Congress

The latest polls show the people are not happy with President Obama's handling of budget matters, but Republicans look even worse. And yet, while the GOP delivers one idea after another, Obama has offered nothing, instead just attacking, attacking, attacking, blaming everyone but himself in utter denial of the reality that no man on the face of this Earth is more responsible for our debt…

Shortly after noon today, MSNBC's Contessa Brewer followed her colleague Chuck Todd in using the anniversary of the 14th Amendment becoming law to cite the liberal fantasy of a clause in the amendment empowering President Obama to end-run Congress on raising the debt ceiling. Like Todd she got her history and the text of the relevant clause wrong. This occurred during a satellite interview…

On Wednesday's NBC Nightly News, Capitol Hill correspondent Kelly O'Donnell declared the delayed vote on House Speaker John Boehner's debt ceiling plan "took precious little time," and touted how "Democrats filled the time with sharp words." A sound bite was featured from Tennessee Congressman Steve Cohen: "I've had kidney stones that are easier to pass than this." O'Donnell focused…

In a critical "Keeping Them Honest" segment Wednesday night, CNN's Anderson Cooper selectively reported findings from his network's own poll to bolster his argument that Republicans are out-of-touch with the wishes of the American people in the debt ceiling debate. This came even after the Democrat Senate Majority Leader, supported by the president, produced a plan including no tax increases…

At a hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security today about the radicalization of young Somali American Muslims by the al-Shabaab terrorist group, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) said the committee should hold a hearing on “right-wing extremists” in the United States. Jackson Lee used much of her allotted five minutes to question panelists with expertise on radicalization about the…

Update: According to the Library of Congress website, July 28, 1868 was the day when Secretary of State William Seward "issued a proclamation certifying without reservation that the Fourteenth Amendment was a part of the United States Constitution." Todd told his viewers that July 28, 1868 was the day the amendment "officially became part of the U.S. Constitution" although Article V of the U.S…

Gosh, isn't it convenient that Associated Press reporter Jim Abrams, in a Wednesday evening dispatch ("Democrats say Obama should invoke 14th Amendment"), was able to find "some legal scholars" who believe that President Obama can invoke Section 4 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution to ignore the nation's current debt ceiling and have the government go out and borrow more money, but "…

How have we arrived at this place where the fate of our federal budget — our economy, indeed our capacity to have a functioning federal government — seems to depend on what two men (the speaker of the House and the president) may or may not be secretly talking about in an interior room in the White House? Meanwhile, elected representatives and senators, kept ignorant of those life-and-death…

At the top of Wednesday's NBC Today, as co-host Ann Curry declared that "Americans are just fed up with the stalemate" over the debt ceiling, fellow co-host Matt Lauer announced: "The latest setback came last night when House Speaker Boehner was told by the Congressional Budget Office that his proposal would cut spending far less than advertised." In the report that followed, correspondent…

House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have both released debt limit plans, but if House Republicans don't support Boehner's plan, they could be handing President Obama an easy victory. The debt limit debate has not only sharply divided Republicans and Democrats, but it might also be forcing a schism among Republicans who favor a permanent solution now versus…

Good Morning America's Jon Karl on Wednesday chided a "broken down" Congress unable to get a debt ceiling deal done. Karl ignored Barack Obama's role in failing to secure legislation that would end the impasse. Instead, he complained, "The whole place seems to have broken down. Republicans can't even convince some of their own members to vote for the Republican plan." Karl made this point…

If her gig at Time magazine doesn't work out, Jay Newton Small could always try working in Harry Reid's press shop. She certainly knows how to butter up the Senate majority leader. Witness Newton Small's latest Swampland blog post at Time.com where she denounces House Republican debt ceiling plans as "histrionics" while forecasting a resolution to the debt ceiling deadlock that has Reid…

If there's a reason why Dayton Daily News staff writer Drew Simon wrote his Tuesday morning story ("Seniors fear losing Social Security checks") other than to scare the elderly, I don't know what it is. Nowhere in his report did Simon say who was the first person to invalidly raise the specter of Social Security checks not going out on August 2 (it was President Barack Obama, in case you…

CNN's Wolf Blitzer put Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on the defensive Tuesday in a testy interview on the debt ceiling, lecturing the congressman and asking provocative questions about any divides within the party on Capitol Hill. Blitzer told Jordan that "you've got to deal with reality now" after reporting that the Balanced Budget Amendment, a brainchild of House Republicans, failed in the…