Source: http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/30/8059496-south-carolina-rick-perrys-to-lose
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Friday, September 30, 2011
South Carolina, Rick Perry's to lose?
Mix of GOP interests makes this conservative state less monolithic than many assume.
Killing of al-Awlaki Major Blow to Al-Qaeda
Con Coughlin, The Telegraph
Another bombing raid, and another al-Qaeda terrorist mastermind bites the dust. The latest attack, which is said to have killed Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-born terrorist who masterminded the East Midlands Airport cargo bomb plot, means that 2011 is turning out to be an exceptional year for the West's counter-terrorist offensive against al-Qaeda.The elimination of Osama bin Laden by a team of US Navy Seals in May removed the terrorist organisation of its spiritual figurehead. The killing of Awlaki and several other al-Qaeda operatives in a bombing raid in Yemen – most...
Another bombing raid, and another al-Qaeda terrorist mastermind bites the dust. The latest attack, which is said to have killed Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-born terrorist who masterminded the East Midlands Airport cargo bomb plot, means that 2011 is turning out to be an exceptional year for the West's counter-terrorist offensive against al-Qaeda.The elimination of Osama bin Laden by a team of US Navy Seals in May removed the terrorist organisation of its spiritual figurehead. The killing of Awlaki and several other al-Qaeda operatives in a bombing raid in Yemen – most...
Source: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2011/09/30/killing_of_al-awlaki_major_blow_to_al-qaeda_264530.html
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Federal Eye: Fed worker pay comes under fire
The Republican-led House is scheduled to hold its first hearing Wednesday on the compensation of federal employees, pitting the Obama administration and federal worker union leaders against conservative fiscal experts armed with detailed reports suggesting federal employees are paid too generousl...
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The killing of a U.S. jihadist
U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was on "hit list" of terror targets; His death in drone attack raises debate over the reach of U.S. law 
Source: http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~r/CBSNewsMain/~3/j3bdIOoqOs4/main20114032.shtml
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A 2012 boom for Cain, but winning will be tougher
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Herman Cain is on a roll, the latest hot commodity in a constantly shifting 2012 Republican presidential race. 
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Number one Romney attack line against Perry? Immigration.
Indicted for insufficient hatred. (Reuters)
?It is becoming increasingly clear that Rick Perry has problems with the truth. Each of Rick Perry?s attacks has been proven false,? Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said. ?Instead of dreaming up phony attacks on Mitt Romney, Governor Perry should explain why he encourages illegal immigration, why he wants to dismantle Social Security, and why he accepted billions of dollars of stimulus to cover up his massive budget deficit.?
It's no accident that immigration leads the list. Perry's insufficient hatred toward brown people was always liable to become a campaign issue, and his opponents are finally wielding it like a club (like Michele Bachmann).
Rick Perry is such a nut that there aren't a lot of opportunities to attack him from the Right. This is perhaps the only place for them to do that, and Perry's opponents won't let that opportunity go to waste?even if it further alienates the GOP from the nation's largest growing demographic.
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Arab League's backing of no-fly zone over Libya ramps up pressure on West
The league's move represents an extraordinary step by the leading Arab organization, historically reluctant to sanction a member, and provided fresh evidence of the reformist spirit recasting Arab politics.
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Thursday, September 29, 2011
House clears spending bill averting shutdown
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44717870/ns/politics-capitol_hill/
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Supercommittee's progress unclear so far
First Read: Lawmakers tight-lipped on work toward a deal to reduce the national debt.
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Emergency Homeowners Aid Ending With Up to $500 Million Unspent
Congress set aside $1 billion for the Emergency Homeowners? Loan Program, but it might ultimately help only half the number of households it was expected to serve.
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=899e025f45563b0f736d3b3a64cea97f
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House meets today to avoid government shutdown, unless...
But as The Hill notes:
The House is on course Thursday to pass a one-week spending bill that will keep the government running through Oct. 4. The measure is expected to be approved by unanimous consent; leadership isn't expecting anyone to jump ship on the vote, aides said.But first things first.
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a leading critic of government spending, won't object to the bill, his office said. The offices of other key conservatives ducked calls on Wednesday, including that of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), about whether they intend to seize the spotlight and force the government to the brink of a shutdown.
A single objection Thursday would force Congress to return to work Friday to head off a shutdown, with the new fiscal year starting Saturday.
There are a few other guesses out there as to who might be selfish enough to try to grab the spotlight on this one. (Look for more about that this Sunday, from David Nir.) But odds are it won't be Michele Bachmann. She hasn't shown her face in the House chamber since August 1st, missing the last 30+ votes. It'd be awfully calculated for her to suddenly show up for work now, only to force the rest of her colleagues to fly back to DC on a moment's notice to try to clean up her mess.
But there are others out there perhaps just as crazy.
The Clerk's office tells us that we can expect the House to convene today at 11 a.m. ET, and the unanimous consent request should come shortly after that, if you'd like to keep an eye on 'em. (They'll naturally run through the Pledge of Allegiance and an opening prayer first.)
Odds of something going wrong: very, very low. Yes, someone might want to showboat. After all, we're here discussing it, so that tells you that someone just might be crazy enough to do it. But the thing is, if someone objects, that means all the rest of their colleagues will have to cancel all their plans and fly back to Washington on Friday, only to vote overwhelmingly to pass the thing. The guy who objects to this is in for a giant wedgie.
Still...
8:16 AM PT (Barbara Morrill): Passed without drama.
House approves bill by unanimous consent and no one objects. There was no vote. Only 3 members present: Harris, Culberson and Van hollen.
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Tears, shouts as terror hearing becomes political
WASHINGTON -- Congress pushed deep into a raw and emotional debate Thursday over American Muslims who have committed terrorist attacks in the name of religion, in a hearing punctuated by tearful testimony, angry recriminations and political theater.
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The Plum Line: Newsflash -- Recalls are legitimate in Wisconsin
Ezra Klein, on last night's events in Wisconsin: It seems to me that the system worked. Democrats were able to slow the process down and convince both voters in Wisconsin and the national media that there was something beyond business as usual happening in Madison. National and state polls sh...
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Watch: Bill O'Reilly Interview: Will Christie Run?
The Fox News host discusses the race for the Republican nomination.
Source: http://feeds.abcnews.com/click.phdo?i=48e753f3fe8da99f3ebce0f4cf46f4ac
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What happens if the Super Congress�fails?
President Barack Obama showed some chutzpah when he personally issued a rare, bona fide veto threat to the deficit supercommittee, and here?s a key reason why: Failure is an option.[...]The White House and Congress will get another year to agree to the $1.2 trillion in budget cuts if the joint House-Senate committee deadlocks in November. But on the off-chance that a bill reaches Obama?s desk, vetoing a measure without tax hikes can win the affection of his base and more than a few independents who buy his soak-the-rich plan?all without the messy problem of sparking a worldwide recession.
It?s as close to a sure thing as there is in politics.
Ignoring the "soak-the-rich plan" editorializing committed here by the authors, the basics are pretty much on point. The government won't shut down if the committee deadlocks, or if they ignore his veto threat and don't include tax increases in the plan. If the White House is going to be spending time worrying about what Congress is doing, it should be expending that effort on what will almost surely be another shutdown threat six weeks from now, when we're supposed to have a 2012 budget.
In the meantime, what actually happens if they do deadlock, and the automatic triggers kick in? Ryan Grim at HuffPo argues that those cuts really aren't automatic.
The supposed across-the-board cuts aren't slated to go into effect until January 1, 2013. Put more simply: They might not ever go into effect.The automatic cuts?known as sequestration?are often discussed in Washington as if they're certain, an inevitability that Congress won't be able to prevent. But on the same day those cuts would go into effect, the Bush tax rates, which President Obama extended for two years, are set to expire, leading to an "automatic" tax hike that is treated in Washington as anything but inevitable.[...]
A lame duck Congress would have two months after the 2012 election to stave off the expiration of both that tax policy and the super committee's "automatic" cuts.
The most likely scenario: The super committee locks up along partisan lines and, after the 2012 election, bipartisan negotiators deal with the tax cuts and the super committee's sequestration cuts, along with a basket of other expiring provisions, in one set of negotiations. Democrats will be pressured by the coming sequestration, while Republicans will be motivated by the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. And all of their negotiations will take place in a political and economic climate impossible to predict today.[...]
Stan Collender, a Democratic budget expert and consultant to Wall Street and Washington lobbyists, saw through it quickly, writing a report for Qorvis Communications downplaying the likelihood of the automatic cuts.
"There is a high probability that the super committee won't be able to agree on a deficit reduction deal and that the across-the-board spending cuts that are supposed to be triggered if that happens will NOT go into effect as scheduled in 2013," he wrote. "Federal budget agreements have seldom, if ever, gone the distance. Instead, they have always been changed, waived, ignored or abandoned."
One good reason the committee could very well deadlock and the triggers be essentially negotiated away, Grim points out, is the bipartisan opposition to defense cuts. He quotes Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), who says, "I am very concerned about broad cuts across the board, particularly as it relates the Department of Defense." Another factor is that budget committees are often irrelevant because of the simple fact that one Congress can't dictate the work of the next. What's cut by the 112th Congress can be restored by 113th, though certain policies (like the Bush tax cuts) are harder politically to overturn than others.
Nonetheless, the Catfood Commission II members could share the "wistful" hopes for a grand bargain, and might very well find a path that, in Mike Lux's words, "delights lobbyists and inside-the-Beltway pundits, but just ends up enraging everyone else?sort of like the lawmakers a couple decades back who were congratulating themselves on their grand bipartisan deal on catastrophic coverage for seniors, but went home to find seniors surrounding and beating on their cars."
So there's no guarantee of a Super Congress deadlock, and depending on just how wistful President Obama is about that grand bargain, a lot of damage could still be done.
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Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Commerce Secretary Locke nominated for China ambassador post
President Obama on Wednesday officially nominated Commerce Secretary Gary Locke as the next U.S. ambassador to China, continuing a reshuffling of top administration officials over the past several months.
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Obama administration petitions Supreme Court to hear health care lawsuit
The Department of Justice filed a cert petition today asking the Supreme Court to review the 2-1 decision of the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit striking down the Affordable Care Act, providing this statement.
"The Department has consistently and successfully defended this law in several court of appeals, and only the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled it unconstitutional. We believe the question is appropriate for review by the Supreme Court."Throughout history, there have been similar challenges to other landmark legislation such as the Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act, and all of those challenges failed. We believe the challenges to Affordable Care Act?like the one in the 11th Circuit?will also ultimately fail and that the Supreme Court will uphold the law.
In a blog post, senior White House adviser Stephanie Cutter writes:
Unfortunately the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Affordable Care Act's individual responsibility provision. We strongly disagree with their decision and today, the Obama Administration will ask the Supreme Court to hear this case, so that we can put these challenges to rest and continue moving forward implementing the law to lower the cost of health care and make it more secure for all Americans. We hope the Supreme Court takes up the case and we are confident we will win. Here's why:
- The Affordable Care Act, through the individual responsibility requirement, will require everyone, if they can afford it, to carry some form of health insurance since everyone at some point in time participates in the health care system, and incur costs that must be paid for. For the 83% of Americans who have coverage and who are already taking responsibility for their health care, their insurance premiums will decrease over time. Only those who are able to pay for health insurance will be responsible for obtaining it and new tax credits and other provisions in the law will make health insurance affordable for middle class families. That?s why the Congressional Budget Office estimated that only 1 percent of all Americans would pay a penalty for not having health insurance in 2016.
- Opponents of reform wrongly claim that Congress exceeded its authority in regulating when and how people pay for health care. Those who claim that the ?individual responsibility? provision exceeds Congress? power to regulate interstate commerce because it penalizes ?inactivity? are simply wrong. People who make a decision to forego health insurance do not opt out of the health care market. Their action is not felt by themselves alone. Instead, when they become ill or injured and cannot pay their bills, their costs are shifted to others. Those costs ? $43 billion in 2008 alone ? are borne by doctors, hospitals, insured individuals, taxpayers and small businesses throughout the nation.
- Additionally, banning insurance companies from discriminating against people with preexisting conditions helps to ensure that every American who can afford it has insurance. We don?t let people wait until after they?ve been in a car accident to apply for auto insurance and get reimbursed, and we don?t want to do that with health care. If we?re going to outlaw discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, people should not be allowed to game the system and raise costs on everyone else.
We know the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. We are confident the Supreme Court will agree.
Here's a link to the petition [pdf].
2:02 PM PT: In a conference call with a senior Department of Justice official, they said they chose this case to petition the court on because Justice believes it most effectively frames the issues for the court.
As for the timing of the petition, they said Justice would rather the constitutionality of the law be decided sooner rather than later so that the federal government, states, and insurance companies can move ahead with implementation of the law.
2:47 PM PT: One other thing worth noting about the conference call is that the Senior DOJ Official Speaking On Background explained that the administration's position on severability, as mentioned in previous briefs, is that if the minimum coverage provision (individual mandate) is declared unconstitutional, then the community rating (no differential premiums based on health status) and guaranteed issue (i.e., cannot deny coverage based on preexisting conditions) provisions were inextricably intertwined with it, and should be stricken as well. (Adam B)
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House Panel Launches Probe of Planned Parenthood
A Republican-led House committee has launched an investigation into Planned Parenthood, requesting a mountain of documents covering everything from audits to abortion-funding records to its policies on reporting sexual abuse.
Source: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/politics/~3/k4e_Sswn2u4/
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Mitt Romney praises governor who wrote book calling Social Security a�Ponzi�scheme
It turns out there's another governor who just wrote a book in which he called Social Security a Ponzi scheme: Mitch Daniels of Indiana. But when it comes to Mitch Daniels, Mitt Romney must not think it's a big deal, because over the weekend, he said Daniels could have his choice of jobs in a Romney administration.
Speaking before about 400 party activists in a downtown ballroom, Romney sprinkled flattering references to Daniels through an otherwise standard stump speech. Asked afterward by the locals whether he'd consider their governor as a vice presidential running mate, Romney was encouraging but non-committal."Where's Mitch in your government?" one gladhander wondered. "Wherever he'd like to be," answered Romney. "Mitch is an extraordinarily capable guy."
You at least gotta give Mitt this: He's got absolutely no shame and is willing to say whatever he thinks it takes to get what he wants.
2:53 PM PT: Maybe Mitch Daniels has caught Mitt's disease: now he says he wouldn't use the term "Ponzi scheme" to describe Social Security again. Of course, Romney's statement about Daniels came before Daniels' own flip-flop.
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