Bloomberg News last year asked for the travel expenses for the heads of 57 major departments in fiscal 2011, a test of President Obama’s pledge to run the most open government in history.
“The State Department is one of five Cabinet offices that have yet to fully comply with requests under the Freedom of Information Act to disclose the details and expenses of official travel more than a year after they were filed.”
Great Falls Tribune: “Two weeks after news reports first linked former Gov. Brian Schweitzer to a pair of mysterious dark money political groups, a Tribune investigation shows Schweitzer’s ties to those groups are deeper than a top political consultant let on.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said that filibuster reform is needed in Congress because it has a lower approval rating that North Korea, The Hill reports.
Said Reid: “Is there anyone out there in the real world that believes that what’s going on in Congress of the United States is good? Our approval rating is lower than North Korea’s.”
The Fix: Is Reid bluffing?
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“The once-collegial relationship between Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell has collapsed into a free-for-all of name-calling, finger-pointing and mutual mistrust,” Politico reports.
“The tension is growing as McConnell emerges as one of the Democrats’ top targets in 2014 and as the two men collide over an unprecedented change to Senate filibuster rules. The ill will and bitter feelings have never been more intense nor meant more to the Senate…The leaders are clashing because each believes the other is destroying the integrity of the institution, where they have spent nearly 60 collective years and taken similar paths to power.”
Washington Post: “The U.S. Senate, once considered the most exclusive and chummiest club in America, has in recent years been transformed into an ideological war zone, where comity and compromise have lost their allure, while confrontation and showmanship now pay big dividends.”
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) announced his candidacy for governor declaring that he figuratively and literally has a spine of steel, the Austin American Statesman reports.
Explained Abbot: “On a steamy summer day like this, I went out for a jog. While I was jogging a huge oak tree suddenly crashed down on me. The falling tree crushed my spinal cord — piercing my body with pain — leaving me forever paralyzed. I would never walk again.”
Noting that doctors had to insert steel rods along his vertebrae, he added: “Some politicians talk about having a spine of steel. I actually have one. I will use my steel spine to fight for you and every Texas family.”
“The evidence didn’t support prosecution and the Justice Department engaged in this, the President engaged in this and turned it into a political issue that should have been handled exclusively with law and order.”
— Rep. Steve King (R-IA), in an interview on Fox News Sunday, arguing that George Zimmerman should never have been tried for the killing of Trayvon Martin.
Edward Snowden has dangerous information that could become the United States’ “worst nightmare” if revealed, journalist Glenn Greenwald said in a newspaper interview, Reuters reports.
Said Greenwald: “Snowden has enough information to cause harm to the U.S. government in a single minute than any other person has ever had. The U.S. government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden, because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is heading to New Hampshire as part of a summer swing through early voting states on the presidential calendar, the AP reports.
“The freshman senator, a tea party favorite thought to be weighing a 2016 presidential bid, is scheduled to headline an Aug. 23 fundraiser for the New Hampshire GOP. The trip represents Cruz’s first visit to New Hampshire, which is expected to host the nation’s first presidential primary. He has already visited South Carolina and has summer stops planned for Iowa and Florida.”
Gwen Ifill: “I am reading an advance copy of Dan Balz’s book Collision 2012 — happily mining nuggets of all the stuff I wish I knew last year. My guess is that President Obama and Governor Romney wish they knew them too. It’s the kind of summer reading only a political nerd would love, but Dan’s ability to be a fly on the wall is unparalleled.”
Aides to Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) tell the Daily Caller that rumors the Republican is planning to resign as soon as Monday are simply not true.
Said spokesman Paul Shanks: “The rumors are false.”
John Dickerson: “When the bipartisan machine breaks down, it collapses in ways that can be seen and unseen. The saga of the farm bill gives us examples of both. For the last 40 years, the bill has passed through an unofficial agreement between urban liberals and rural conservatives. The former got funding for food stamps and the latter got farm subsidies. Yesterday, the farm bill passed the House without this deal in place. For the first time since the 1970s, the bill did not include funding for food stamps. No Democrats voted for it. The jalopy of bipartisanship has been going through a prolonged collapse. Still, it’s notable when the usual death rattle is augmented by a convulsion that throws off a wheel.”
“The farm bill episode also highlights a less visible part of the machine that’s going kaput… Congressional conference committees are important because they are the mechanism that has often been used to hammer out deals for the most contentious pieces of legislation. They haven’t undergone a public undoing like the one at the heart of the farm bill, but they are fading away.”
Former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) said that he didn’t want to leave Montana to serve in the U.S. Senate but a source familiar with his decision told CNN Schweitzer “was beginning to recognize what senior Democrats in Washington had feared.”
Said the source: “The research book was getting worse by the minute.”
NRSC spokesman Brad Dayspring confirmed the same to Roll Call: “We did our homework and there was a lot of rust under Schweitzer’s hood — a LOT of rust.”
Meanwhile, Democratic sources tell The Hotline that “the amount of opposition research on the former governor painted a grim picture. A report in the Great Falls Tribune tomorrow will outline Schweitzer’s ties with a dark money organization, which may have been deeper than Schweitzer had let on.”
“I was just watching MSNBC, and they had a woman that used to work for me and a couple of other people on there, and they were talking about the Republican primary. And I was laughing. I said, ‘Boy, it really has become our version of Fox.'”
— Bill Clinton, in an interview with Esquire.
Former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) told the Associated Press that he will not run for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat in 2014.
Said Schweitzer: “I don’t want a job where I have to wear a suit and my dog isn’t welcome.”
Zero Hedge: “We expect the Treasury to exhaust its extraordinary measures to create borrowing authority on October 31, and run out of cash on November 1.”
“The Texas Senate approved sweeping abortion regulations late Friday as anger boiled over in the gallery and elsewhere in the Capitol and the dull roar from protesters provided a continuous counterpoint to hours of emotional floor debate,” the Austin American Statesman reports.
Texas Tribune: “The measure restricting abortions in Texas is now headed to Gov. Rick Perry’s desk, having passed as thousands of protesters who opposed the measure chanted in and around the Capitol. The crowd outside the chamber erupted after HB 2 passed with a vote of 19-11. But inside, there were none of the eruptions that helped kill the abortion bill in the first special session.”
Los Angeles Times: “In the first six months of this year, a total of 47 line items restricting abortion have been enacted in 18 states… Perry’s signing of the Texas legislation would bring the 2013 count to 52 restrictions in 19 states.”
Kathleen Parker: “Republicans seem to be adopting the self-immolation tactics of principled martyrs. Of course, principled or not, you’re still dead in the end.”
“Before you can govern, you have to win. And before you can win, you have to offer something people want to buy. What Republicans are selling appeals to an ever-diminishing market that doesn’t even include their erstwhile allies in business and industry. And their self-immolation may prove to have been nothing more than a bonfire of vanities.”
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.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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