Zing!
Also, look out for folks you know among the viewer audience (ooh, look, it’s Nina Totenberg!) that Specter periodically questions, Oprah-style (spoiler alert: they don’t all win trips to Australia).
The effect is that of an early PBS talk show, complete with Specter looking at the wrong camera, odd musical interludes and an Edward R. Murrow -like sign-off.
And if all this doesn’t sound fascinating enough, may we suggest turning the resolutely sober program into a drinking game? Take a sip every time anyone says “Citizens United,” “money” or “politics.” Do a shot any time Specter cracks a smile or the phrase “stare decisis” is uttered.
Who says this isn’t must-see-TV?
Poisoned? Well . . .
President Obama’s decision last week to override the Senate and make recess appointments ticked off Republicans — and now, let the Hill aftershocks commence!
One possible victim of the sour mood caused by the recess appointments is a heretofore innocuous bipartisan bill that would streamline the Senate confirmation process.
The bill, which is aimed at making the notoriously lumbering chamber more efficient by reducing the number of presidential appointees requiring a Senate vote, cleared the Senate back in July. Since then, it’s been languishing in the House.
And now we’re hearing that the bill might never see the light of day.
The subject of confirmations has turned toxic on Capitol Hill, where Republicans in both chambers are smarting from Obama’s end run around Senate Republicans’ gambit to keep the president from making recess appointments by technically keeping the chamber in session — even though the “sessions” lasted mere seconds each day.
The Justice Department this week backed up Obama’s strategy, saying it was perfectly within his authority.
But not everyone on the Hill agrees.
“The president pretty much poisoned the well on the whole subject matter,” says one Republican staffer. “If you bring that bill up now you’d get a big fight.”
Advocates for the bill were hoping for smoother sailing. They anticipated the House would simply pass the bill in deference to the Senate — since Senate GOP leaders backed it, and because it deals solely with the business of “the upper chamber.”
“This should be the Senate’s prerogative, and we would hope that the House would defer to that judgment,” says Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a bipartisan good-government group.
While that might — might — have been the case just a few weeks ago, it’s certainly not now.
Breaking news!
The president, speaking at a fundraiser Wednesday night at a private home in Chicago, unloaded this bombshell:
Obama, according to the White House transcript, talked about “The first bill I signed — a bill that said that we’re going to have equal pay for equal work because I want my daughters treated the same way as my sons.”
Sons? What sons? How many? Where? Names? Do the girls know? (More important, does Michelle?)
Will the boys be joining him on the campaign trail?
With Emily Heil
The blog: washingtonpost.com/
intheloop. Twitter: @InTheLoopWP.
Loading...
Comments