President Obama started asking congressional Republicans for emergency Zika funding in March. BY May they hadn't done a damn thing. We wrote at the time that instead of cooperation, what the House Republican leaders had given Obama instead of cooperation was more deranged right-wing intransigence and more of their crazy, dangerous anomie.
With all this talk about an anti-Trump tsunami sweeping Ryan and his GOP House majority out of power, there are some hopeful signs, even if the DCCC doesn't have enough plausible candidates running to achieve that. One district the DCCC is studiously ignoring is TX-21-- the Austin/San Antonio corridor-- where derabged Trump enthusiast Lamar Smith managed to get a "free pass" from an increasingly out-of-touch Nancy Pelosi.
Barbara Lee says no wars without congressional approval; Fred Upton disagreesLast week the House passed the 2017 Defense Appropriations bill. As part of the debate, Barbara Lee (D-CA) offered an amendment that would prohibit the use of funds for the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, a blanket excuse any president-- Clinton or Trump-- could use to attack anyone, anywhere without seeking constitutionally-mandated congressional approval.
Unless...Right-wing extremists and anti-immigrant fanatics Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Steve King (R-IA) offered two amendments Thursday to prevent undocumented immigrants from serving in the U.S. military. Gosar's amendment was defeated 210-211, 30 Republicans crossing the aisle to vote with every single Democrat.
Thursday the House passed, HR 5279, the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act, 297-127. All but two dozen Democrats reluctantly voted for it, allowing it to pass in the face of opposition from 103 rabid right-wing Republicans who were prepared to let Puerto Rico descend into chaos and misery.
The nature of political conservatism is corruptionFriday morning the House rejected a plan to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics-- which concerned me, because I just filed a complaint against corrupt conservative Patrick Murphy with it. Right wing New Mexico multimillionaire oil industry crook, Stevan Pearce (R) was behind an amendment to kill it by taking $191,000 out of its budget.
