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Here's a secret: Bipartisanship is working
Bill Scher:
On the surface, Washington seems hopelessly mired in chronic partisan dysfunction. Scandal hysteria continues to fuel bitter partisan rhetoric. Senate Republicans are still obstructing humdrum presidential nominations. House Republicans are threatening (again!) to block the perfunctory but essential task of raising the debt limit. Gridlock produced the hated sequester. The broadly popular gun background-check bill remains stalled. Obama recently lamented that the partisan “fever” he hoped his re-election would cure has “not quite broken yet.”
And yet, amid the recent acrimony, landmark immigration reform quietly earned a solid bipartisan vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee, sending the bill to the Senate floor. And the Senate minority leader pledged not to lead a filibuster that would prevent a final up-or-down vote.
The bill cleared committee after a last-minute deal was struck between Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch and Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, making it easier for technology companies to hire foreign workers. While the agreement was a setback for the AFL-CIO, altering a previous compromise with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the union’s president, Richard Trumka, did not seek to blow up the bill. He hailed the committee vote as “an enormous step toward healing an injustice.”
Don’t call it a comeback. Bipartisanship has been here for years.
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Is the GOP blinded by Obama hatred?
Indeed, several recent polls seem to indicate that the IRS, Benghazi, and Associated Press trifecta is having little or no impact on public opinion. Obama’s approval rating, at 49 percent, has remained unchanged in Gallup’s tracking polls; a CNN survey out this week pegged it even higher, at 53 percent, a slight uptick from the network’s last survey in April, before all three stories blew up.
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As we reflect on Margaret Thatcher’s legacy, we are reminded of this gem surfaced by our Bad Opinion Generator.
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Beneath Margaret Thatcher’s steely and polarizing public persona was a grocer’s daughter with a high voice and a sharp tongue, a woman who held onto a childhood love of poetry and science throughout her life.
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Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative prime minister who led Great Britain from 1979 through 1990, died Monday morning of a stroke at age 87.
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On this day in 1970, President Nixon signed a bill limiting cigarette advertisements on TV and radio. Nixon, who was an avid pipe smoker, indulging in as many as eight bowls a day, supported the legislation at the urging of public health advocates. There had been warnings about the dangers of smoking as far back as 1939, and by the end of the 1950s, all states had laws banning the sale of cigarettes to minors. In 1964, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) agreed that advertisers had a responsibility to warn the public of the health hazards of cigarette smoking.
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Today, a majority of the Supreme Court justices voiced strong skepticism of the Defense of Marriage Act’s constitutionality.
Indeed, DOMA may be doomed. -
Cartoon of the day, Christopher Weyant, © 2013 Cagle Cartoons
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Dick Cheney publicly supported allowing gay couples to marry in 2009 — what took the rest of these folks so long?
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Between pensions, office space and staff, postage, travel, and other benefits, the U.S. spent nearly $3.7 million in 2012 on our four living former presidents and Ronald Reagan’s widow, Nancy Reagan, according to new analysis from the Congressional Research Service (CRS). Here’s how that breaks down:
- $1.32 million — Allowance paid to George W. Bush in 2012
- $85,000 — Bush’s telephone bill
- $46,000 — Bush’s postage and printing tab
- $395,000 — Rent for Bush’s Dallas office
- $978,000 — Allowance paid to Bill Clinton in 2012
- $442,000 — Rent for Clinton’s New York City office
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What a difference a decade makes. A Washington Post/ABC News poll released Monday shows that 58 percent of Americans support legalizing gay marriage and only 36 percent oppose it. In 2003, it was the reverse: 37 percent favored same-sex marriage and 55 percent opposed it. How did we get here? Let’s take a look back at America’s gay-marriage evolution.
Photo: Genora Dancel (left) and Ninia Baehr, plaintiffs in a Hawaiian anti-gay marriage case, in 1996. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook)
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On this day in 2003, a U.S. led coalition invaded Iraq. President Bush said the goal of Operation Iraqi Freedom was to “disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.” The Iraqi invasion was strongly supported by Vice President Cheney. As Defense Secretary during the 1991 Gulf War, he opposed an invasion of Iraq, saying it wasn’t worth the casualties or “getting bogged down.” The U.S. combat role in Iraq ended last year after 4,486 Americans were killed, another 32,223 wounded. Direct spending on the Iraq war is estimated at $757 billion, a figure that does not include interest on money borrowed to finance the war — or taking care of veterans. A Brown University study in 2011 said it may also cost $1 trillion more (through 2050) to care for veterans of the 105-month war.
On this day in 2011, President Obama ordered air strikes on Libya.
