[ Posted Monday, December 29th, 2014 – 18:28 UTC ]
Today's article is nothing more than a giant collection of links to some stories you may have missed during 2014. Another way to put this is: I am clearing out my list of "things I should write about, when I have the time" -- articles which got me thinking, but which I never followed up on by actually writing about them. I'm cleaning up my bookmarks, and so I thought I'd dump all these out there for others to read, perhaps waiting for a flight home or perhaps hiding in your old bedroom because you are sick of dealing with your extended family's drama right now. Ahem.
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[ Posted Friday, December 26th, 2014 – 19:14 UTC ]
Welcome back to our annual year-end awards column!
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[ Posted Tuesday, December 9th, 2014 – 18:14 UTC ]
One Maryland Republican in the House, apparently still upset that his state donated the land for D.C. centuries ago (or something), pushed an amendment to the cromnibus that would have flat-out overturned the will of the people on Initiative 71, and kept recreational marijuana fully illegal in District law. Democrats indicated that this was a deal-breaker for them (on the entire cromnibus bill), so today a compromise of sorts seems to have been reached.
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[ Posted Friday, December 5th, 2014 – 18:05 UTC ]
It is indeed the season. Yes, it's that magical time of year when the wee folk of Capitol Hill actually get something done. These brief bursts of activity only happen very rarely, of course, and always immediately proceed another one of the many, many long vacations Congress takes during the year.
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[ Posted Wednesday, November 26th, 2014 – 17:29 UTC ]
Yes, apparently that's a new word now: "cromnibus." Now, some, editorially-speaking, have been insisting on "CRomnibus" or "Cromnibus," but for the time being here, we've decided that it doesn't qualify for proper-name status in any way.
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[ Posted Friday, November 21st, 2014 – 17:40 UTC ]
When Congress wouldn't pass a bill, the president had to act on immigration and deportation policy, to keep families intact -- a measure that affected 40 percent of the undocumented immigrants in the United States. The president in question was George H. W. Bush, and the year was 1990. Congress, at the time, was run by the opposition party. What did they do in response? They passed a bill, which Bush later signed.
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[ Posted Friday, November 7th, 2014 – 17:14 UTC ]
President Obama called the 2010 midterms a "shellacking." He demurred on providing a label for the 2014 midterms, but others sprang into the void. The most notable label so far (the one seemingly most repeated, at any rate) is that Democrats suffered an "ass-kicking" this past Tuesday night. At this point, I won't quibble over terms. Democrats got beat, and they got beat pretty badly.
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[ Posted Wednesday, November 5th, 2014 – 17:00 UTC ]
It's either the morning after, or the mourning after -- take your choice.
Last night, Democrats got well and truly shellacked once again in a midterm election. It was so bad, it's pretty hard for Democrats to even attempt to gild the lily or spot that elusive silver lining. Republicans are consumed with glee, which they've well earned this year.
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[ Posted Tuesday, November 4th, 2014 – 16:20 UTC ]
Happy Election Day, everyone! It being an off-year election, there will be no presidential race to dominate the news tonight as the election returns come in. The biggest races will be in the Senate, with political control of the chamber hanging in the balance. On the House side, the only real question is how many seats the Republicans will pick up. But there are plenty of interesting down-ballot races to watch, while waiting for Alaska's returns to come in late in the night (or, perhaps, the recounting of West Podunk's ballots). I thought, as a preview/guide to tonight's returns, it'd be worth the time to take a quick look at some of the other contests we may be hearing about this evening.
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[ Posted Tuesday, October 28th, 2014 – 17:12 UTC ]
With one week to go until the 2014 midterm elections, almost all of the punditocracy world is absolutely chomping at the bit for this cycle to already be over, so they can concentrate on the much-more-fun 2016 presidential election season. This is pretty obvious, with some media now swooning over Jeb Bush's possible candidacy and the Clintons out stumping for other Democrats (and being covered more in the news than the actual candidates).
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