Become a member. Already a member? Log in.
“A deal between the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and labor groups on visas for low-skilled workers was supposed to clear a path for an immigration reform package in the Senate,” Politico reports.
“Instead, some business groups are grumbling about the deal and they’re gearing up for a lobbying battle on Capitol Hill — where powerful interests helped doom immigration reform over the same issue before.”
Politico: “The obsessive speculation about Hillary Clinton’s plans for 2016 promises to be the longest and most intense parlor game in the history of American politics. It is a consuming fixation already, not just among the operatives and reporters who always inhale this stuff but to an extraordinary degree among average Americans.”
Meanwhile, Michael Tomasky warns that Republicans will do more damage to themselves than to Clinton by digging up “old non-scandals no one even remembers.”
President Obama “made another push Wednesday to build support for gun-control laws in the wake of December’s mass school shooting in Connecticut. But since then, states have passed more measures expanding rather than restricting the right to carry firearms,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Arkansas eliminated prohibitions on carrying firearms in churches and on college campuses. South Dakota authorized school boards to arm teachers. Tennessee passed a law allowing workers to bring guns to work and store them in their vehicles, even if their employer objects. Kentucky shortened the process for obtaining licenses to carry a concealed gun.”
However, the Hartford Courant reports Connecticut passed last night the most restrictive gun law in the nation.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “is not going quietly,” the New York Times reports.
“With only three months to go in his second and last presidential term, he has raised a series of controversies intended, experts say, to reshape his public image and secure the support of dissatisfied urban Iranians for his handpicked successor, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei. It is all part of a power struggle ahead of the June election between Mr. Ahmadinejad’s faction and a coalition of traditionalists, including many Revolutionary Guards commanders and hard-line clerics.”
“She completely surprised me. I was having dinner with my boys. A couple of candidates who had endorsed us in the race, they said time to go in. I go in, I round the corner, there she is to give me a hug and surprise me. It was a nice event, and it was not at all what I expected. But it was awfully, awfully nice surprise.”
— Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R), in an interview with CNN, recounting how he was surprised by his fiancee, Maria Belen Chapur, at his primary victory party.
Coming this month: The Centrist Manifesto by Charles Wheelan.
The author imagines a Centrist Party which attempts to win a few as four or five seats in the U.S. Senate, enough to deny either traditional party a majority. At that point, he says the Centrists would be the powerbrokers in DC. giving voice to those who fall in the ideological middle.
“I will tell you these are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people
who have those now they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in
the future, the number of these high capacity magazines is going to
decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot
and there won’t be any more available.”
— Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), quoted by the Denver Post, apparently not understanding that a gun magazine can be reloaded.
Joshua Green: “As best I can tell, only two things are guaranteed to remove a politician from office in the wake of a sex scandal. One is consorting (or attempting to consort) with someone who is underage… The other thing that can dislodge a congressman from his seat is an angry spouse… But even these ‘guarantees’ seem shakier and shakier.”
“Surviving a sex scandal is hardly new. Just ask Bill Clinton, the patron saint of surviving sex scandals. But it used to be an exception, and now it looks more like a rule.”
President Obama “plans to return 5 percent of his salary to the Treasury in solidarity with federal workers who are going to be furloughed as part of the budget cutting process known as sequester,” the New York Times reports.
“The voluntary move would be retroactive to March 1 and apply through the rest of the calendar year… The White House came up with the 5 percent figure to approximate the level of automatic spending cuts to non-defense federal agencies that took effect that day.”
RNC Chairman Reince Priebus took a break from rebranding the Republican party to accuse Democrats of supporting infanticide.
He writes on Red State: “The President, the Senate Majority Leader, the House Democratic Leader, and the Chair of the Democratic National Committee (in whose home state this hearing occurred) made funding Planned Parenthood an issue in the 2012 campaign. They should now all be held to account for that outspoken support. If the media won’t, then voters must ask the pressing questions: Do these Democrats also believe a newborn has no rights? Do they also endorse infanticide?”
Steve Benen: “This feels a bit like under-the-radar pandering — maybe Priebus wrote this for RedState, as opposed to a mainstream outlet, in the hopes that only the GOP base would see it — but the party chairman is still taking a risk.”
Highly-recommended: Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea by Mark Blyth.
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) has filed a petition with
the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals asking the full
15-judge court to reconsider a decision by a three-judge panel last
month that overturned the state’s sodomy law, the Washington Blade reports.
The panel ruled last month that a section of Virginia’s
“Crimes Against Nature” statute that outlaws sodomy between consenting
adults, gay or straight, is unconstitutional.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee “is seeking to tie former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) to other House Republicans, pushing them to say whether or not they back the House nominee’s campaign to return to Congress after his fall from grace,” The Hill reports.
“Sanford’s nomination puts the GOP in a bind — the party might need to help him win the race, but it needs to avoid being tainted by his past scandal. Many Republicans have privately groused that his nomination hurts the party’s image at a time they’re trying to rebrand.”
Taxpayers could shell out at least $120,000 to figure out how indicted former Pittsburgh police Chief Nate Harper might have misappropriated about $70,000, the Pittsburgh Tribune reports.
DNAinfo has photos of the demolition that began this week on the apartment building where President Ronald Reagan lived as a child.
“The University of Chicago bought the building in 2004 as part of a decadelong effort to buy all residential property immediately north of the hospital… Preservationists had tried to save the building, but were unable to persuade city or university officials that the gas-lit apartment where Reagan lived from ages 2 to 3 was historically significant.”
A must-read e-book just out: Lesterland: The Corruption of Congress and How to End It by Lawrence Lessig.
“Two maids allege that FBI agents from Miami tried to brow-beat them into
making incriminating statements against U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez,
during questioning about alleged sex parties at the Dominican Republic
resort home of a South Florida doctor who hosted Menendez numerous
times,” the Miami Herald
reports.
Many Republicans “privately concede” former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R), who easily won a runoff last night, could hand a safe Republican House seat to Elizabeth Colbert Busch (D), Politico reports.
“Fellow GOP pols don’t like him. Neither do female voters.His campaign is largely an exercise in seeking forgiveness for his transgressions four years ago — a defensive crouch that makes it tricky to take the fight to Colbert Busch, the sister of late-night comedian Stephen Colbert.”
Charleston Post and Courier:
“The political race many had anticipated would unfold in the 1st
Congressional District — the national comedian’s sister versus the
once-disgraced governor angling for a comeback — is finally here.”
It’s worth noting that Public Policy Polling, which nailed the runoff result, found Colbert Busch leading Sanford by two points.
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.
“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”
— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
“Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all.”
— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”
— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
“The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom — nicely packaged, constantly updated… What political junkie could ask for more?”
— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.