Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) has been a corrupt politician all his life. He knows all the tricks, whether for getting (and doing) special favors or for stopping any serious inquiry into how he does things. But now he’s in a spot of trouble he can’t dodge. Or can he?
While on the campaign trail last year with a friend, his opponent made it clear that he was a man that could reach across the aisle and compromise. Thereafter, a tea party leader in the room commented: “You mean like John McCain?” The tea party leader meant it facetiously and sadly the candidate was obviously befuddled by the remark – believing his propensity to compromise was a badge of honor. My friend humorously remarked:
Representative Paul Ryan first introduced the Ryan budget plan in 2008. This year, the House passed a version of it. Now he has a new version on his House web page. Supporters and opponents both focused on the Ryan budget plan as soon as Mitt Romney nominated Ryan for Vice President. This should surprise no one. Paul Ryan has a plan; the putative President does not. That plan does not impose Greek-style austerity. It does promise to balance the budget in the only way one can balance it: by cutting spending. When he wrote it, Paul Ryan faced reality, both financial and political.
A venal Senator, seeking to put his name on as many public monuments as possible, is bad enough. The United States Senate is full of that kind. (So, too, are most State Senates.) But a demagogue who would harm the interests of his own constituents to satisfy an ideology is worse. Such a Senator is Frank Lautenberg, the senior Senator from New Jersey.
Next Wednesday, the House of Representatives will vote on whether to cite Eric Holder, Attorney General, for contempt of Congress. The House scheduled that vote after Holder kept withholding information on Operation Fast and Furious, and after Rep. Darrell Issa showed that Holder knows more than he’s telling. But that citation, even if it passes, will be too little, too late.
Nancy Pelosi showed recently why she was never worthy to be Speaker of the House of Representatives, and indeed that her San Francisco constituents show incredibly bad judgment in re-electing her term after term. She actually said that the Founding Fathers would applaud the health care reform bill, or “Obamacare,” did they live to see it. In fact, Obamacare violates every precept for which they stood.
The Left embarrassed itself yesterday, and clearly talked too much, with its overheated rhetoric on the debt ceiling deal.
The White House and Congressional leaders have a deal on the debt ceiling. It is a Trojan horse of built-in tax hikes that solves nothing.
The Democratic Senate plan to raise the debt ceiling failed of cloture. Negotiations are now taking place behind closed doors.
The House, and nearly half the Senate, is in revolt against the Senate leadership over the debt ceiling. A deal now seems highly unlikely.
