Fmr. US Senator Jesse Helms, 1921 - 2008.
posted on Jul 4, 2008 - View this thread

NewsFilter: Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID - Conn.) strikes a decisive blow against another Islamic terror front group: YouTube.
posted on May 19, 2008 - View this thread

Want to live it up at the U.S. party conventions and get access to Senators and Congressmen? USA Today has posted the campaign committee price lists:
Democratic Senate and Congress
Republican Senate and Congress

If you've got the dough, you may conveniently request a convention package online from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The National Republican Congressional Committee and the NRSC have other price lists on their sites, but it seems like the DSCC and DCCC sites keep theirs under wraps.
posted on May 1, 2008 - View this thread

Texan Larry Kilgore is running for a seat in the US Senate. Agree or disagree with the man, he certainly has the courage of his convictions.
posted on Oct 10, 2007 - View this thread

Lieberman-Kyl’s Iran amendment passes. By a vote of 76-22, the Senate passed the Lieberman-Kyl amendment, which threatens to “combat, contain and [stop]” Iran via “military instruments.” Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) called the amendment “Cheney’s fondest pipe dream” and said it could “read as a backdoor method of gaining Congressional validation for military action.”
posted on Sep 27, 2007 - View this thread

Senate kills bill to give D.C. representation (L.A. Times).
posted on Sep 19, 2007 - View this thread

"If this pace of blocking legislation continues, this 110th Congress will be on track to roughly triple the previous record". Ah, for the halcyon days of yore, when obstuctionism was so obviously unconstitutional that it required a nuclear response.
posted on Jul 20, 2007 - View this thread

Newsfilter: The United States Senate may once again be up for grabs. Senator Tim Johnson, D-SD, 60, has reportedly just suffered a stroke and is currently undergoing tests at The George Washington University Medical Center.
posted on Dec 13, 2006 - View this thread

Abu Gharib? Feh. The newest Dark Side: telemarketing abuse. The National Republican Congressional Committee has launched a $2.1 million campaign calling individuals, including those on the Federal Do-Not-Call Registry, with automated telephone messages scripted to sound as if they are coming from the Democratic candidate up for election, in the hopes of driving away support come Tuesday's elections. "Hello. I'm calling with information about [Democratic candidate]," the recording begins, and then pauses for the traditional hang-up. If the recipient does indeed hang up, they then receive repeated phone calls back. This manner of scripting violates 47 CFR 64.1200(b)(1), which requires that "the identity of the business, individual, or other entity that is responsible for initiating the call" be "state[d] clearly" "at the beginning of the message." The New Hampshire Attorney General got them to stop calling those on the Do-Not-Call Registry, at least. (In their best interests, perhaps, due to the $5,000 fine per call potentially racking up hefty fines.) This is going on at the very least in the Pennsylvania 6th, the Connecticut 4th, the North Carolina 11th,, the New Hampshire 2nd, and nationwide.
posted on Nov 5, 2006 - View this thread

Calling All Wingnuts blogger Mike Stark (previously discussed here) found himself in a fight with George Allen's staffers after asking the Senator an impertinent question about his first wife and sealed divorce file and court records.
posted on Oct 31, 2006 - View this thread

GOP Senators have lost their bid to kill the currently-defunct estate tax. This defeat of the permanent repeal effort is a major triumph for the 98% of Americans who've never been in danger of having to pay the tax.
posted on Jun 8, 2006 - View this thread

"Resolved that the United States Senate does hereby censure George W. Bush, president of the United States, and does condemn his unlawful authorization of wiretaps of Americans." Invoking "high crimes and misdemeanors," Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold introduces a motion to censure [PDF link] President Bush for his controversial, legally dubious NSA wiretapping program. Feingold declares: "The President must be held accountable for authorizing a program that clearly violates the law." Republican leader Frist retorts: "It's a crazy political move" that sends a "terrible" signal to Iran. Democratic bloggers say: Call your senator. [More legal fallout from the NSA program recently discussed here.]
posted on Mar 13, 2006 - View this thread

Media outraced by Bloggers, Kerry appeal to netroots galvanizes suprise drive against Alito On Google News, you'll read how US Democratic Senators Obama and Biden are against a filibuster. Old news. They've agreed to support it. Encouraged by direct appeals by Senators. Kerry and Kennedy to internet activists, a blizzard of calls, emails, and faxes, organized via the Daily Kos and other blogs - with tactical direction from Kennedy - have helped flip the positions of several Democratic senators, and as of Saturday some claimed the push was already within 2 votes of forcing continued Senate debate on the Alito nomination. In fact, the pro-filibuster bloc might have started with 37 votes Meanwhile, today, Morning Edition, which declined to run the filibuster push as a top story and failed to mention the internet effort, asked Senator Kennedy on Senator Hillary Clinton's opposition to the filibuster: actually, she joined the effort last Friday [ see main link ] : D'oh !
posted on Jan 30, 2006 - View this thread

News Filter: Senate in closed session. Looks like Senate is now in close session, after Harry Reid invoked Rule 21 and asked for an investigation into the lead-up to the war. Does it sound like a major deal or is it political maneuvering?
posted on Nov 1, 2005 - View this thread

Meet Priscilla Owen, 2-time nominee for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, Senate nuclear option trigger, and "activist judge" who White House Counsel Gonzales himself criticized ...for "an unconscionable act of judicial activism" in seeking to restrict a minor's right to an abortion. ...

This PDF from People for the American Way goes case-by-case to paint a damning picture: It focuses not only on the evidence from Justice Owen’s dissenting opinions that she is a right wing judicial activist, but also on the fact that this conclusion is established by the criticism often leveled at her by her conservative colleagues on the Court, particularly including Alberto Gonzales. Indeed, during the relatively brief time that they served together on the Court, Gonzales wrote or joined numerous opinions sharply criticizing opinions written or joined by Owen. This report also addresses Justice Owen’s failure at her confirmation hearing to dispel the serious concerns that had been raised about her record. For the reasons we discuss below, the Judiciary Committee made the correct decision in refusing to confirm Priscilla Owen to the Fifth Circuit. It should make the same decision again.
posted on May 18, 2005 - View this thread

Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) on the "nuclear option." "The Senate is intended for deliberation not point scoring. It is a place designed from its inception, as expressive of minority views." As the Senate gears up for another round of contentious judicial confirmations, and as Washington gears up for all-out war following Rehnquist's imminent retirement, here's an eloquent, if Godwin-invoking, defense of deliberative lawmaking from the Senate's preeminent historian.
posted on Mar 1, 2005 - View this thread

Jeff Johnson wants to know what Pete Coors has to say.
posted on Nov 4, 2004 - View this thread

The campaign website of Alan Keyes , Illinois Republican Party's nominee for the United States Senate. [via Chicagoist]
posted on Aug 17, 2004 - View this thread

Conservatives Win Big With Fetus Bill
posted on Mar 27, 2004 - View this thread

Pickle's pickle. "The sergeant at arms is facing the oddly postmodern task of investigating a Senate leak of a report on the investigation of a Senate leak."
posted on Mar 10, 2004 - View this thread

Republican Dirty Tricks "From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what tactics. The office of Senate Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle has already launched an investigation into how excerpts from 15 Democratic memos showed up in the pages of the conservative-leaning newspapers and were posted to a website last November." They just can't get Nixon out of their system, huh?
posted on Jan 22, 2004 - View this thread

Senate approves S.887 Can-Spam Bill. Spammers unhappy.FTC to report to Congress with a plan for creating a Do-Not-E-mail registry.
posted on Oct 23, 2003 - View this thread

The Senate bans "partial birth" abortions, but a similar law was struck down in Stenberg v. Carhart . Memo to Mr. Bush: there are other branches of the U.S. Federal Government.
posted on Mar 13, 2003 - View this thread

Lott Resigns As GOP Leader. Senator Lott has bowed to internal and external pressure and has resigned his position as Senate majority leader. He will, however, not resign from the Senate altogether. Will Republican be able to recover, or have they been permanently weakened? Will Democrats still be able to capitalize on the scandal?
posted on Dec 20, 2002 - View this thread

Blue man runs for Senate Stan Jones, the Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate in Montana suffers from argyria, a condition in which the skin becomes stained a permanent shade of blue. How do you come down with it? You drink lots of colloidal silver. Jones started mixing his own shortly before Y2K to help boost his immune system in the antibiotic-short apocolypse he was sure was coming. No word if he is now engaged in weird behavior involving metal tubes.
posted on Oct 3, 2002 - View this thread

More election hilarity expected!!! So, does anyone here still remember the 2000 election? Its not through with us yet. The GOP could regain control of the Senate immediately following the Nov. 5 elections, thanks to a nutty legal wrinkle associated with Sen. Jean Carnahan's appointment to the seat Missouri elected her deceased husband to. That is, if she loses, and if the Democrats don't pull the trick William Safire expects them to.
posted on Oct 2, 2002 - View this thread

Torricelli Considers Dropping Out Of His Re-Election Bid ...and Republicans' hopes to reclaim the Senate brighten. Why drop out now, with only 5 weeks left? Is Torricelli guilty of even more ethics violations than previously thought? (more inside...)
posted on Sep 30, 2002 - View this thread

House likely to approve homeland security bill that erodes labor protections "But the Senate, which likely takes up the matter next week, so far has pursued a much different course. On Thursday, the Democratic-led Senate Governmental Affairs Committee crafted legislation that would protect all current civil service protections and make it more difficult for the president to move workers out of unions. Bush and other Republicans said the measure would give the president less authority than he has now."

The House seems to be so much more conservative and extremist than the Senate. Heck they're still working on trying to ban selected types of abortion procedures even when there's a strong chance it won't pass constitutional muster and the Senate isn't likely to support them.

Is it your perception that the House is more conservative? If so, why do you think that's true?
posted on Jul 26, 2002 - View this thread

History repeats itself? Lest we forget, constitutional qualms about the Pledge helped bring down Mike Dukakis 14 years ago ... will the Democrats, in an urge to avoid the same fate, let through Bush's slate of conservative nominees? How about a new Justice if Rehnquist retires?
posted on Jun 27, 2002 - View this thread

Georgia Republicans Attempt to Derail Democratic Primary "Overzealous staffers" signed affidavits of identity for candidates in eight Senate seats to pose as primary opponents to more established Democratic candidates. Dirty pool or legitimate tactic?
posted on May 29, 2002 - View this thread

Shudder... At least Helms tries to pretend he's offended... Warning: Quicktime file, may put you off your feed.
posted on Sep 6, 2001 - View this thread

So long my friends, farewell goodbye
I'd love to stay and play and sing for awhile,
But it's time to hit the road and say goodbye
So long farewell goodbye
....maybe
posted on Aug 21, 2001 - View this thread

So Help Me God : "Ninety-five percent of the people believe in God. An invocation of his name, in conjunction with the seriousness of telling the truth, has an importance beyond mere legal requirement," Sessions said Thursday. [via NextDraft]
posted on Aug 3, 2001 - View this thread

Will he or won't he switch is the question for Vermont Sen. Jeffords. If he does, the Democrats gain control of the Senate. But this Washington Times article seems to be pleading Sen. Jeffords to remain within the GOP. If he is such a stalwart conservative, why the all propaganda from the Times?
posted on May 21, 2001 - View this thread

Sen. Storm Thurmond poster boy for term limits? Is this more hipocracy on part of we need term-limits Republican? Why doesn't he just resign and spend some time with his family?
posted on May 8, 2001 - View this thread

Cheney casts his first tie breaking vote in the Senate.
posted on Apr 3, 2001 - View this thread

A giant loophole in McCain-Feingold will give oil companies a total exemption from all its propsed spending restrictions. This is levelling the playing field?
posted on Mar 27, 2001 - View this thread

Campaign finance reform gets 2 weeks of debate in the Senate starting today. It has become a battle between the McCain-Feingold bill and the Dubya-D-40 backed Hagel-Landrieu bill. Will anything meaningful get passed? Will it matter if it does?
posted on Mar 19, 2001 - View this thread

Take my wife, please Old soldiers may die but their wives carry on. The mantle is passed.
posted on Feb 23, 2001 - View this thread

Statement of Senator Feinstein opposing John Ashcroft. I hope he doesn't get in. A friend of mine told me he saw some "Roe v. Wade is dead" demonstrators on TV outside the capitol building and the first thing he thought was Triumph of the Will had descended upon Washington.
posted on Jan 25, 2001 - View this thread

Snowe Days for Democrats? It may take only one party-switch to give Democrats control of the Senate. Maine may offer just the one.
posted on Nov 30, 2000 - View this thread

If Al Gore becomes the president, Mickey Kaus has a wickedly devious idea on how the Dems can stick it to the senate Repubs. It hinges on Joe Leiberman refusing the vice-presidency.
posted on Nov 9, 2000 - View this thread

No-one here seems to be paying attention to the Senate. The following states replaced Republican Senators with Democratic Senators: Delaware, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri.
Meanwhile, Virginia replaced a Democrat with a Republican.
Washington State is too close to call. If Washington goes D, we get a 50-50 Senate and THAT will be a confusing mess; who gets to head all the committees? There won't be a majority party. [more]
posted on Nov 8, 2000 - View this thread

"No Senate Race in New York in 2000."
I was at the my AOL page and from there, two-clicked my way to their election 2000 link to find my local races; where I was greeted with the aforementioned quote, in red. At first I thought it was a reference to the New York State Senate. But the top of the page clearly says, "U.S. Senate Race." Am I the only person being duped by the AOL election information services?
posted on Oct 17, 2000 - View this thread

THE ROBINSON REPORT: "A Complete Report to the Citizens of the Commonwealth on the Personal Background of a Candidate for the United States Senate" -- written by the candidate, in the spirit of full discolsure. [more inside]
posted on May 28, 2000 - View this thread