CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Tea Party activists hit the Hill, arrested outside Pelosi’s office « - Blogs from CNN.com

Disarray. That's one word to describe the status of the Obama administration's legislative program as Congress heads into its final four weeks of work before the August recess. A watered-down cap-and-trade bill passed the House narrowly last month, but Sen. Barbara Boxer has decided not to bring up her version in the upper chamber until September. Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, who promised a health-care bill last month, still isn't delivering, and neither is the Health Committee's Christopher Dodd. They're both trying to nibble down cost estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, which has put the price tag at a trillion or more. But their latest ploys — broad-based tax increases, transferring more of the Medicaid burden to the states — sound like sputtering. Meanwhile, Majority Leader Harry Reid says he's taken off the table one approach that has potential bipartisan support — ending the tax preference for employer-provided insurance. In the House, there is more chaos.

And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and Shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to enquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind? Let our answer be this: America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights. [see comments section...]

"A so-called public plan option won't touch the foundations of this dysfunctional, wasteful, multi-payer system of insurers. It will not provide cost control." -- Quentin Young, M.D., Physicians for a National Health Program. Key congressional committees are hearing testimony this week, and there will be a public rally for single-payer on Thursday.

Conservatives are using sordid story of killer unicorn to lick their collective wounds, but there's more to Specter's past than just pulp.

After news that U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter will have to be replaced, plenty of names are being bandied about, and some of them just happen to belong to highly qualified women. (I guess some people aren't pacified by the bench's current female tokenism.) But Vanity Fair's Nell Scovell has an offbeat suggestion for the right woman for the job: Anita Hill. Yes, that Anita Hill. Scovell writes of the Brandeis University law professor:"She’s reasonably young, smart, and -- after her ordeal testifying at Clarence Thomas’s 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearing -- she certainly understands politics as well as law." But, really, the recommendation is based on the "potential for healing" (aka political payback): "I want the still ranking member of the Judiciary Committee Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) to finally treat Hill with the respect she deserves. I want Hill confirmed with more votes than Thomas. And, mostly, I want Hill to counter Thomas’s continued assaults on personal freedoms and equality." Note: Ah, revenge is sweet and so are you...

"E.D. Hill has been jabbed out of her Fox News segment. Hill is the anchor who suggested that Barack and Michelle Obama's fist bump could be interpreted as a "terrorist fist jab." Hill, who once won an Emmy for her work at WHDH-TV in Boston, was replaced in a new line-up on Fox."

America's Pulse, E.D. Hill's show where the Terrorist Fist Jab was invented, ends on Monday. This stuff just works itself out somehow.

"What does Hillary want? What does she want?" Senator Clinton asked last night. What does she want? Seriously? This misguided and self-centered attitude is what ultimately doomed her campaign. It should never have been about what she wants -- or, now, what she's demanding as ransom in exchange for releasing her supporters. Senator Clinton is effectively holding up the works and delaying the big show even though she has spent too many weeks inexplicably bolstering Senator McCain's chances over Senator Obama in November -- even though every second she's remained in this race, despite the mathematical reality, she has forced Senator Obama to keep his army divided, when it ought to have been raging forward in a unified, fist-pumping head-first frontal assault against the nefarious Bush Republican political machine. But she's Senator Clinton and she gets to do and demand whatever she wants for some reason. Even if it means diminishing the nominee and boosting the Republicans. Even if it means a victory for Senator McCain. Even if it means the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. Even if it means 100 more years (or whatever McCain is saying today) in Iraq. Even if it means, as Thom Hartmann said yesterday, "More death."

A group called VoteBoth has been leading the charge for Clinton and Obama to team up on the Democratic ticket.But the people behind it come from just one of those camps,Clinton's, and one of their goals may be keeping Clinton's White House prospects alive.The group's founder, Adam Parkhomenko, until recently worked as an assistant to Patti Solis Doyle, who was Clinton's campaign manager until February. Parkhomenko in 2003 founded the Draft Hillary for President Committee. Also VoteBoth's spokesman is Sam Arora, who in recent years worked for Clinton and for former Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe, Clinton's presidential campaign chairman.VoteBoth's Facebook page lists three others as administrators, all with Clinton connections.

Remember the mysterious fires that occurred on Capitol Hill last fall? No, it wasn't a terrorist plot - it was a Capitol Hill police officer, who has at least admitted to causing one of them.

Another excellent drawing and commentary by The Searcher. The man has talent and foresight! HILLARY: But what about the focus groups? We tested honest and straightforward, and it tested horribly. AIDE: Uh, yes and no. We tested YOU attempting honest and straightforward. But the focus groups never bought it. Apparently genuine is more than a conversational style. And quite frankly, you made them very uncomfortable.

On Wed, Mark Klein, a telecom technician who states he cooperated w/ AT$T and the NSA in their ILLEGAL eavesdropping program will be testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Klein states, “I have first-hand knowledge of the clandestine collaboration between one giant telecommunications company, AT&T, and the NSA to facilitate the most comprehensive illegal domestic spying program in history,”later adding, "AT&T built technology to help the government’s domestic warrantless wiretapping program..."

The Roberts-Scalia-Thomas-Alito-and-sometimes-Kennedy fivesome on the Court today is the closest the country has come to the domination of the third branch of government by the same ideology that gave us the Bush administration and its Congressional and Fourth Estate enablers.

"In June, Timothy Hill, the press secretary for Rep. David Davis (R-TN), used his office computer to make a series of edits to his boss’s Wikipedia page, deleting information about political contributions from the pharmaceutical industry."

When Robert Steinbuch discovered his girlfriend had discussed intimate details about their sex life in her online diary, the Capitol Hill staffer didn't just get mad. He got a lawyer.