Hold Fast

Mike Stark does some great work interviewing Senator Chris Dodd, getting him to speak out against the obstructionism by the Republicans that have turned the Senate into a dysfunctional institution.

he had some pretty strong words for the conduct of certain Senators (that remained unnamed), saying they needed to “start acting like Senators”.
But perhaps the most […]

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So, is Ben Nelson going to jump ship to the Republican Party some time before January 2011? After all, his opposition to some of President Obama’s key legislative issues (health care reform and labor reform) is now being compounded by his opposition to President Obama’s nominees. Steve Benen writes of Nelson:
In other words, a senator […]

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It’s remarkable: one year ago, when the Obama administration started, Democrats had fifty-nine votes in the Senate (though two were in the hospital (Kennedy & Byrd) and one, Al Franken, would not be seated because of frivolous Republican lawsuits). At the time, we were at an historic moment where big ideas were not only necessary, […]

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It’s hard not to love this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m3MyjHM-a4

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Well isn’t this interesting:
Sen. Joe Lieberman has reached a private understanding with Majority Leader Harry Reid that he will not block a final vote on healthcare reform, according to two sources briefed on the matter.
Chris Bowers asks what people think the “private understanding” is.  Booman guesses that Reid threatened Lieberman with taking away his position […]

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Yesterday I wrote a long memo on the process surrounding the health care legislation in the Senate, focusing on cloture votes. It is up on the SEIU blog and is reprinted below.
* * *
The health care debate has been long and hard fought. As we near the time when we expect the Senate to take […]

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKz5ZHM8kFM

Alan “Big D” Grayson’s exchange with Georgia Republican Paul Broun is pretty remarkable. First, Grayson absolutely schools Broun on the unconstitutionality of bills of attainder. Broun is reduced to repeatedly reading off of a talking points memo - on camera - to try to respond to Grayson’s Socratic line of questioning. Second, Grayson has yet […]

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I recently finished reading Robert Caro’s Master of the Senate, the volume of his biography of Lyndon Johnson that covered his years in the Senate.
One thing that Caro’s coverage of LBJ’s Senate tenure makes clear, segregation was preserved and civil rights were delayed for upwards of half a century because of the dominance of conservative […]

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Jane Hamsher has a must-read post on the culpability of Harry Reid in the possibility that there is a silent filibuster of the public health insurance option. Jane writes:
There are 51 Senators who will vote for a public option, something 77% of the country wants. It would win a majority in a floor vote. We […]

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Contra Ben Nelson, there is no need for Senate Democrats to negotiate with Republicans to craft a health care bill that they will vote for. But what does negotiating with Republicans look like? It involves taking key parts of the legislation, watering them down or eliminating them to the point where that specific issue might […]

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