The Swamp (Free subscription) | 11/04/2009
by Mark Silva First Rep. Mark Kirk, the Illinois Republican who has his eyes and fundraising set on President Barack Obama's old Senate seat, voted for a "cap and trade'' energy bill that fellow Republicans like to denounce as "cap and tax'' - Kirk one of a handful of Republicans who helped get the bill out of the Democratic-run House with the narrowest vote possible....
The Swamp (Free subscription) | 4 hours ago
by Mark Silva As the president prepares for another international trip, while pressing for passage of a "cap and trade'' energy bill back home, the Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee are preparing to send some postcards. No stamps required on the Internet, where the Republicans are tracking Air Force One's previous journeys and planning to mark the significance...
The Swamp (Free subscription) | 5 hours ago
by Mark Silva President Barack Obama, delaying a 10-day trip to Asia by a day so that he can travel to Fort Hood, Texas, on Tuesday to take part in a memorial for those killed in the shooting spree there, also will be taking his time with a decision about the deployment of additional troops in Afghanistan. But the president won't need much time at all, the White House says, to sign any...
The Swamp (Free subscription) | 10 hours ago
by Mark Silva Big Bird is throwing a birthday party. And he is inviting some very special guests. We don't mean Oscar the Grouch. We mean Michelle Obama, the first lady, who plans to help celebrate the 40th anniversary of the children's television program on Tuesday with an appearance on the set. Advance word from the show is that Big Bird observes that both he and the first lady are...
The Swamp (Free subscription) | 11 hours ago
by Mark Silva With the election of Barack Obama, the first African American to serve as president, an overwhelming majority of Americans believed that race relations in the United States would improve. Most still do. But only 41 percent of those surveyed say relations have improved since Obama's election in November 2008, the Gallup Poll has found - and one in five of those surveyed...
The Swamp (Free subscription) | 8 hours ago
by Mark Silva Rep. Anh "Joseph'' Cao, the one Republican who voted for the House's health-care legislation near midnight Saturday, said he had let the White House know he was on board: "I called the White House and said I could possibly support the bill." The president had called the freshman congressman from New Orleans around noon on Saturday, hours before a vote on...
The Swamp (Free subscription) | 11 hours ago
by Mark Silva There's a little joke that Sen. Orrin Hatch likes to tell about the so-called ''public option'' in the health-care legislation that passed the House by a vote of 220-215 over the weekend. "One big joke in Washington is, if the government ends up running health care, it'll be just like the U.S. Postal Service,'' the Utah Republican told Don Imus this morning in his...
The Swamp (Free subscription) | 11 hours ago
by Mark Silva The great Republican rift, the one that opened like a chasm in the 23rd Congressional District of New York, is sliding South: The Club for Growth, the conservative Political Action Committee that plowed television advertising money into the New York congressional race for a Conservative Party candidate, says today that it is supporting Marco Rubio, the Cuban-American former...
The Swamp (Free subscription) | yesterday
by Mark Silva It was the "end of an era," those elections conducted last week, according to Saturday Night Live's account of the way its writers figure that FOX News Channel's writers see and report it. FOX will be quick to note that it is the No. 1-rated cable news channel, its election-night coverage far and away drawing more viewers than its rival cable news channels grabbed....
The Swamp (Free subscription) | yesterday
by Mark Silva 220-215. The first full vote on the health-care reform that President Barack Obama is demanding from Congress by year's end arrived late last night in the House. "Let's keep making history,'' the president told supporters in a Democratic Party email that went out after the 11:15 pm EST vote. "Despite countless attempts over nearly a century, no chamber of Congress...
The Swamp (Free subscription) | 11/07/2009
by Mark Silva President Barack Obama, who has ordered feeral flags lowered to half-staff until Veterams Day for the soldiers killed and wounded in an Army psychiatrist's rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, honors the fallen, their families and their comrades today in a weekly address that also honors the service of all military men and woman present and past. "It was in this place,'' Obama...
The Swamp (Free subscription) | 11/07/2009
by Mark Silva Those East Coast media who are always "making things up'' may not be the best friends of Alaskan Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican nominee for vice president, but Palin is expected at one of the Washington media's most elite gatherings: A winter dinner of the Gridiron Club, that invitation-only assembly of Washington journalists which stages a white-tie evening of Marine...
The Swamp (Free subscription) | 11/06/2009
by Mark Silva President Barack Obama plans a stop today at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where some of the most wounded casualties of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are being treated -- and where the Army psychologist accused of killing 13 and wounding 30 at Ft. Hood, Texas, worked for several years before reassignment in Texas. The visit was planned before Thursday's shooting --...
The Swamp (Free subscription) | 11/06/2009
by Mark Silva and updated The president today ordered flags flown at half-staff until Veterans Day in respect for 13 killed and 30 wounded in a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas. "We don't know all the answers yet, and I would caution jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts,'' President Barack Obama said today in a Rose Garden appearance. The lowering of flags will...
The Swamp (Free subscription) | 11/06/2009
by Mark Silva As the House prepares to take the first vote Saturday on the health-care legislation that President Barack Obama is seeking by year's end, most Americans say they'd be happy with Congress taking more time to either work out minor problems or major changes in the bill. A slim majority - 53 percent - also say they oppose the president's plans for a health-care and insurance...
