[ Posted Thursday, January 30th, 2014 – 17:22 UTC ]
What prompted this column (clippy though it may be) was the breaking news that House Republicans have leaked a two-page document to the press outlining their priorities in new immigration bills. The first thing they stress is the plurality of that last word -- as in "bills," and not "bill." Republicans have, of late, developed a bizarre and unreasonable fear over legislation that they consider long and hard to read. They score some sort of political points with their base by opposing such bills, which is inexplicable outside of that base, so we'll just accept it as fact so we can all then move along. The House Republicans will have lots of little bills rather than one big bill -- that's a given, at this point.
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[ Posted Wednesday, January 29th, 2014 – 17:37 UTC ]
Last night, President Obama gave his annual address to Congress and the American people. Reactions, as usual, were all over the map. Listening to some of them, though, I found myself wondering what will happen if the conventional Washington wisdom proves wrong in the 2014 midterm election. Because while I didn't actually hear anyone toss out the "lame duck" term to describe Obama, most commentators were assuming that it's going to be a good Republican year at the polls, and that the only real question is whether Republicans will win control of the Senate or not. But what if this proves not to be true? Call me a cock-eyed optimist if you will, but I couldn't help wondering how different next year's State Of The Union speech will be if Democrats have a much better year than expected, and not only hold the Senate but win control of the House.
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[ Posted Monday, January 27th, 2014 – 16:46 UTC ]
As the city of Washington prepares for its time in the spotlight tomorrow night (the "State Of The Union" speech being approximately Washington's "Oscar night" on primetime television), pundits will go into overdrive on the question of "what it all means," for roughly the next week or so. Every paragraph of the speech will be examined microscopically, supporters will cheer, opponents will boo, and conclusions will be drawn among the inside-the-Beltway set.
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[ Posted Friday, January 24th, 2014 – 18:37 UTC ]
Sooner or later, though, whether it is 2014 or 2016 or beyond, the "Year Of The Marijuana Voter" is coming.
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[ Posted Tuesday, January 21st, 2014 – 16:46 UTC ]
For those of you not up on the lingo of the marijuana subculture, that headline is meant to be a pun of sorts, combining the Super Bowl (more on this in a moment) with the phrase "packing a bowl." Barack Obama, back in his "Choom Gang" days, would certainly have known what this is meant to refer to -- cramming marijuana in the bowl of a pipe constructed to smoke the substance.
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[ Posted Friday, January 17th, 2014 – 18:07 UTC ]
Before we begin this week's political wrapup, please be advised that President Obama's speech on reforming the National Security Agency won't be covered here today. Obama just gave the speech this morning, and we feel it is too important to offer up snap judgments, preferring instead to let it percolate for a few days before commenting on the substance of the speech or the newly-announced policies.
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[ Posted Tuesday, January 14th, 2014 – 16:57 UTC ]
New Jersey's governor was just in the news, but because it was unrelated to all the other Chris Christie stories circulating right now, it likely will be ignored by most of the public. Democratic officeholders and candidates for office would do well, however, to pay it a bit more attention. Because this is seems like a tailor-made issue for Democrats to campaign on this fall (and beyond).
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[ Posted Friday, January 10th, 2014 – 17:43 UTC ]
Welcome back to our regular Friday roundup of politics! We've been on hiatus for quite a while now, since we took two weeks off to dole out our year-end awards, and then last week we were just sick as a dog, which precluded all rational thought (much less trying to type coherently). So we've got a lot to cover this week, and our apologies in advance for all the stuff we're bound to have missed in the past month.
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[ Posted Monday, January 6th, 2014 – 18:55 UTC ]
President Obama had a pretty significant month in the polls, which might come as a surprise if all you've been listening to is the conventional wisdom in Washington (which has been happily parroting "Obama's polling is in free-fall!" all month long). In fact, what happened this month was that Obama stopped sliding downwards in the polls, and began actually recovering a bit of the ground he's lost since the disastrous Obamacare website launch at the beginning of October. What's more, Obama looks pretty good to continue this recovery for at least the next month or two. Which, as I said, might just come as a surprise to some.
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[ Posted Monday, December 30th, 2013 – 15:09 UTC ]
It's time for a regularly-scheduled checkup (to use a medical metaphor) on how Obamacare's doing. Three months in, things do seem to be improving. So much so, in fact, that January will (one way or another) see a shift in the political discussion to other aspects of the health reform law than just the HealthCare.gov website. Whatever way the story gets spun next month, it will be different than the prevailing storyline up to this point. But before we get to that, let's take a look at the progress made in the past month.
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