[ Posted Wednesday, July 6th, 2011 – 13:21 UTC ]
As many were predicting, President Obama's bounce in approval polls due to the death of Osama Bin Laden did not last very long. While Obama started the month still strongly riding the wave of public approval from the Bin Laden raid, this had mostly dissipated by the second week in June, and Obama's poll numbers flattened out after that. The plateau he hit at this point is slightly higher than he had before the "OBL bump," but that's about the only consolation for Obama fans in the June numbers.
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[ Posted Friday, July 1st, 2011 – 16:29 UTC ]
Since the year is now exactly half over, I took the opportunity yesterday to tally up how much vacation time Congress has taken this year, so far. The answer is pretty shocking -- the House has taken 46 out of a possible 125 non-holiday weekdays off, and the Senate (not to be outdone) has gone on vacation for 49 days out of those 125. To put this another way, out of 26 weeks Congress could have worked, the House took over nine weeks off on vacation, and the Senate took almost ten weeks to play rather than work. Something for everyone to ponder as we all enjoy our measly three-day vacation this weekend!
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[ Posted Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 – 16:16 UTC ]
California has just concluded its first test of a radical concept: if legislators can't manage to do one of the most basic tasks they are hired to do in a timely manner, then cut their pay. No on-time budget? No paycheck. Period. And while there's not enough data to draw any hard-and-fast conclusions, the idea seemed to work exactly as it was designed: this time around, the politicians were very personally motivated to do their job.
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[ Posted Friday, June 24th, 2011 – 16:13 UTC ]
Well, it's certainly been an eventful couple of weeks, hasn't it?
We're back on our regular weekly schedule here after returning home from our second trip this month (this one to Netroots Nation), after which I can firmly conclude that flying, these days, sucks. Big time. Sigh.
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[ Posted Thursday, June 23rd, 2011 – 17:03 UTC ]
Finally, I leave you with a secret, just in case you ever find yourself attending a Netroots Nation convention: if you want to guess which state will host Netroots Nation next year, look for a senator attending who is not from the state you're currently in.
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[ Posted Monday, June 20th, 2011 – 00:11 UTC ]
[Program Note: OK, since I've been away, and since June has been a (shall we say) "sub-par" month for us here in terms of posting things in a timely manner, I'm going to run a rare late-Sunday column for your edification. This is, in some ways, a mea culpa for the break in service last week. Also, it seemed appropriate, since I've been away so much this month that I pretty much completely missed commenting on the continuing saga of Anthony Weiner. So, while Weiner's case was a bit more unique (no hookers were even involved), I thought it time to dig this column out from three years ago, which I wrote in the wake of the Eliot Spitzer scandal. You may also wish to check out a follow-up column I wrote entitled "On Whores" in November of 2009. In any case, this column somehow seemed appropriate, given the mainstream media frenzy in the past few weeks....]
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[ Posted Friday, June 10th, 2011 – 15:40 UTC ]
Having just gotten back from a trip abroad where the news was dominated by the story of a politician facing severe consequences (and the end of his political career) for his sexual misconduct, I opened up the pages of the American news to find... well, pretty much the same thing.
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[ Posted Wednesday, May 25th, 2011 – 16:39 UTC ]
Sometimes special elections are harbingers of things to come. And sometimes they are not. The tricky part is that nobody can tell the difference until long afterwards. Which certainly doesn't stop rampant speculation in the meantime. Last night, a Democrat pulled off a surprising upset in New York's 26th congressional district, in an election that was forced due to the resignation of a House member who got caught trolling the internet (with shirtless pictures, no less) for extramarital fun and games. What this signifies for the 2012 election is anyone's guess, at this point.
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[ Posted Monday, May 23rd, 2011 – 16:34 UTC ]
With all this frantic jumping in and out of the race, I thought it was time to take another look at the Republican field to see how it is shaping up. At this point, there are only a few holdouts left on the sidelines, as most of the bigwigs (and some decidedly "smallwigs") have made their intentions known.
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[ Posted Friday, May 20th, 2011 – 16:46 UTC ]
A word here about timing is necessary, I think. While the blog post is quite obviously meant as a semi-joke, wouldn't this have been more fun in, say, mid-October -- a few weeks before Hallowe'en? Instead of this week, with the "End of Days" prophesied for midafternoon this Saturday? I'm just saying....
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