Back in 2007, I thought it would be a good idea to write congressional Democrats a memo, in the hopes they could begin to learn a skill Republicans seem to be born with: the ability to stay on-topic and present your political ideas and agenda items succinctly and memorably to the public. I had grown tired of watching the Sunday political shows where Republicans all sang off the same songsheet while Democrats were easily led into the weeds with long rambling tangents to what they should have been saying that particular week. This early effort grew, in the following weeks and months, into the format we now use weekly: a quick rundown of amusing items in the political news of the week, the awarding of the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week and the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week, and then seven numerated talking points suggested for all Democrats to use to explain the Democratic position to all and sundry (especially on Sundry morning talk shows... so to speak...).

Read Complete Article »

President Obama gave a press conference recently, and -- since it is still the political Silly Season -- got a lot of media attention. For what he was wearing. No, seriously. Washington was all a-twitter (or even a-Twitter) because Obama wore a suit that was not dark blue or black. While some may smack their heads over the idiocy of what passes as the Washington press corps, the right thing to do is to celebrate how males have finally reached sartorial equality with women, when viewed by political "journalists." This is not a backhanded compliment, I hasten to point out, it is meant as a backhanded insult. Because it is always insulting to a politician to focus on what she (or, now, he) is wearing, instead of reporting on the substance of her words and actions. This has been going on for women in politics for exactly as long as women have been in American politics, right up to Hillary Clinton's pantsuits and Sarah Palin's shopping spree. All women know this -- they will be judged on what they wear, sometimes more than what they say or do. Especially female politicians. President Obama is just getting a tiny taste of what women have had to put up with in the political arena since Day One. So I choose to celebrate this new equality (of the idiocy of the political press), and the closing of this particular part of the gender gap.

Read Complete Article »

The indictment of Governor Rick Perry of Texas and his subsequent court case are about to complicate things politically for John Boehner. No matter the actual outcome of Perry's case, the arguments made by Perry and his supporters are going to provide an easy equivalence with Boehner's plans to sue President Obama -- an equivalence which would not have existed had Perry not been indicted.

Read Complete Article »

Welcome to the "Dog Days" of summer, at the height of the political Silly Season. This year, one dog did indeed have his day in August, as 7-year-old "Duke" just won a rather bizarre election to become mayor of Cormorant, Minnesota. The strangest thing (to us) was that the "12 people in the village each paid $1 to cast a vote." Um, didn't we make poll taxes illegal quite a while back? The job (and the election) are assumably only "ceremonial" (at least we hope so), but still "Dog Elected Mayor," as a headline, is right up there with "Man Bites Dog." As for Duke's mayoralty, well, it's a "Ruff!" job but someone's got to do it, we suppose. So to speak (or roll over, or shake... good boy!)

Read Complete Article »

We've got a lot to cover today (as that headline should evince), but before we begin examining the anniversaries, elections, and politics of the week, I'd like to begin instead by promoting a video.

Read Complete Article »

As I write this, the House has still not managed to pass a bill to deal with the border crisis. They've been trying for a few days now, but have been locked in a serious battle between Tea Party hardliners and Republicans from more moderate districts. The Tea Partiers are demanding the harshest possible bill, and the moderates are the ones who actually demanded that Speaker John Boehner attempt to do his job and get a bill through before they all fly home for a lavish five-week vacation. Moderate Republicans know that "we couldn't pass anything" is going to be a tough sell back home. When Boehner tries to make the bill extreme enough to appease the Tea Party hardliners, he loses moderate votes. When he tries to make it appealing enough to the moderates to vote for it, he loses Tea Party votes. Stay tuned, as the last act in this Keystone Kops drama has yet to take place!

Read Complete Article »

Speaker of the House John Boehner just gets weaker by the day, it seems. Today, he had to pull a bill from consideration because he did not have enough votes to pass it. The reason he didn't have enough votes to pass it is because he cannot do anything without the approval of a small faction of extremists within his own ranks. The Tea Party tail just wagged the Boehner dog, once again. Boehner, unsurprisingly, is attempting to blame it all on President Barack Obama. It beats the alternative of admitting his own weakness and incompetence, I guess.

Read Complete Article »

John Boehner is currently involved in playing what can only be called a "game of chicken" with his own party. To rev this metaphor up to the redline (warning: this entire column is really nothing more than an extended metaphor), Boehner is driving the Republican Party towards a head-on collision with the Tea Party, way out on the edge of town, down Impeachment Road. As is usual in these bouts of self-destructiveness, Boehner has already taken his go-to explanation out of his pocket, and tried to blame President Obama for the fine mess Boehner is creating for himself. In other words, welcome to the opening of "Silly Season, 2014."

Read Complete Article »

Back in Washington, we have one week to go before the opening of "Silly Season 2014," an annual event brought on by hordes of political reporters scrambling around, devoid of actual stories, while Congress is away on its six-week vacation. What will the main Silly Season story become, for pundits to endlessly obsess over this August? Your guess is as good as mine. Several candidates have already popped up ("Hey, let's all talk about impeachment!" for starters), but perhaps some lonely town hall meeting (with some hapless member of Congress) somewhere in the hinterlands will provide the fodder for this year's Silly Season obsession -- hopefully, with an epic rant caught on video!

Read Complete Article »

For years, Harry Reid refused to act. He struck deals with Republicans (that always soon collapsed), and shied away from using what was called (at the time) the "nuclear option." As a result, judicial and other presidential nominations languished in the Senate, unvoted-upon. Because Republicans could filibuster any nominee they wished, they essentially decided to filibuster all of them. Finally, late last year, Harry Reid had had enough. He called for a vote to change the Senate's rules (fun historical note: the filibuster is not actually mentioned in the Constitution), and from that point on all executive and judicial nominees (below the Supreme Court) would be confirmed only by a majority up-or-down vote. We are about to see why this was so important, in the current "Obamacare can't give subsidies to customers of the federal exchange" court case.

Read Complete Article »