Eight senators are urging Attorney General Eric Holder to open a formal investigation into potential violations of civil and criminal laws related to issues surrounding the ongoing BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The eight consist of seven Democrats and one left-leaning independent, and all are members of the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee. They wrote Holder Monday, asking the nation’s top law enforcement official to probe whether BP “made false and misleading statements to...
Monthly Archives: May 2010
White House Counters Right’s Favorite Attack Against Court Nominee Kagan Head On
The White House has begun pushing back against one of the chief attack lines that prominent conservatives have launched against President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court. White House blogger Jesse Lee published a post Monday titled, “Elena Kagan: ‘Supportive Of the Men And Women Who Are Fighting To Protect Us’,” directly in answer to a frequent criticism from the Right against Kagan, which is that as dean of the Harvard Law School, she barred military recruiters from campus....
Senate Majority Leader: Wall Street Greed Spills Into The Gulf Of Mexico
Capitol Hill may be busy both with considering financial reform legislation, as well as dealing with the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, they share a common root: human greed. The Nevada Democrat on Monday sought to connect dots between the Senate’s consideration of a package of new regulation of Wall Street and the environmental disaster unfolding off the coast of Louisiana in an effort to bring the financial reform...
Capitol Hill Gusher: Giant BP Gulf Coast Spill Yields Flow Of Oil Related Legislation
While the BP oil disaster continues to leak as much as 100,000 barrels a day into the waters off the coast of Louisiana, it’s also gushing legislation across Capitol Hill as lawmakers work to contain the spill’s environmental and economic damage. House and Senate Democrats are unveiling a growing number of bills in response to the disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico, caused by an explosion last month on an offshore drilling platform leased by energy giant BP....
Capitol Idea: Obama’s Most ‘Supreme’ Influence Could Come In a Second Term
Appointing a new justice to sit on the Supreme Court is one of the most profound, and long-lasting, duties any president can exercise. Of course, he can carry out this particular responsibility only when a vacancy opens up, which can occur at such irregular intervals that they seem to happen at random. George W. Bush got chances to nominate two justices, including a new chief justice — both of which came only in his second term. Bush’s father also...
Republicans Protect BP In The Senate
GOP senators have blocked consideration of legislation that would force BP and other oil companies to pay the full amount for cleanup and other damage resulting from a spill, such as that currently underway in the Gulf of Mexico. Republicans objected Thursday to the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act, a Democratic bill that would raise the liability caps for oil companies from $75 million to $10 billion. New Jersey Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Bob Menendez, as well as Florida...
Republicans Who Hate and their Gardeners
The whole economy of Southern California would collapse without underpaid, sub-minimum wage workers, and the only people who fall into that category are the undocumented. There was an unwritten code among the police to ignore them, unless they made trouble.
Senate Defeats GOP Attempt To Water Down Derivatives Reform By Wide Margin
The Senate Thursday swept aside a Republican amendment which would have weakened proposed legislation to regulate and shine a light one of the most shadowy markets on Wall Street. By a vote of 39-59, senators defeated a substitute amendment offered by Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) that would have weakened a measure put forward to impose new rules on what today is an unregulated $600 trillion derivatives market. That means the Wall Street Transparency and Accountability Act of 2010, introduced...
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