WASHINGTON - The Senate Finance Committee battled over insurance plans for seniors on Wednesday and rejected a Republican effort to delay a final vote on a broad healthcare overhaul as it slowly waded through a crush of amendments.
Democrats, the majority party in the Senate, repeatedly dismissed Republican proposals on a series of largely party-line votes through a long day that barely made a dent in the hundreds of pending amendments to the proposal by Chairman Max Baucus.
Congress appears set to ignore President Obama's proposal that banks be required to offer "plain vanilla" financial products such as 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, giving the banking industry an early victory in its fight with the administration over how to reform the financial-services sector.
Barack Obama failed to achieve a hoped-for breakthrough aimed at a resumption of Middle East negotiations today at a three-way meeting with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in New York.
The president had only one success to show for months of effort - a handshake between the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, meeting for the first time since the Israeli leader was elected in February.
The two appeared reluctant to shake hands, smiling hesitantly and having to be coaxed by Obama.
During his confirmation hearing last year, Scott O'Malia, a Republican Senate aide nominated to be a commissioner on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, testified that while working for an energy firm years earlier, the "Enron debacle" had opened his eyes "to the very serious consequences of...inadequate oversight." O'Malia, who'd been nominated by President George W.
In a speech to a joint session of Congress on healthcare Wednesday night, President Obama briefly alluded to the age-old argument between the individual's desire for freedom and the need for security. He noted there has been a healthy skepticism of the federal government since the nation's founding. On occasion, in reaction to the destructive excesses of this or that Gilded Age, progressives have been able to overcome our natural Jeffersonian inclination to prefer limited government.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the first time yesterday suggested she may be backing off her support of the public option.
As soon as I started covering Barack Obama, I knew he was going to be trouble.
Not Global Trouble, like W. and Dick Cheney. Or Hanky-Panky Trouble, like Bill Clinton and John Edwards. Or Tedious Trouble, like John Kerry and Michael Dukakis.
He was going to be the kind of guy who whipped you up and then, when you were all excited, left you flat, and then, when you were deflated and exasperated and time was running out, ensorcelled you again with some sparkly fairy dust.
Needless to say that when you wake up one morning and find yourself the
subject of the lead editorial in the largest conservative publication
on the planet, it is a bit jarring.
There was a time, not all that long ago, when the U.S. pretended
that it viewed war only as a "last resort," something to be used only
when absolutely necessary to defend the country against imminent
threats. In reality, at least since the creation of the National Security State
in the wake of World War II, war for the U.S.
