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Another Lobbyist Enters the Obama Administration
Tweet Share on Facebook January 29, 2009 Comment (2)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Another former lobbyist enters the Obama administration ...
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Dick Armey Displays Republican Sexism on Hardball With Joan Walsh of Salon.com
Tweet Share on Facebook January 29, 2009 Comment (123)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
Not sure what Joan Walsh said to prompt former (thank god) U.S. Rep. Dick Armey to retort as follows. But whatever it was, Armey's loose lips have shown him to be the chauvinist he and many of his old guard GOP buddies are. In fact, Armey will now be seen as the GOP's "aren't we out of it?" poster child. As the party reforms after its trouncing at the polls in November, it should consult Armey on what it needs to do, and then do the complete opposite.
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Obama is Right to Sign the Ledbetter Law on Sex Discrimination
Tweet Share on Facebook January 29, 2009 Comment (28)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
My colleague Sam Dealey posts against the Lilly Ledbetter Law, which President Obama is due to sign today, as the first bill signing of his administration. The law makes it easier for people who believe they've been discriminated against in terms of pay to sue employers.
Sam: I'm against frivolous litigation, too. But methinks you stretch the possibilities posed by the Ledbetter Law to the point where they don't just break, they get nuked. In your post of yesterday you wrote:
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Barack Obama Smart on Republican Response to Stimulus
Tweet Share on Facebook January 29, 2009 Comment (19)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The House voted almost entirely on partisan lines to pass the stimulus package that, slightly amended, came out of the House Appropriations Committee. It passed without a single Republican vote and with 11 Democratic votes against, from Allen Boyd (FL 2), Bobby Bright (AL 2), Jim Cooper (TN 5), Brad Ellsworth (IN 8), Parker Griffith (AL 5), Paul Kanjorski (PA 11), Frank Kratovil (MD 1), Walt Minnick (ID 1), Collin Peterson (MN 7), Heath Shuler (NC 11), and Gene Taylor (MS 4). They break into several categories. Boyd and Cooper are "blue dogs" by conviction who represent state capital districts (Tallahassee, Nashville) that wouldn't have minded pro-stimulus votes. Bright, Griffith, Kratovil, and Minnick won their seats in 2008 in Republican-leaning districts. Ellsworth and Shuler won their seats in 2006 in Republican-leaning districts. Kanjorski is an old-timer who was pressed in the 2008 election. Taylor is a temperamental Jacksonian maverick elected in the Gulf Coast Mississippi district who mostly votes like a Republican but wears no man's collar. Peterson is a committee chairman (Agriculture) who represents a rural district that, despite historic DFL roots, has recently been the most Republican district in Minnesota in presidential elections. It took some guts, in my view, for Boyd, Cooper, and Peterson to cast these votes.
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Yes, Sarah Palin Is Running for President, Or Getting Ready to Anyway
Tweet Share on Facebook January 29, 2009 Comment (30)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Asked if her new political action committee was an early signal that she is running for president in 2012, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin replied: "No, not at all, not at all, no. It's helpful to have a PAC so that when I'm invited to things even like to speak at the Lincoln Day dinner in Fairbanks, to have a PAC pay for that instead of have the state pay for that because that could be considered quasi-political." Uh-huh. She's being something less than completely honest here, but we can forgive her.
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Stimulus No Votes Were a Republican Mistake
Tweet Share on Facebook January 29, 2009 Comment (26)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I think that, looking back, the Republican Party will conclude that it made a political mistake in opposing President Obama's economic stimulus plan in lockstep unanimity.
I say that as someone who has argued here, in agreement with the GOP on several of the points (It's not enough stimulus. The bill bears hidden agendas. The big construction projects will take too long. There should be more tax breaks.) made by House Republicans in yesterday's debate.
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Ledbetter Law Makes Sex Discrimination Suits Worse
Tweet Share on Facebook January 28, 2009 Comment (41)By Sam Dealey, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Yesterday Congress passed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a darling of the Left and likely the first bill that President Obama will sign. As the Washington Post described it:
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More Evidence of Declining Immigration
Tweet Share on Facebook January 28, 2009 Comment (4)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Remittances to Mexico in calendar year 2008 fell by 3.6 percent, which apparently was twice as much as experts projected. This is a big hit to Mexico's economy; remittances are Mexico's second biggest source of hard currency, after oil exports. This is just more evidence that, as I wrote in a recent column and blogpost, that we may be seeing a sharp decline in immigration—and perhaps a significant reversal of immigrant flow.
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What George Mitchell, the Middle East Peace Process, and Students in Ireland Share
Tweet Share on Facebook January 28, 2009 Comment (8)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
President Obama's new envoy to the Middle East, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, is well known in Washington for his work on the Good Friday Accord in Northern Ireland and for chairing the investigation into steroid use in Major League Baseball. There's some interesting commentary today about Mitchell's chances for success: Columnist Alex Massie writes in the New Republic about the similarities between the Irish and Middle East peace processes and holds some hope for a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians; Gerry Adams, the British MP from West Belfast and leader of Sinn Fein, tells a few stories about working with Mitchell back in the day, but ends up less than optimistic about Mitchell's chances with Hamas in his column for the London Guardian.
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Obama, Bush, and a First Amendment Heroine in Virginia
Tweet Share on Facebook January 28, 2009 Comment (33)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
Judith Scott probably never set out to be a First Amendment heroine. But she is as far as I'm concerned. As described in my Scripps Howard Newspaper column, she has filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia for what she claims was a retaliatory firing. Her proselytizing boss at the Blacksburg, Va., Middle School, whose acts are detailed in her court filing, kept trying to force her to participate in unlawful prayer meetings and religious events at work.
