Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has declined to support Michael Steele, the always-quotable chairman of the Republican National Committee, in Steele's bid for re-election to the post.
“I'm not backing anybody,'" McDonnell told The Washington Post. "I think there are some challenges within the RNC right now in terms of fundraising and grassroots organization that weren't up [to] standards during this last election so at this point I'm not making an endorsement one way or another.”
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President Obama's choice of prominent Chicago banker William Daley to serve as his new chief of staff signals a strong shift for the administration as the White House intensifies its efforts on the economy. Obama also is set to announce his new economic team Friday to coincide with the release of the first unemployment figures of the new year.
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With Republicans now in control of the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Eric Holder and other Justice Department officials are going to be answering a lot of questions in the next two years. "We're going to start fast," promises Rep. Lamar Smith, new chairman of the committee, as he lists a bunch of priorities: immigration, national security, the constitutionality of Obamacare, lawsuit abuse, intellectual property, and more.
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A mixed jobs report Friday was received as partial vindication by both parties, as President Obama declared that a positive "trend is clear" and Republican called for more spending cuts.
"The pace of hiring is beginning to pick up," Obama said at Thompson Creek Manufacturing in Landover, Md. "We're also seeing more optimistic economic forecasts for the year ahead.
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President Obama challenged congressional Republicans to embrace the "shared responsibility" of governance even as the White House appears ready to use unilateral executive powers to battle Capitol Hill. With Republicans taking over the House and increasing their number in the Senate, Obama faces the possibility of having his agenda stalled with limited room to maneuver -- making for tough sledding in the two years leading up to his 2012 re-election bid.
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When the 112th Congress convenes Jan. 5, many familiar faces will be gone from the Capitol's hallways, replaced by newcomers sent by angry voters eager to shake up Washington, D.C.
The incoming class of freshmen lawmakers is enormous by historical standards, and mostly Republican. Of the 435 House members, 96 were newly elected Nov. 2 and 87 of them are Republicans. In the Senate, 13 of the chamber's 100 members are new arrivals, all but one of them Republican.
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By Sara A. Carter The Washington Examiner
Despite Turkey's growing ties with Iran, the Turkish Defense Minister admitted to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on a visit to Ankara last year that a nuclear Iran is a threat to all of Europe, and endorsed the need for a missile defense shield pushed by the United States, recently released WikiLeaks documents confirmed.
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Just as fresh blood is reinvigorating the House GOP rank and file, there will be new energy in the leadership, too.
Even though Republicans were out of power for just four years, the old GOP committee chairmen haven't come back to reclaim their old spots; nearly all the lawmakers who are taking over committees have never held the chairman's gavel before.
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President Obama's latest recess appointment is a corporate lawyer, hailing from a leading Democratic lobbying firm where he represented defense contractors and health care companies.
The nomination of James M. Cole, now deputy attorney general, never made it to the Senate floor thanks to questions about his time as a compliance monitor at AIG, and his views on fighting terrorism.
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Consider one conundrum in American politics. Income inequality has been increasing, according to standard statistics. Yet most Americans do not seem very perturbed by it.
Barack Obama may have been elected president after telling Joe the Plumber that he wanted to spread the wealth around. But large majorities in polls approved when Obama and congressional Democrats abandoned oft-repeated campaign promises to raise taxes on high earners in the lame duck session.
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