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Government Funding Bill Expected By End of Week
Congress has apparently decided that it can only deal with one major fight at a time. At the same time that the parties jockey over whether to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance, at...
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Slight Movement But No Resolution in Omnibus, Payroll Tax Fights
Let’s try to get our heads around what’s happening in the government shutdown/payroll tax cut/unemployment insurance Congressapalooza fight: • The House seems prepared to move forward on their omnibus...
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Republicans May Have Trouble Getting Continuing Resolution for Budget Passed
Stan Collender, one of Washington’s major budget guru, reports that even getting the basic business of Congress done by pre-election deadlines could prove impossible. The basic issue here is that the...
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Bravely Bold Conservatives Running Away on Budget Stopgap
House conservatives are running away from one spending fight, asking Eric Cantor to schedule a vote on a stopgap spending bill that would push any budget fight well into 2013. The request would not...
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Tentative Deal Reached to Fund Government Through March 2013
Following up on a previous item, Congressional leaders have indeed agreed to a 6-month stopgap spending bill to avoid a government shutdown at the end of September. The emerging deal is a sharp...
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Congress Close to Passing Budget Stopgap as Fiscal Cliff Looms
Congress comes back for what promises to be a quick mop-up session before the election. The main items of business include two expiring authorizations, one for farm programs and the other for the...
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House Passes 6-Month Continuing Resolution to Fund Government
The House passed a six-month spending bill that will keep the lights on in government agencies until March 2013. Democrats and Republicans made a bet that the next Congress will find more favorable...
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Reid Calls Out Scott Brown for Trying to Duck MA-Sen Debate With Elizabeth...
There’s a debate scheduled tonight in Massachusetts between Sen. Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren, in that hotly contested Senate race (C-SPAN will cover it at 7pm ET). But it may not have come off...
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Low-Productive Congress Finishes Spending Bill, Beats War Drums With Iran on...
Let me just recap Congress’ final day on Friday, though I could recap the entire 112th Congress and still need to include something else to fill out the blog post. On Friday, the Senate finished off...
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Don’t Look Now, But Here Comes the Debt Ceiling
The Treasury Department estimates that the US will reach its debt ceiling by the end of this year. However, they still have an array of extraordinary measures that gave them about three months of...
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Iran and the West Quietly Resume Negotiations on Nuclear Program
Since the beginning of the Iranian oil embargo imposed by the EU July 1, the press reports have sought to increase tensions between Iran and the West rather than reduce them. Witness today’s story...
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Member of Assad’s Inner Circle Defects from Syria
Brigadier General Manaf Tlass, a commander of the Republican Guard in Syria and a close confidant of President Bashar al-Assad, has defected to Turkey, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius confirmed...
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Syrian Regime Floats Resignation of Assad as Possibility
I heard LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the chair of the Democratic National Convention, speak last night in Burbank, and among a fairly mainstream liberal speech that focused heavily on the DREAM Act...
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Forthcoming IAEA Report Will Announce Continued Uranium Enrichment by Iran
Looks like we’re scheduled to endure another round of hype about Iran’s nuclear program. David Sanger writes in today’s New York Times about an imminent IAEA report. International nuclear inspectors...
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Former Bush CIA Director Michael Hayden Explains Folly of an Attack on Iran
The Democratic platform on Iran has a mix of pleas for a diplomatic solution combined with the ever-present threats and vows of military force if required. It acknowledges straight-out that “Iran has...
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Netanyahu Stirs Controversy With Remarks on Iran and “Red Lines”
In addition to the tragic situation in Libya, another international incident simmered last night, on the subject of Israel and Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a speech claiming...
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After Karzai Criticism, US Looking for Exits in Afghanistan
Not a good sign for your signature war policy when the lead partner in the country in question says it’s doomed to failure. Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai said on Thursday that the U.S.-led war on...
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Obama Administration Denies Imminent Bilateral Talks With Iran
The White House is denying a report in the New York Times claiming that they will conduct one-on-one talks with Iran over their nuclear program. The bilateral negotiations, the fruit of a secret...
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Report: John Kerry to Be Named Secretary of State
Se. John Kerry (D-MA) Former Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry has been chosen to serve as Secretary of State, according to a Chicago Sun-Times columnist who heard it from an unidentified...
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Pentagon Designing Bombs For War With Iran
While the Obama Administration drones on about seeking a diplomatic solution the Department of Defense has been tasked with designing weapons for a war with Iran. In the event of a bombing campaign in...
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