Connecticut’s Chris Dodd Faces a Backyard Rebellion

In many respects, Senator Chris Dodd is more powerful than ever on Capitol Hill these days. After enduring eight years in the political wilderness, the Connecticut Democrat is one of his ascendant party’s senior statesmen, someone who endorsed Barack Obama early on in his presidential campaign and hails from a solidly blue state.

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Why Some Brits Don’t Want a Sir Ted Kennedy

If Gordon Brown expected props back home for being the first European leader to enjoy President Obama’s hospitality at the White House and only the fifth British Prime Minister ever to address Congress, he might have reconsidered the fourth paragraph of that speech. Like a nervous entertainer at a particularly rowdy children’s party, Brown pulled his rabbit out of the hat almost at the start of his act. Her Majesty — Britain’s Queen — had bestowed an honorary knighthood on “Sir Edward Kennedy,” he announced

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CIA Veterans Blast Senate Probe of Operations Under Bush

For a handful of CIA operatives who were on the frontlines of the war on terror in the early months and years after 9/11, it’s the stuff of nightmares. After all, they did their job as their political masters defined it, using tools and techniques approved by their lawyers

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Obama’s Budget: Earmarks Aren’t the Real Problem

When it comes to Congressional earmarks, it’s hard to decide who’s the biggest hypocrite. The current media favorite is President Obama, who sought earmarks as a senator, criticized earmarks as a candidate, and now plans to sign a spending bill stuffed with nearly 9,000 earmarks. But what about earmark-addicted Republicans, who oversaw an unprecedented explosion of earmarks when they controlled Congress, resisted efforts by Obama and other Democrats to inject accountability into the earmark process, and even grabbed over 40% of the earmarks in the current bill, yet have the gall to blast Obama’s cave-in

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Commentary: Rush Limbaugh GOP debate is idiotic

The cold winds of March have obviously affected the intelligence and thought processes of people who need to get their thinking straight. (CNN) — The cold winds of March have obviously affected the intelligence and thought processes of people who need to get their thinking straight. The idiotic debate raging in Washington this week around Michael Steele, the newly elected chairman of the nearly defunct Republican Party, and Rush Limbaugh, a conservative icon for the past 35 years, is beyond foolish.

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Two Democrats urge Obama to veto spending bill

Two Senate Democrats urged President Obama Wednesday to veto a $410 billion spending bill and said they are going to vote against it, criticizing it for its cost and for including too many personal pet projects. “I don’t think we should pass it [spending bill] this way,” Feingold said on CNN’s The Situation Room Wednesday. “[I’d like] to have the president veto it and say ‘clean it up, do it over.'” Feingold added: “If that doesn’t happen I think he should …

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Senate Democrats Optimistic on Health-Care Reform

As President Barack Obama prepares to convene a health-care summit at the White House later this week, Administration officials are signaling that he intends to pursue a very different strategy for getting reform passed from the one used by his Democratic predecessor in office. Unlike the failed effort of 1994, when Bill and Hillary Clinton presented Congress with a detailed blueprint for reform — and never saw a bill reach the floor of either the House or Senate — Obama is outlining broad principles, with a bottom line of universal coverage, and leaving it up to lawmakers to fashion a plan for meeting them.

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