A secret recording of a campaign strategy session between Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his advisors was recorded by leaders of the Progress Kentucky super PAC, Democratic operative Jacob Conway tells WFPL-FM.

The super PAC operatives did not attend the opening of McConnell’s campaign headquarters, but they arrived later and were apparently able to hear the strategy meeting from the hallway.

Said Conway: “One of them held the elevator, the other one did the recording and they left. That was what they told to me from them directly… Apparently the gentlemen overheard the conversation and decided to record it with a phone or recording device they had in their pocket. Could’ve been an iPhone, could’ve been a Flip camera or something like that.”

Although Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has said the release of audio of a private meeting in his office is reminiscent of Nixon-era dirty tricks, Mother Jones, which first published the recording, says “there’s no evidence that the audio was the result, as the McConnell campaign has insisted, of a Watergate-style bugging operation.”

A source close to Sen. Mitch McConnell tells National Review that the FBI was at the senator’s campaign’s office in Louisville, KY, and the campaign handed over “pertinent information” related to the audio recording of a private meeting reported yesterday.

Campaign manager Jesse Benton spoke to Mike Huckabee: “This is Gestapo-kind of scare tactics, and we’re not going to stand for it.”

Roll Call: “Four senators may have signed on to a gun background check deal Wednesday, but only two showed up for the news conference — in part because Sen. Patrick J. Toomey’s public support for the bill hinged on not having to stand next to Sen. Charles E. Schumer.”

The Week looks at the evidence.

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.”

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.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said that “unless nominations start moving swiftly through the Senate, another round of dramatic rules changes may be in the offing,” Roll Call reports.

Said Reid: “All within the sound of my voice, including my Democratic senators and the Republican senators who I serve with, should understand that we as a body have the power on any given day to change the rules with a simple majority, and I will do that if necessary.”

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.

“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. 

Salomon Melgen, the Florida political donor at the center of a criminal probe, told Bloomberg that he and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) are “like brothers” who spoke weekly, yet his companies never benefited and he broke no laws.

Said Melgen: “I don’t have any business interests at all that have been helped by any politicians.”

Tennessee state Sen. Frank Niceley (R) introduced a bill to give Tennessee lawmakers the power to select nominees to the U.S. Senate, the AP reports.

“Under the bill, primary elections would be replaced with caucus votes in the General Assembly… the measure is aimed at returning to a system more closely resembling the era before the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ended legislatures’ power to directly appoint senators in 1913.”

Charlie Cook: “You can hear bad ideas almost every day. But only occasionally do you hear a colossally bad, ill-conceived idea, one that leaves you wondering who dreamed it up.”

A new Quinnipiac University poll in New Jersey finds voters are divided on scandal-plagued Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) with 40% approving and 41% disapproving.

Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) “is suddenly in high demand. His banishment is over, his rehabilitation almost complete,” the Washington Post reports.

“Several years after acknowledging his ‘very serious sin,’ he has successfully adopted a higher profile in the divided U. S. Senate… Now Vitter’s name is atop most lists of possible GOP gubernatorial nominees for Louisiana in 2015 when Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) reaches his term limit.”

Roll Call: “Sen. John McCain may have apologized for calling relative Senate newcomers Rand Paul and Ted Cruz wacko birds, but the Arizona Republican hasn’t given up fighting their isolationist position on U.S. foreign policy.”

“Over the past few weeks three different senators have put the nominations of three picks by President Obama — the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Interior Department and Labor Department — in jeopardy,” The Fix reports.

“In none of these instances… did the senators suggest the president’s nominees were unqualified… So the question is, why has it become so common for senators to throw up roadblocks in the confirmation process?”

“The answer: Because Washington has become so dysfunctional, threatening a high-profile nomination has become one of the best ways senators can now achieve their normal policy objectives.”

“That comment is indicative of some in Washington who’ve been too quick to surrender on every front. Texans, by our nature, do not quickly surrender. And I think that’s one of the reasons so many Texans are frustrated with politicians in Washington.”

— Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), in an interview with the Dallas Morning News, responding to Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) advice on the need to selectively pick your fights.

A reconstruction by the Boston Globe of the events leading up the defeat of an international treaty on disabilities “provides an inside look at how the Senate, once known as the ‘world’s greatest deliberative body,’ has become overwhelmed by partisanship — even on a seemingly uncontroversial measure aimed at helping some of the world’s most vulnerable people.”

“It demonstrates how outside groups and powerful constituencies exert outsized influence with arguments that are, in their best light, often tangential to the issue of the day.”