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How Apple Used Shell Companies to Save $44 Billion in Taxes [more inside]
posted by Elementary Penguin on May 21, 2013 - 205 comments

Despite widespread popular support, on April 17th, 2013, the US Senate voted to defeat four legislative amendments that would strengthen background checks for gun purchases and place a ban on assault rifles and high-capacity ammunition magazines. Victims and survivors of victims of recent shootings who were in the Senate audience were heard to yell "Shame on you" at legislators as the final votes were tallied.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Apr 17, 2013 - 288 comments

Elizabeth Warren, in her new role as a member of the Senate banking committee, asks banking regulators: when did you last take a big Wall St bank to trial? (SLYT)
posted by shivohum on Feb 16, 2013 - 91 comments

The U.S. Senate has declined to promote Captain Timothy W. Dorsey to the rank of rear admiral (lower half). Dorsey, currently serving as Navy Reserve inspector general, was involved in one of the more bizarre friendly fire incidents in U.S. Military History, intentionally shooting down a U.S. Air Force jet during military exercises some 25 years ago. [more inside]
posted by kjars on Jan 8, 2013 - 75 comments

Robert Bork, the conservative jurist at the heart of two political firestorms--in 1973 he carried out the "Saturday Night Massacre" by firing Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, and in 1987 had his nomination for the Supreme Court rejected by the Senate after a combative confirmation hearing--died yesterday. A perennially divisive figure, Bork's passing drew encomiums from the right and condemnation from the left.
posted by Horace Rumpole on Dec 20, 2012 - 88 comments

Senator Daniel Inouye, Democrat and senior senator from Hawaii, has died at the age of 88 from respiratory problems. [more inside]
posted by Rangeboy on Dec 17, 2012 - 109 comments

There's been a lot of talk in the US media about the "Fiscal Cliff" and the "Grand Bargain" What are they?

The "fiscal cliff" is a confluence of three legal changes taking effect Jan. 1: the expiration of a payroll-tax cut, the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts, and the advent of mandatory spending cuts known as "sequestration."

Fiscal Cliff 101: 5 Basic Questions Answered. What's Happening: Fiscal Cliff Explained [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns on Dec 1, 2012 - 214 comments

As the least-productive Congress in a generation draws to a close, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has spoken in support of a new proposal to reform the filibuster. The proposed changes would not eliminate the filibuster, but would restore the talking filibuster, which requires that the opposition explain their objections and keep talking in order to delay a vote on the bill under consideration. [more inside]
posted by wintermind on Nov 16, 2012 - 54 comments

Tired of the Presidential race? The battle for 33 Class I seats in the 100-member United States Senate, once commonly known as the "World's Greatest Deliberative Body", now known for stifling torpor with record-breaking numbers of filibusters and a total logjam of pending confirmations, is also taking place on the same day. With many key Senate races happening in states where the Presidential outcome will be lopsided, all eyes are on split-ticket voters. 53 Democrats (2 of them independents) and 47 Republicans make up the current chamber. Who will control the second Senate ivory gavel, the first of which was shattered in 1954? [more inside]
posted by Hollywood Upstairs Medical College on Oct 13, 2012 - 71 comments

Despite not raising any money or updating his campaign website (cache) since 2009, 35 year-old flooring installer Mark Clayton has won the Democratic Party primary in Tennessee and will be running for US Senate against Republican incumbent Bob Corker. Clayton's policy positions are unusual for a Democratic candidate. [more inside]
posted by ghharr on Aug 3, 2012 - 100 comments

Last month, JP Morgan Chase announced it had lost $2 billion dollars in a 'hedging' maneuver. Today, Jamie Dimon, Morgan's chairman and CEO, testified before the Senate banking committee. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns on Jun 13, 2012 - 69 comments

This article explores the history, from the lawyers' perspective [PDF; 41 pages], of a high-profile litigation of sixty years ago, the whirlwind of state and federal litigation that attended the 1948 runoff election battle between Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson and former Texas governor Coke Stevenson for the Texas Democratic Party nomination for the office of United States Senator. Johnson famously won this election by 87 votes [...] [more inside]
posted by smcg on May 29, 2012 - 7 comments

From the How To Be A Retronaut archives: U.S SENATE DINING MENU, Thursday August 27th, 1964
posted by The Whelk on Apr 6, 2012 - 74 comments

What do John McCain, Rick Santorum, and George Voinovich have in common? They have all been seated at the Senate's candy desk throughout their careers. [more inside]
posted by Bukvoed on Mar 27, 2012 - 35 comments

Mother Jones: The 10 'Occupy' candidates vying for seats in the US House Of Representatives and Senate and their prospects.
posted by The Whelk on Mar 14, 2012 - 27 comments

Today on Rewind a remarkable historical piece that features two American icons who clashed over issues of corruption and misappropriation of funds in the 1950s and 60s. They are Robert Kennedy- former Attorney General of the United States, but at the time Chief Investigator of the Rackets Committee for the United States Senate, and James Hoffa- head of the Teamsters Union. (MP3) [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation on Jan 20, 2012 - 1 comment

With the recent news that unemployment applications are at their lowest levels since 2008, Congressional Republicans are attempting to curtail unemployment benefits. Democrats want to extend benefits for another year. This has led to an impasse. [more inside]
posted by reenum on Dec 22, 2011 - 64 comments

Last night, the Unites States Senate voted successfully to invoke cloture (end debate) on S.1619, the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2011. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) filed a series of motions to suspend the rules in an effort to force a vote on President Obama's American Jobs Act [PDF]. That's when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) nuked the Senate. [more inside]
posted by wintermind on Oct 7, 2011 - 167 comments

Elizabeth Warren will announce her entry into the Massachusetts Senate race tomorrow morning. Warren, who created, but was not confirmed to head, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is seeking to replace Scott Brown (R), who won Ted Kennedy's seat in 2010. Brown remains rather popular in Massachusetts, and Democrats weren't at all confident any of the current candidates had much chance to knock him off. The hope is that Warren and her pro-consumer bona fides can ride the expected wave of high Democractic voter turnout in the general. [more inside]
posted by schoolgirl report on Sep 13, 2011 - 76 comments

Lt. Gen. Russell Honore has a solution to the increasing splintering and radicalization of Congress: send all the members of Congress to boot camp and keep them there until they recognize their duty to America.
posted by reenum on Aug 5, 2011 - 56 comments

LulzSec (twitter account) have hacked senate.gov. The group has previously hacked Bethesda, Pron.com, FBI affilliates amongst others. Although some argue that LulzSec represent the catalyst to improve IT security, this message to the Senate seems likely to provoke a more direct investigation: [more inside]
posted by jaduncan on Jun 13, 2011 - 141 comments

"A few years from now, an hour with a good plumber- if you can find one- is going to cost more than an hour with a good psychiatrist. At which point we'll all be in need of both." Mike Rowe addresses the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation about the rapid decline in the trade labor force.
posted by XQUZYPHYR on May 13, 2011 - 94 comments

The mayor of Washington DC has been arrested, along with 6 of the 12 members of its city council, during a protest today near a US Senate office building, objecting to the city's use as a bargaining chip while negotiating the 7th Continuing Resolution to avoid a government shutdown last Friday. The bill prohibits the District of Columbia from locally funding abortion services, and imposes a locally-unpopular school voucher program. Had the government shutdown taken place, the DC government would have also had to suspend most of its operations including trash pickup. For those of you keeping track, Vince Gray is the 3rd (of 6) DC mayor to be arrested while in office. [more inside]
posted by schmod on Apr 11, 2011 - 93 comments

Army Psy Ops Units Targeted American Senators
posted by empath on Feb 24, 2011 - 77 comments

Filibustery, making the filibuster — and the proposals in the U.S. Senate to reform it — more understandable. [more inside]
posted by carsonb on Jan 31, 2011 - 5 comments

Stephen Harper once referred to the Canadian Senate as a "dumping ground for liberal cronies". He has now appointed his 36th senator, more than double the number of appointments by his predecessor, Paul Martin. Of further interest is that while 5/17 of Martin's appointments were members of the opposition party all 36 of Stephen Harpers appointments were directly affiliated with the conservative party. His most recent appointments? A Priest and a former CFL Comissioner
posted by sarastro on Dec 20, 2010 - 35 comments

Lisa Murkowski has become the first successful write-in candidate for the US Senate in more than fifty years. Lisa mounted a write-in campaign after she narrowly lost Republican nomination to Joe Miller, a candidate supported by the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party. Her campaign team ran this adorable spelling bee advertisement (also these) after Joe Miller demanded the exclusion of any ballots in which Ms Murkowski's name was misspelt.
posted by Joe in Australia on Nov 17, 2010 - 114 comments

It's Election Day in America, and as is so often the case in this fickle land, the results of the 2010 midterm elections are up in the air. Although President Obama's party is expected to suffer significant losses, record numbers of districts remain competitive, and even minute errors in polling could mean the difference between a historic Republican landslide and an unexpectedly robust Democratic defense. At stake are control of not just the Senate and House, but myriad state and local offices, many of which will play key roles in the dynamics of the 2012 presidential race -- and, more subtly but no less crucially, the once-in-a-decade congressional redistricting process. Much uncertainty surrounds the behavior of the electorate -- how many will turn out, and how informed will they be? To help move those statistics in the right direction, look inside for voter guides, national and state fact checkers, and an assortment of other resources to keep tabs on as the results roll in. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi on Nov 2, 2010 - 858 comments

Kentucky officials have identified the assailant in the face-stomping of a private citizen shortly before a debate between candidates for the office of Senator in the state of Kentucky. Contrary to initial reports which quickly dismissed the assault as the isolated acts of assorted private citizens, it has now been revealed that the gentleman curb-stomping the head of a MoveOn.org activist prior to the debate between candidates last night was none other than a county-level representative of the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Kentucky, Mr. Rand Paul.
posted by joe lisboa on Oct 26, 2010 - 351 comments

Jack Conway, a candidate for United States Senate, is catching flak from Democrats and Tea-Partiers alike, for airing an attack ad against his opponent, Rand Paul that brings up some bizarre dirt published in GQ a few months back. At a debate between the two candidates Sunday, Paul refused to shake Conway's hand at the end. Today, the National Republican Senatorial Committee released a response to the Aqua Buddha ad. [more inside]
posted by krysalist on Oct 20, 2010 - 68 comments

The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) has started to be fast-tracked through the legislative process. This bill would create two blacklists (without due process) of domains which ISPs would be forced to block, based on alleged copyright infringement. The RIAA claims that such websites put Americans at risk (but doesn't state exactly what the risk is). Wired Magazine calls it the "Holy Grail of intellectual-property enforcement." The EFF has started an online petition against it and is encouraging internet engineers to speak out against it. [more inside]
posted by hippybear on Sep 29, 2010 - 33 comments

Cloture to force a vote on the fiscal 2011 defense authorization bill has not been achieved. DADT will stand. Chances are not better in a possibly more Republican Senate post-November, and the bill is unlikely to pass before then. Republican voters against cloture: Every single senator; Democratic voters against cloture: Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor.
posted by jaduncan on Sep 22, 2010 - 186 comments

Tea Party candidate and Sarah Palin endorsee Christine O'Donnell - a former chastity lobbyist - has defeated the longest-serving Congressman in Delaware's history by six percentage points to claim the Republican nomination for Vice President Biden's former Senate seat - despite Karl Rove's televised statements to Sean Hannity that she says "nutty things": It does conservatives little good to support candidates who, at the end of the day, while they may be conservative in their public statements, do not evince the characteristics of rectitude and truthfulness and sincerity and character that the voters are looking for. [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese on Sep 15, 2010 - 448 comments

The XXXXXXAct ofXXXX bill passes the United States Senate.
posted by swift on Aug 10, 2010 - 55 comments

How broken is the Senate? George Packer asks in his New Yorker piece, "The Empty Chamber."
posted by Trochanter on Aug 8, 2010 - 44 comments

"When I say Alvin, you say Greene." - So begins a promotional rap video^* endorsing United States Senate candidate Alvin Greene (previously).
* - Link to Countdown segment on MSNBC that includes the video [more inside]
posted by ODiV on Jul 26, 2010 - 46 comments

Vic Rawl has filed a protest against the man who beat him in the South Carolina Democratic primary for the US Senate. The official reason is election irregularities, however at the core of the protest is the fact that the winner Alvin Greene is a complete unknown with no prior experience. He won the primary despite the fact that he has no campaign headquarters or material and in fact did not seem to campaign at all. Also curious is the pending criminal case in which he is accused of showing a pornographic website to a college student. Mr. Greene does not come across particularly well in interviews and CNN interviewer Don Lemon even went so far as to question his mental health and called it one of the most bizarre interviews he's ever had. So is this Republican tampering as many observers are accusing? (FiveThirtyEight weighs in) Did South Carolina voters give him the (59%-41%) victory because they thought he was Al Green, soul music's most insinuating singer? Or perhaps these are the wrong questions and we should be focusing on Alvin Greene's platform: jobs, better education for children and justice.
posted by jeremias on Jun 15, 2010 - 115 comments

The FBI has released their extensive files on US Senator Edward M. Kennedy to the public, covering their relationship with him between 1961 and 1985. The seven files, totaling more than 2,200 pages of documents reveal (among other things,) the perhaps unsurprising news that the late Senator received "scores" of death threats from radical groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, “Minutemen” organizations, and the National Socialist White People’s Party. The release was initiated by a Freedom of Information Act Request from Judicial Watch on May 3, 2010, (Complaint pdf) but the FBI gave the Senator's family the "rare opportunity" to raise objections before releasing the file.
posted by zarq on Jun 14, 2010 - 20 comments

Yesterday, the New York Times published an investigative report showing Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (D) either lied or spoke ambiguously about serving in Vietnam in several past public appearances. Blumenthal is currently the Democratic frontrunner for Senator Chris Dodd's Senate seat, and is expected to face former WWE CEO Linda McMahon (R). Today, McMahon's campaign announced they "fed" the story to the paper and posted the video of Blumenthal's statement to their YouTube channel. More from Politico. [more inside]
posted by zarq on May 18, 2010 - 124 comments

ACORN, the low-income community grassroots organisation, is set to close by April 1st, citing "a series of well-orchestrated, relentless, well-funded, right-wing attacks that are unprecedented since the McCarthy era". Meanwhile the New York Times has issued a correction on the stories which led to the 87-3 vote to remove ACORN's Federal funding (previously), admiting that "while footage shot away from the offices shows one activist, James O'Keefe, in a flamboyant pimp costume, there is no indication that he was wearing the costume while talking to the Acorn workers."
posted by Artw on Mar 22, 2010 - 87 comments

[A] seminal moment in the evolution of Republican obstructionism. [A] seminal moment in the history of Congress.
Senate Held Hostage. America Held Hostage.
Richard Shelby Shuts the Government Down. [more inside]
posted by jckll on Feb 5, 2010 - 282 comments

Carly Fiorina, perhaps best known as the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, is attempting to become the Republican candidate for Barbara Boxer's long-time Senate seat. But her nomination isn't sewed up yet; her potential GOP challenger is former Congressman and Stanford Law professor Tom Campbell. So earlier today, Fiorina's campaign released this political attack ad against Campbell. It features her newly-minted acronym "FCINO", it's about six times longer than most political ads, it makes copious use of stock photography, and it stars demon sheep with red glowing eyes. Wait, what?
posted by Asparagirl on Feb 3, 2010 - 155 comments

How America Can Rise Again by James Fallows
Is America going to hell? After a year of economic calamity that many fear has sent us into irreversible decline, the author finds reassurance in the peculiarly American cycle of crisis and renewal, and in the continuing strength of the forces that have made the country great: our university system, our receptiveness to immigration, our culture of innovation. In most significant ways, the U.S. remains the envy of the world. But here's the alarming problem: our governing system is old and broken and dysfunctional. Fixing it—without resorting to a constitutional convention or a coup—is the key to securing the nation's future. (via|previously)
posted by kliuless on Jan 6, 2010 - 61 comments

Joe Lieberman has a pony request.
posted by tylerfulltilt on Dec 18, 2009 - 66 comments

Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley opens up another Ask Chuck Webcast. The people respond. Grassley answers.
posted by Optimus Chyme on Dec 17, 2009 - 12 comments

The Senate votes to bring health care bill (text in an amendment) to floor, 60-39. Major concessions extracted by holdout senators. Other analysis here and here. Differences between this and the House bill.
posted by shivohum on Nov 22, 2009 - 74 comments

The House of Representatives just passed the health reform bill in a vote of 220-215.
posted by reenum on Nov 7, 2009 - 425 comments

A long-standing element of ufo/paranormal conspiracy theory, cattle mutilation has been reported in the United States for several decades. Here's some FOIA documents relating to the FBI's investigation (and discussions of whether they had jurisdiction to investigate) from the 1970's. All links are PDFs: cattle1.pdf, cattle2.pdf. cattle3.pdf, cattle4.pdf,cattle5.pdf.
posted by rmd1023 on Nov 3, 2009 - 30 comments

Jamie Leigh Jones alleges she was drugged and gang-raped by co-workers at Camp Harper in Iraq while employed by KBR. As explained by Senator Al Franken in this youtube clip, Ms. Jones had signed a contract requiring binding arbitration of employment related disputes. Sen. Franken introduced Amendment 2588, which would prohibit any use of Federal funds for Federal contractors that require such agreements. The amendment passed 68-30 (roll call). [more inside]
posted by aerotive on Oct 19, 2009 - 186 comments

ACORN already drew fire last year during the election, accused of voter fraud, although ACORN points out there was no real fraud going on [pdf]. Now, they are facing controversy over a recent video showing ACORN officials offering advice to amateur actors posing as a pimp and prostitute on what to say when seeking a mortgage for a brothel. A second video captured an ACORN worker claiming to have murdered her husband (she later said she was simply messing with the filmmakers). As a result of these recent controversies, the Senate voted 83-7 to prohibiting the use of funds to fund ACORN. [more inside]
posted by Deathalicious on Sep 16, 2009 - 159 comments