeting and killing in drone strikes in Pakistan over a 14-month period,” an NBC News review of classified intelligence reports shows.
“About one of every four of those killed by drones in Pakistan between Sept. 3, 2010, and Oct. 30, 2011, were classified as ‘other militants,’ the documents detail. The ‘other militants’ label was used when the CIA could not determine the affiliation of those killed, prompting questions about how the agency could conclude they were a threat to U.S. national security.”
“The uncertainty appears to arise from the use of so-called ‘signature’
strikes to eliminate suspected terrorists — picking targets based in
part on their behavior and associates. A former White House official
said the U.S. sometimes executes people based on ‘circumstantial
evidence.'”
Former Rep. Allen West (R-FL) has converted his campaign committee to a federal PAC and registered it as Deep Strike PAC, Roll Call reports.
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“This will be the most open Republican nomination in 50 years.”
— Former New Hampshire Attorney General Tom Rath (R), quoted by NPR, on the 2016 presidential race.
Former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) is looking to open a new law firm this September, CNN reports.
“The firm will be based in Raleigh, North Carolina, and will focus on plaintiff work, the source said. Before entering politics, Edwards was a nationally known attorney who specialized in representing plaintiffs in medical malpractice, personal injury and product liability lawsuits, earning millions.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), “the leading Republican behind the Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform bill, says he will not vote for the legislation he helped write and has staked his political future on, unless substantial changes are made before final Senate consideration,” Byron York reports.
“In a major shakeup of President Obama’s foreign-policy inner circle, Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, is resigning and will be replaced by Susan Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations,” the New York Times reports.
The appointment puts Rice, “an outspoken diplomat and a close political ally, at the heart of the administration’s foreign-policy apparatus. It is also a defiant gesture to Republicans who harshly criticized Ms. Rice for presenting an erroneous account of the deadly attacks on the American mission in Benghazi, Libya. The post of national security adviser, while powerful, does not require Senate confirmation.”
Samantha Power will be appointed to replace Rice as U.N. Ambassador.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) told The Hill that he has not received a phone call from President Obama in four years.
In 2009, Obama “basically had Grassley on speed dial, calling him frequently during negotiations over an overhaul of the nation’s healthcare system.” But when the senator said he would not back the president’s plan, the phone calls stopped.
The New York state ethics committee “that investigated sexual harassment allegations against Assemblyman Vito Lopez (D) mysteriously omitted from its final report a document that is highly embarrassing to embattled Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D),” the New York Daily News reports.
“The document — a Feb. 14, 2012, email sent to Assembly lawyers from an attorney representing two Lopez staffers who accused Lopez of groping them — suggests Silver had an inappropriate relationship with a top aide.”
President Obama “has pivoted back to playing hardball with Republicans after a spring spent attempting to woo Senate Republicans over collegial dinners and White House visits,” Roll Call reports.
“With GOP lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol bringing him heat over a variety of administration missteps and scandals, the president seems to have made a calculated decision to go on offense on judges, on student loans and with fresh veto threats on appropriations bills.”
A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds recent controversies surrounding the IRS and other government agencies “have sown doubts about the honesty of the Obama administration, but most people don’t hold the president personally responsible for the agency actions.”
“A majority of poll respondents, some 55%, said IRS scrutiny of conservative groups raised some level of doubt about the administration’s ‘overall honesty and integrity’… Moreover, a plurality of 43% in the poll said IRS scrutiny of conservative groups was part of a widespread effort by those in government, compared with 29% who saw it as a case of a few officials acting on their own.”
A new Bloomberg poll finds 47% of Americans say they don’t believe Obama on the IRS controversy, compared with 40% who say he is being truthful,
Obama adviser David Plouffe brought up decades-old allegations that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) stole cars and burned down his own business because “he had no choice,” Politico reports. “There was simply no other Obama aide with the stature or street cred with the Democratic base to confront Issa — even though he was a key player in the administration during the period covered by Issa’s inquiry.”
“His decision to trash Issa in such a personal way stunned Plouffe admirers who privately fret about poking such an ambitious and unpredictable adversary in the eye, fearing it will only reinforce the California Republican’s determination to prove that the orders to scrutinize conservative groups came from high-ranking administration officials.”
Said Plouffe: “If he behaves himself I am happy to never think about him again. I do think it’s highly relevant for the media to examine Congress’s top cop both in terms of how he is handling the current situation but also his background. He is a man in the spotlight — the American people should and will be eager for more info on who the inquisitor is.”
Emails show that top aides to Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) expressed concerns about the governor’s participation in a 2011 event at the governor’s mansion that marked the launch of a dietary supplement made by a major McDonnell campaign donor, the Washington Post reports.
The messages “provide new information about the circumstances that led the governor and his wife to open the mansion to Star, whose chief executive had paid $15,000 for the catering at the wedding of McDonnell’s daughter three months earlier.”
Missouri state Rep. Jason Smith (R) easily won Tuesday’s special election for the vacant 8th Congressional district seat in southeastern Missouri, beating fellow state Rep. Steve Hodges (D) by a more than 2-to-1 ratio, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.
Smith said in an election night interview that he planned to fly to Washington today with the hope of quickly taking the oath of office: “We’ve been without representation in the 8th District the last 134 days, and I’m going to stay up there until the speaker of the House will swear me in.”
Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) intends to run for the U.S. Senate seat opened by the death of Frank Lautenberg, three sources with knowledge of the congressman’s thinking told the Newark Star-Ledger.
“Pallone has long harbored interest in running for the U.S. Senate and said as much this year, even though Newark Mayor Cory Booker has led in polls of potential candidates and is the favorite of many top Democrats. One drawback would have been Pallone having to give up his House seat that he’s held for 25 years. But since Christie has bumped the election up to 2013, Pallone can run for Senate without having to worry about giving up that seat.”
Despite raising $200,000 to buy a video reportedly showing Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack, Gawker reports that “after a long silence, the video’s owner reached out to the intermediary we have been dealing with. He told him the video is ‘gone.'”
“‘It’s gone’ could mean many things. It might mean that the video has been destroyed. It might mean that it has been handed over to Ford or his allies. It might mean that he intends to sell or give it to a Canadian media outlet. It might mean that the Toronto Police Department has seized it and plans to use it as evidence in a criminal investigation. It might mean that it has been transferred to the custody of Somali community leaders for safekeeping. It might be a lie. The intermediary doesn’t know.”
“I don’t know the cost for the special election and I don’t care.”
— New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), announcing a special U.S. Senate election that falls just weeks ahead of the November gubernatorial election.
The wife of Alabama state Sen. Shadrack McGill (R) “is claiming that women are sending unsolicited images to her husband in an attempt to break up their marriage,” WAAY-TV reports.
Said Mrs. McGill on Facebook: “This is the ‘behind the scenes’ garbage that political life brings. I will not turn a blind eye to it any longer!”
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Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.