You have got to be kidding me:
Senate Democratic leadership has announced who will be serving on the conference committee to iron out differences in the House and Senate versions of the stimulus bill.
* Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
* Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont.
* Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii
* Finance Committee Ranking Member Charles Grassley, R-Iowa
* Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Thad Cochran, R-Miss.
Both Finance and Appropriations were heavily involved in the creation of the Senate version, with each committee holding markups on their portions.
And for the House:
* Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey, D-Wis.
* Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.
* Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif.
* Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Jerry Lewis, R-Calif.
* Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Dave Camp, R-Mich.
This is what it means to not have a critical mass, to have less than 25% of your constituency represented. Only 17% of all congressional members are female. And so, with five from the Senate (5% of the Senate) and 5 from the House (just over 1%), what chance do women get to be selected for these critical reconciliation meetings?
The Senate switchboard number is (202) 224-3121. If you can't get through or would rather send an e-mail, you can look up your Senator's contact information and web form at the Senate.gov site.
Mayor Corning [] was an intimate of Polly Noonans for more than four decades.
Gillibrands parents and other family members have described Corning as a father figure who taught the Noonan kids how to hunt, fish and enjoy outdoor pursuits. The mayor was a regular guest of Noonan and her husband at the Noonans house. Corning and Noonan frequently attended political functions, dinners and dances together and the mayor occasionally joined the Noonan on family vacations.
Even on Gillibrands heady day that resembled something of a coronation, her family members could not escape the unquenchable rumors that Corning and Noonans long association produced offspring. It remains one of Albanys great abiding political myths, a mystery wrapped in an enigma, likely never to be resolved.
Until her death in 2003 at age 87, Noonan bluntly dismissed the rumors with salty-tongued retorts. Corning deftly deflected such speculation with his cool, urbane personality. He died in 1983 at age 73.
Noonan and Corning each remained married to their respective spouses throughout their lives. If there was a romance, family members say, the two took the truth to the grave with them.
"I don't think there is any truth to that. Its pure conjecture," Gillibrand's father said.
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Corning and Noonan became close in 1937, when Corning, 28, was a Democratic state senator who headed the Scenic Hudson Commission and Noonan, 22, was hired as the commission's secretary. He was a product of Groton and Yale; she was a tenacious Scot who touted her tartan but did not have a college degree.
There were plenty of smiles as she [Kirsten Gillibrand] was introduced in Albany last week, but Gillibrand is widely disliked within New York’s congressional delegation for her bullying personality and unwillingness to wait her turn in the Washington seniority queue. Already Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy, of Long Island, has vowed to challenge Gillibrand in a 2010 Democratic primary because of the new senator’s pro-gun stance. Paterson seems to believe that he has cauterized the intramural Democratic fighting. Instead, the elevation of Gillibrand has widened the wound. Last Thursday, one of the governor’s aides called Andrew Cuomo, asking the attorney general to attend Gillibrand’s unveiling. Cuomo, according to a friend, said he’d be busy reorganizing his sock drawer.
The state canvassing board has soundly rejected the Coleman campaign's attempt to disenfranchise 133 voters in Minneapolis whose ballots were lost during the recount, unanimously deciding to count those votes. In addition, they urged Minnesota's 87 counties to identify, open, and count absentee ballots that were wrongly rejected.
This is a huge win for us, because our position has always been the simple principle that every lawful vote should be counted.
Al Franken's chances of winning the Minnesota recount may have just gone up astronomically.
The state canvassing board just voted unanimously that absentee ballots that were initially rejected because of clerical errors -- and the current estimate from the hearing is that there could be nearly 1,600 of them, based on some extrapolation -- should be counted, probably the single biggest issue that the Franken campaign has been hammering ever since this recount began, and which really seemed up in the air going into this hearing.
The board can't directly order the county officials to do the counting, only making a formal request to go back and count the votes and then submit amended totals. But many counties have already begun or finished the process of sorting the rejected absentees at the board's request, and board members did castigate any election officials who wouldn't do so, with some of them even leaving open the option of seeking a court order if necessary.
Because of all that, it seems very likely that the vast majority of these ballots will be counted before this is over -- and it could possibly seal the deal for Franken.
In the closest Senate race in Minnesota history, every vote should be counted fairly.
But there are Minnesotans who had their votes thrown out, even though they did nothing wrong.
They voted absentee, but their ballots were improperly rejected because of someone elses mistake.
And in the closest Senate race in Minnesota history, their votes remain uncounted.
While it's one thing for Obama to personally forgive Lieberman for the race baiting and other gutter tactics that he engaged in on McCain's behalf during the campaign, it's quite another to let the chairmanship of such an important committee, which Lieberman has used for years to prevent Senatorial investigation into no-bid contracts and contractor abuse within the Department of Homeland Security, to serve as an olive branch.
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Lieberman, many will recall, was responsible for holding hearings into the government's response to Hurricane Katrina. But after winning his 2006 election with the help of the GOP, he decided it would be too "divisive" and refused to do so.
Good governance is going to be about more than passing new legislation, it's going to be about cleaning up the mess that has been made over the past 8 years. It's going to be about weeding out the graft and greed and corruption that has caused American taxpayers to foot the bill for outrageous deficits. The military industrial complex has been bilking the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security with no-bid contracts for things nobody needs that we're not allowed to know about for years now. The only way we're going to find out about these abuses, and right then, is if our elected officials accept that responsibility.
Not only is Joe Lieberman not doing that job, as Chairman of the Department of Homeland Security Committee he's keeping anyone else from doing it. He happily allowed a seat on the Homeland Security Advisory Council to be doled out as political patronage to a corrupt Bush Pioneer. He has no interest in cleaning up the mess he helped to make.
Is his continued happiness worth the cost of healthcare? Of the environment? Of putting Americans back to work? Of reducing our dependence on oil and getting the economy back on its feet?
Allowing Lieberman to retain control of a committee where he has done nothing but suppress meaningful oversight is going to be an awfully bitter pill to swallow when we're told that the price of "change" we all thought we were voting for is going to be too high.
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