Politics: Political Columns and Blogs - The Washington Post

Everything you need to know about how the Supreme Court could rule on same-sex marriage

Sean Sullivan — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 10:32:30 GMT

The Supreme Court could announce decisions in a pair of landmark gay marriage cases as soon as Thursday morning.

So, how might the highest court in the land decide, and which states will be affected? Thanks to a fantastic new interactive Washington Post graphic, you can explore all of the possibilities.

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The ‘SNAP Challenge:’ The claim that food stamp recipients get by on $4.50 a day

Glenn Kessler — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 10:02:00 GMT

“Why would Members of Congress commit to spend only $4.50 a day on food and live on the budget of the average SNAP recipient? . . . Almost 30 of my colleagues and I are taking the SNAP Challenge — spending, on average, $1.50 a meal to highlight how critical this lifeline is for so many families.”

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How much money did Customs and Border Protection need to avoid furloughs?

Josh Hicks — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 10:01:54 GMT

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told Customs and Border Protection employees on Wednesday that they would not be furloughed this year, despite the agency's initial estimate that its employees would have to take 14 days off because of the sequester.

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Intelligence contractors omitted from whistleblower protections

Joe Davidson — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:43:21 GMT

When Edward Snowden dropped his bombshell about widespread government snooping, he revealed more than National Security Agency secrets.

His actions also exposed big holes in whistleblower protections available to intelligence community employees and contractors.

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Former special agents sentenced to 8 months in prison for fraud

Josh Hicks — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:34:51 GMT

A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced two former special agents for the Commerce Department Office of the Inspector General to eight months in prison for submitting false expense claims and clocking hours they didn’t work.

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IRS may pay $70 million in employee bonuses

Josh Hicks — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:04:32 GMT

The Internal Revenue Service is in talks with its employees union regarding $70 million in bonuses despite a directive from the White House budget office telling agencies not to issue such awards, according to a Republican senator.

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America’s broken bootstraps

George F. Will — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 23:21:52 GMT

All men are by nature equal,

But differ greatly in the sequel.

A quarter of a millennium later, that couplet from a colonial American almanac defines an urgent challenge. Modern society increases how, and the predictability of how much, people differ in the sequel.

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Fence-sitting Republicans need to choose sides on immigration

E.J. Dionne Jr. — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 23:19:02 GMT

The future of immigration reform is, for now at least, not up to House Speaker John Boehner. It is in the hands of a group of moderately conservative Republican senators who have to decide whether their desire to solve a decades-old problem outweighs their fear of retaliation from the party’s right wing.

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Team Obama vs. Team Marijuana

Al Kamen — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 23:11:00 GMT

It was rematch time for the White House softball team, which, as you might recall, got smoked last summer by a squad fielded by a coalition of pro-marijuana groups.

The two teams squared off again Wednesday night at the field on the Ellipse, just off the White House’s front lawn, and again the One Hitters — you guessed it, that’s the pot lobby’s team — beat STOTUS, which is shorthand for “softball team of the U.S.”

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Customs and Border Protection avoids sequester furloughs

Josh Hicks — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 22:52:08 GMT

Congress has approved a plan to avoid furloughs for U.S. Customs and Border Protection employees in fiscal 2013, according to a Wednesday statement by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

CBP also will continue to pay for “administratively uncontrollable overtime,” which applies to Border Patrol agents when they work unscheduled extra hours to fulfill their duties, according to the announcement.

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Tea party scalds Marco Rubio

Dana Milbank — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 22:18:15 GMT

The tea party returned to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, but this time the don’t-tread-on-me crowd trod upon one of its own.

Much of the scene was familiar: the yellow flags, the banners protesting tyranny and socialism, the demands to impeach President Obama and to repeal Obamacare. But there was a new target of the conservatives’ ire: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and his “amnesty” plan for illegal immigrants. The loathing of this onetime darling of the movement — Rubio rode the tea party wave to office in 2010 — could be seen in the homemade signs on the East Lawn of the Capitol proclaiming, “Rubio RINO” (Republican In Name Only) and “Rubio Lies, Americans Die.” Rubio antagonism became a main theme of the event, held by Republican Reps. Steve King (Iowa), Louie Gohmert (Tex.), Michele Bachmann (Minn.) and other opponents of the bipartisan Senate immigration legislation that Rubio negotiated.

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Alex Sink says Charlie Crist would be 'a disaster' as Democratic nominee

Sean Sullivan — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 21:46:30 GMT

EARLIER ON THE FIX:

Harry Reid's support for D.C. statehood is nothing new

Which immigration amendments will pass next?

The remarkable consistency of President Obama's job approval numbers

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The remarkable consistency of President Obama's job approval numbers

Chris Cillizza — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 19:30:25 GMT

Here's the truth about President Obama's job approval numbers: They don't move around all that much.

New numbers from Pew Research Center tell that story. Forty nine percent of respondents approved of the job President Obama while 43 percent disapproved. Those numbers are remarkably unchanged from where Obama stood in a January Pew poll despite the fact that the past five and a half months have seen the failure of the White House's attempt to change gun laws, the IRS scandal, evidence of an improving economy, the NSA revelations and plenty of other "major" news events.

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Capitol Hill post offices closures get final stamp

Emily Heil — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 19:13:00 GMT

The fight over post office closures is hitting close to home for members of Congress and Hill staffers — the U.S. Postal Service is finally shutting down three Capitol Hill facilities.

Lawmakers and other Hill denizens may now have to (gasp!) walk to the next building to buy their stamps, now that the USPS on Wednesday issued “Final Determination to Close notices” (which means what you’d assume it does) at the post offices in the Rayburn, Cannon, and Capitol buildings.

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Rush Holt is no Cory Booker. And he's just fine with that.

Sean Sullivan — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:40:58 GMT

Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), in his own words, is no Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D).

"I'll be the first to admit, I'm no Cory Booker," Holt says in an introductory campaign video released Wednesday. "I don't have a million Twitter followers, I've never run into a burning building, and I'm not friends with Mark Zuckerberg, though I did like him on Facebook."

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Moniz taps veteran environmentalist as chief of staff

Al Kamen — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:18:00 GMT

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has tapped highly regarded environmentalist Kevin Knobloch, most recently president of the advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists, to be his chief of staff.

Knobloch had also been the organization’s legislative director for arms control and national security and had worked on the Hill in the ‘80s as legislative director for former Democratic senator Tim Wirth of Colorado and legislative assistant and press secretary for former New York Democratic representative Ted Weiss.

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Sequester furloughs avoided for Customs and Border Protection

Josh Hicks — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 17:46:50 GMT

Congress has approved a plan to avoid furloughs for U.S. Customs and Border Protection employees during fiscal 2013, according to a Wednesday statement from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

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Who will be the next Republican senator to embrace gay marriage?

Sean Sullivan — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 17:18:15 GMT

Note: We originally posted this item on April 5. We're resurfacing it now, in light of Sen. Lisa Murkowski's Wednesday announcement that she supports gay marriage. With the Supreme Court expected to rule soon on cases involving gay marriage, the issue is front and center once again. So, it's worth revisiting which Senate Republican might be next to follow in the footsteps of Murkowski and Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.). We've taken Murkowski off the list, and reached out to the offices of the remaining senators on it. We will update with any change in position.

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Americans don't believe in much of anything -- and why that's a terrible thing for politics

Chris Cillizza — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:26:18 GMT

People no longer trust their government, their media or much of anything else to do the right thing.

That lack of confidence, which has accelerated in the last decade or so, is a major (and often overlooked) factor in the current political morass in which the country finds itself -- deeply divided along partisan lines without anything even close to objective force able to referee us through the mess.

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White House softball team to suit up against pot lobby for a rematch

Emily Heil — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:07:27 GMT

It’s rematch time for the White House softball team, which you might recall got smoked last summer by a team fielded by a coalition of pro-marijuana groups.

The two teams square off again on Wednesday night at the field on the Ellipse just off the White House’s front lawn.

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Grassley: IRS about to pay $70 million in bonuses

Josh Hicks — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 15:08:11 GMT

A few items that caught our attention on Wednesday:

IRS is about to pay $70 million in bonuses despite administration directive. That's according to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who said his office has learned that the IRS is executing an agreement with the employees' union on Wednesday to pay the bonuses. A directive from the White House budget office tells agencies to not pay discretionary monetary awards under the sequester "unless legally required," according to an Associated Press article.

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Chris Christie, Marco Rubio and the politics of sports

Sean Sullivan — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:21:10 GMT

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) is a Dallas Cowboys fan in a New York Giants/Jets world. And Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is the guy with the off-the-mark NBA Finals prediction.

Those are both good things for them in the world of politics.

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Jimmy Fallon on the Senate immigration bill (VIDEO)

Sean Sullivan — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:49:17 GMT

Why is the Senate's immigration bill so long? NBC's Jimmy Fallon has an answer.

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How Germany feels about Obama -- in 2 magazine covers

Aaron Blake — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:01:34 GMT

President Obama returns to Berlin today to deliver a speech at the Brandenburg Gate, five years after a speech by then-candidate Obama drew more than 200,000 people (and made its way into a negative ad from Arizona Sen. John McCain).

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Eric Holder: Echoes of other Washington officials?

Al Kamen — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:00:00 GMT

Attorney General Eric Holder, constantly skewered by conservatives, came under fire recently from Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who said Holder wasn’t up to the job.

Some might think heavy incoming from another flank might cause Holder to leave.

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