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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (77969)	2/26/2010 10:08:03 AM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Pelosi losing grip on the House? by Ed Morrissey February 26, 2010 Democrats in the House appear to have started falling apart following a year of frustration and lost opportunities. Jonathan Allen reports on three events that would have taxed leadership had they happened individually. Coming as they did all on one day, the Politico reporter wonders whether Nancy Pelosi has lost her grip on her divided caucus, and whether the House will get any work done this year: <<< Shortly after dinnertime, New York Democrat Charlie Rangel emerged from his private hideaway after news broke that he would be admonished by the House ethics committee. Yet reporters in the Capitol rushed right past Rangel to ask House Democratic leaders about a critical intelligence bill that had just been pulled over a torture provision. The language had been inserted in defiance of leadership by House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.). At the same time, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was slated to meet with leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus to try to salvage a routine, $15 billion jobs bill that turned into a piñata for progressives, the moderate Blue Dog Coalition and members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Any of these three issues – a floundering jobs bill, a hastily scotched intelligence authorization or an ethics committee admonishment of the powerful chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee – would qualify as mid-level crises. Together, these incidents illustrated a chamber in a mini-meltdown near week’s end. >>> Ironically, that jobs bill became a piñata for progressives because Harry Reid refused to proceed with the more expensive bipartisan bill concocted by Max Baucus and Charles Grassley. As I wrote yesterday, the relatively paltry $15 billion bill doesn’t have enough in it to stimulate much of anything except more bureaucracy. House Democrats were expecting a bill 20 times the size of what the Senate passed, especially the progressives, who griped about Porkulus only because it didn’t get stuffed with enough spending the first time. On the intel bill, no one seems sure how it wound up with the objectionable language on criminalizing harsh interrogations. Jane Harman, who used to be the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee until Pelosi unceremoniously tossed her off for her own political reasons, called the Jim McDermott language a “mystery.” It was no mystery; progressives had demanded action along those lines, and Pelosi either let them run wild or didn’t know what was happening. Either way, it doesn’t make for a picture of skilled leadership. Part of Pelosi’s problem, though, is that progressives have become irate at Senate Democrats who won’t pass bills radical enough for them. They have been told to pipe down all year, and after losing the public option on health care, they’re angry. The CBC is almost entirely comprised of progressives, so their action on the jobs bill is just a subset of the opposition to the Reid approach. Pelosi has fanned that discontent rather than sooth it, again for her own political purposes, but she may be about to reap the consequences of both her agenda and her management style. Even if Democrats survive the midterms, they may be realizing that Pelosi simply has to go, and someone with better people skills should take her place. hotair.com

To: Sully- who wrote (77969)	2/27/2010 9:30:41 AM
From: FJB	3 Recommendations Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 90947

CNN Poll: Majority says government a threat to citizens' rights Posted: February 26th, 2010 09:00 AM ET From CNN Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com Fifty-six percent of Americans say the government poses an immediate threat to individual rights and freedoms. Washington (CNN) – A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll. Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government's become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of those polled disagree. The survey indicates a partisan divide on the question: only 37 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Independents and nearly 7 in 10 Republicans say the federal government poses a threat to the rights of Americans. According to CNN poll numbers released Sunday, Americans overwhelmingly think that the U.S. government is broken - though the public overwhelmingly holds out hope that what's broken can be fixed. The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted February 12-15, with 1,023 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the overall survey.