comsc US Politics | AMERICAblog News: Thursday Morning Open Thread
Join Email List | About us | AMERICAblog Gay
Elections | Economic Crisis | Jobs | TSA | Limbaugh | Fun Stuff

Thursday Morning Open Thread



| Reddit | Tumblr | Digg | FARK

Good morning.

The President will be dropping by a meeting on the START Treaty this morning. That session will be attended by a bipartisan group of foreign policy experts according to the Daily Guidance:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Senator John Kerry; Senator Richard Lugar; former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright, James Baker, and Henry Kissinger; former Secretaries of Defense William Cohen and William Perry; former National Security Advisor General Brent Scowcroft; Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General James Cartwright; and Senator Sam Nunn.
Republican Senators are blocking passage of the START Treaty, because that's what GOPers do these days.

The President is meeting with the Democratic leaders from Congress today. This was supposed to be a meeting with GOP leaders, too, but they blew off Obama. Even the Washington Post is ever so slowly beginning to notice (finally) that Republicans don't do bipartisanship. There's an article in today's paper titled, "GOP may be less eager than Obama for bipartisanship." I know, duh? Right? And, "less eager" is still a gross understatement. But, don't expect the Dean of the DC press corps, David Broder (who obsesses about bipartisanship), to notice. He's got another nonsensical column about how bad Democrats are today.

Looks like the Senate will be voting on the Defense Authorization bill with the DADT language. The devil is, of course, in the details. Obama and Reid have vowed to bring the bill to the floor, but that only means there will be a cloture vote. We have to get past cloture first. If that happens, the bill has to pass with the compromise DADT language intact. Then, there will be a conference on the Defense Authorization bill and three of the key players (McCain and the Chair and Ranking members of the House Armed Services Committees Skelton and McKeon) oppose repeal. That conference committee bill then has to pass both Houses. There's a lot to do and not a lot of time. Senators better be prepared to stay until this is done.

Lots swirling around...


blog comments powered by Disqus