“I think I understand the Senate better than any man or woman who’s ever served in there.”

— Vice President Joe Biden, quoted by Politico.

“We need 100 more like Jesse Helms.”

— Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), quoted by Mother Jones, on the U.S. Senate he would like.

“When the Senate left town for the August recess, senators confirmed nominees for an assortment of posts ranging from Amtrak board member to ambassador to the Vatican. But one member of Congress’ military promotion was left in limbo,” Roll Call reports.

“Army Reserve Col. Joe Heck is up for what appears to be a routine promotion to be a brigadier general. But no seems to be able to say why Heck, who is known on the House floor as ‘the gentleman from Nevada,’ has been stopped in his tracks.”

“The GOP congressman’s nomination is apparently being held up by something or someone, given that it has been languishing on the Senate calendar since May. The reasons for the delay could involve the constitutionality of promoting a lawmaker to the rank of general, or they could simply be related to Pentagon policy.”

“I am secretly a citizen of Ethiopia.”

— Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), quoted by the Houston Chronicle, poking fun at the flap over his citizenship issues.

“It’s all about learning to use the new tools. In the Senate, there are more tools in the toolbox than are obvious.”

— Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), in an interview with Salon, on serving in a Congress that’s unable to pass legislation.

Arizona Republic: “More than two years after winning his fifth Senate term and nearly five years after an unsuccessful presidential bid, Sen. John McCain is settling into an influential role as a Senate power broker and bipartisan coalition builder who has the ear of President Barack Obama.”

“The Washington, D.C., punditocracy has heralded it as a return of the ‘maverick’ — the label applied to McCain in the 1990s and early 2000s that the Arizona Republican disavowed in 2010 and of which he is still not fond. But other longtime observers of McCain’s 30-year career say he is merely returning to his traditional comfort zone of the political middle ground for what could be his swan song on Capitol Hill.”

“I’m not naming any names, but one senator got up from a Southern state and said, ‘Well, you’ve got to understand that to my people down here, Obama seems like’ — he thought for a second and he said — ‘like he’s exotic.'”

— Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), quoted by the Des Moines Register, describing how one senator suggested his constituents still couldn’t identify with President Obama.

Noam Scheiber says that Democrats, who have an enormous advantage in upcoming presidential elections, shouldn’t have to worry about eliminating the filibuster in the U.S. Senate.

“The point is just that, if you’re predicting who benefits from a filibuster-less world based on where we sit today, the odds favor Democrats because of the odds they’ll generally control the presidency.”

“More to the point, Democrats don’t even have to do away with the filibuster to exploit this advantage. The very fact that eliminating the filibuster is likely to benefit Democrats should strengthen their hand in any confrontation with Republicans over nominees and legislation–like, say, Obama’s three DC appeals court candidates. That’s because, once Democrats recognize that killing the filibuster is in their interest, they should become much more willing to do it, knowing full well that they can live with the consequences.”

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) talked about his bipartisan partnership with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) with ABC News and said it “remains strong and has been solidified through months of negotiations on tough issues like immigration reform, potential filibusters and the fiscal cliff.”

Said McCain: “Sen. Schumer is a person who is as good as his word. His word is good, and he reminds me, in a way, of the work that I used to do with Ted Kennedy.”

Boston Globe: “On any given day in the elegant corridors of the United States Capitol, some of the most powerful people in the world continue a tradition as old as the marble floors: Senators stop and take questions from the news media… It is one of the quainter rituals in an era when the people in power are increasingly removed from the people they most affect, often talking through staff members in written statements or during heavily choreographed events. Most senators typically stop on their way to and from floor votes and committee hearings, and partake in the unthinkable: They answer the questions they are asked.”

But not Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) who will “either huddle close to a Senate colleague, breezing past several reporters as if they don’t exist, or use a variety of other methods to avoid hallway questions. There’s the tricky cellphone to her ear maneuver, the more athletic dash for the elevator, the outright sprint to catch a departing tram.”

“Senate Republicans are standing firm by their threat to block every one of President Obama’s nominees to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, insisting on eliminating all three vacant seats on the country’s second most powerful court,” TPM reports.

“If they follow through, it could spark yet another nuclear showdown over filibuster rules.”

First Read: “A month ago, McConnell had a strong command over his Senate GOP conference; a month ago, he had no general-election challenger; and a month ago, he had no GOP primary. Now everything has fallen apart for the GOP leader. And the one thing his team had been trying to avoid — a primary challenge — has now become a reality. He’s in a big political bind: McConnell has a Republican conference that now regularly breaks with him on enough things that it only energizes some of the conservative skeptics who have been trying to go after McConnell for years. We’re guessing there’s no one that might be looking less forward to the August recess and the coming fall budget battles than Mitch McConnell.”

Of course, there’s also that new poll that shows him losing to Democratic challenger Alison Lundergran Grimes.

Washington Post: “Just a few weeks after 98 senators gathered for an unprecedented meeting in the Old Senate Chamber to settle a long-simmering dispute about the rules of the U.S. Senate, all 100 senators are scheduled to meet again Thursday for a ‘bipartisan caucus meeting.'”

Stephen Colbert takes a hilarious look at Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) arguing a case before the U.S. Supreme Court at age 32..

[Read more…]

“Am I happy? I’d like to be president of the United States.”

— Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), in an interview with the New Republic.

“It’s a little bit like going from the National League to the American League. It’s still politics. But the rules are a little bit different.”

— Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), quoted by the Boston Globe, on moving from the House to the Senate.

Several Republican senators are “talking discreetly about how to advance a bill in the Senate to ban abortion at 20 weeks after fertilization,” the New York Times reports.

“A similar ban passed the House last month, and Senate Democrats quickly pronounced it doomed to fail in their chamber. It is almost certain to be defeated there, and even if it were not, President Obama would veto it. But backers of the ban are eager to bring to the floor of the Senate the same impassioned debate over abortion that has been taking place in state legislatures around the country.”

“Plans under discussion among the staff members of a handful of Republican senators and anti-abortion groups would involve bringing the measure up for a vote, probably as part of debate over a spending measure, sometime after Congress returns from its August recess. Because of the Senate’s porous rules for introducing amendments, people on both sides of the issue say they believe a vote is more than likely if the legislation comes together.”

The relationship between Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) “is going to be awkward in the coming months,” The Hill reports.

“McConnell finds himself increasingly constrained by both his new primary challenger and McCain’s expanded deal-making role with Democrats… McCain is interested in being a major player in the talks later this year when Congress must pass legislation to continue government funding and raise the national debt limit.”

GOP senators say that McConnell “is in danger of looking weak” if McCain again seizes the leadership reins as he did to broker a deal to avert the “nuclear option” on President Obama’s executive nominees.