| November 27, 2011 | - The congressional supercommittee assigned to devise a plan for reining in the federal deficit failed to reach an agreement, triggering $1.2 trillion in budget cuts that will take effect in 2013, including cuts to defense spending and Medicare. Senate Democrats planned to follow up the failed talks by introducing $400 billion in new spending legislation over the coming weeks, while Republicans indicated that they would try to reconfigure the automatic cuts in order to spare defense programs. “The knives,” said Senator Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), “are over our heads.”
| Source 1:
Los Angeles Times
Source 2:
The Hill
Source 3:
Reuters via NBC
Source 4:
Politico
|
| November 13, 2011 | - Silvio Berlusconi, who during the 17 years since he was first elected prime minister has been accused of tax fraud, mafia collusion, bribery of law-enforcement officials, and solicitation of an underage prostitute, stepped down after Italy’s parliament passed austerity measures seeking to contain the impact of the country’s $2.6 trillion debt, which he had been denying was a problem. Italians shouted “Fool! Fool!” outside Quirinale Palace, where Berlusconi submitted his resignation, while a makeshift orchestra played the “Hallelujah” chorus from Handel’s “Messiah.” “He leaves an Italy that is more poor,” said Democratic Party politician Livia Turco, “and was made a joke by everyone.” Economist Mario Monti was named interim prime minister.
| Source 1:
Los Angeles Times
Source 2:
New York Times
Source 3:
New York Times
Source 4:
Washington Post
|
| October 5, 2011 | - Senate Democrats added a 5 percent surtax on millionaires to President Obama's $447-billion jobs bill, and Republican state representative Ritch Workman of Melbourne, Florida, filed a bill to reinstate the practice of dwarf-tossing, which was banned in 1989. “All that it does is prevent some dwarfs from getting jobs they would be happy to get,” said Workman.
| Source 1:
Associated Press via MSNBC
Source 2:
Palm Beach Post
|
| July 31, 2011 | -
Democratic and Republican leaders concluded a week of fierce debate by agreeing on a “framework” deal to resolve the U.S. debt-ceiling crisis. Were the House and Senate to approve the deal, the ceiling would be raised for the seventy-ninth time in fifty years, increasing in the near term by $900 billion alongside an immediate $917 billion cut in federal discretionary spending. A bipartisan committee would be convened to seek ways of reducing the deficit by at least an additional $1.5 trillion in the next decade. The provisional agreement was reached only two days after the House passed and the Senate rejected John Boehner’s bill to cut spending by $917 billion. “Sausage making is not pretty,” said California senator Dianne Feinstein, “but the sausage we have, I think, is a very different sausage from when we started.”
| Source 1:
CNN
Source 2:
NYT
Source 3:
LAT
|
| July 24, 2011 | - New York State approved its first same-sex marriages under a marriage-equality bill passed last month. In New York City, 659 couples received marriage licenses and 483 were wed. “We feel a little more human today,” said Ray Durand, 68, after marrying his longtime partner. Said Democratic State Senator Ruben Díaz Sr. at a rally protesting the new law, “Today, we start the war.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 22, 2011 | - In session for a total of 59 seconds, a skeleton crew of Senate Democrats ended a partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration, putting 4,000 employees back to work and allowing the government to resume collecting $200 million per week in airline-ticket taxes.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
AP via Yahoo!
|
| June 11, 2011 | -
Republican and Democratic leaders, including Nancy Pelosi, called for the resignation of Representative Anthony Weiner (D., N.Y.), who admitted at a press conference that he had publicly tweeted a photograph of his crotch intended to be sent privately to a 21-year-old woman, and that he had in recent years sent explicit photographs and messages to other women. Before the press conference, publisher Andrew Breitbart, who had disseminated some of these photos, took the podium and demanded an apology from the mainstream media for impugning his coverage of Weiner. “Everything we've reported about this story has been true,” he said. “I'm doing this to save his family.” Weiner checked himself into a psychological treatment center and requested a leave of absence from the House.
| Source 1:
WSJ
Source 2:
Int'l Business Times
Source 3:
LAT
Source 4:
NYT
Source 5:
Slate
Source 6:
NYT
|
| May 24, 2011 | -
Democrat Kathy Hochul won a special election to become the Congressional
Representative for New York's District 26, a seat Republicans have held for four decades. Republicans denied that Hochul's victory was a response to their proposal to privatize Medicare, even though Hochul was thought certain to lose until she began attacking her opponent for supporting the plan.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 18, 2011 | - Musashi Waki of the opposition Liberal Democratic Party shouted at Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan about the slow progress. “You should be bowing your head in apology,” he said. “You clearly have no leadership at all.”
| Source:
AO
|
| April 9, 2011 | - Less than an hour and a half before a budget-negotiation stalemate would have necessitated the first U.S. government shutdown since 1995, Democrats and Republicans worked out a compromise. The stopgap agreement, which will fund government operations until Thursday, April 14, proposes a $38-billion reduction in annual spending, the largest ever budget cut, achieved by slashing mainly health and education allocations, including public housing, as well as Pell grants for low-income college students. The military, however, would receive $5 billion more than it did last year.
| Source:
NYT
|
| March 16, 2011 | - The Browning M1911 semiautomatic pistol was declared the state gun of Utah, and the U.S. House of Representatives ended a program (implemented when Democrats controlled the House) that had replaced plastic utensils and foam cups with compostable products in the House cafeterias.
| Source 1:
Talking Points Memo
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| March 12, 2011 | - After Wisconsin governor Scott Walker signed into law a bill that strips public employees of their collective-bargaining rights, the 14 Democratic state senators who fled in an effort to obstruct the bill returned. They were met by 100,000 supporters, marking the biggest protest since the crisis began a month ago, with many chanting “This is what democracy looks like!”
| Source:
Los Angeles Times
|
| February 28, 2011 | - Negotiations broke down between Wisconsin's Democratic state senators and Governor Scott Walker over Walker's proposal to cut benefits and eliminate collective-bargaining rights for state workers. The senators, who left the state last month to prevent passage of the bill, acknowledged that they would likely be forced to return without a compromise solution. “We will have accomplished some of our purpose,” said State Senator Fred Risser. “To slow things up and let people know what was in this bill.” Wisconsin lawmakers were also considering a bill to ban prank phone calls.
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
New York Times
Source 3:
The Wisconsin Badger Herald
|
| February 22, 2011 | - More than 70,000 protesters rallied in Madison, Wisconsin, against Governor Scott Walker's proposal to strip public-sector unions of their collective-bargaining rights. The state's Republican-controlled assembly passed Walker's plan, while fourteen Democrats in the state senate continued hiding in Illinois to stall a vote in the upper house, where Republicans also hold a majority. Many non-union Wisconsin residents agreed with Walker's crackdown. “I know there was a point for unions back in the day,” said Carrie Fox, who works for a billboard-advertising company. “But now there’s workers’ rights; there’s laws that protect us.” Vicki Guzman, a Canadian government employee who drove down from Guelph, Ontario, to join the protests, said, “It's about solidarity, eh?”
| Source 1:
Reuters
Source 2:
Reuters
Source 3:
Chicago Tribune
Source 4:
NYT
|
| February 18, 2011 | - Fourteen Democratic Wisconsin state senators fled Wisconsin in order to prevent a vote on a bill that would eliminate collective-bargaining rights for most government workers. In response, the Tea Party organized an anti-union rally. “We see this as the opening salvo of the 2012 election season,” said rally organizer Drew Ryun. “And we like the odds.”
| Source 1:
Chicago Tribune
Source 2:
MSNBC
Source 3:
LAT
|
| December 17, 2010 | - Senate Democrats failed to bring to a vote a $1.1 trillion spending bill needed to fund the federal government for the remainder of the fiscal year. “A number of Republican senators told me they'd like to see this pass,” explained Senate majority leader Harry Reid, “but they can't support it.”
| Source:
CNN
|
| November 29, 2010 | - Senate Republicans defeated two attempts by Democrats to end Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy and to extend tax cuts for the middle-class, and it was estimated that 15 percent of incoming members of the House of Representatives, of whom 90 percent are Republicans, will sleep in their offices. “I'm not doing this as a political stunt,” said freshman Todd Rokita. “I'm doing this because I'm a cheap bastard.”
| Source 1:
NYTimes
Source 2:
WSJ
|
| November 12, 2010 | - Carl Paladino, Republican candidate for governor of New York and former landlord of two gay bars in Buffalo, told constituents that he opposed children being “brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option.” The next day, he appeared on the Today show and criticized Democratic opponent Andrew Cuomo for attending a gay pride parade with his children.
| Source 1:
Fox News
Source 2:
NY Daily News
Source 3:
NYT
|
| November 4, 2010 | - MSNBC suspended Keith Olbermann without pay for contributing $2,400 to the campaigns of three Democrats; the Republican National Committee showed its support for Nancy Pelosi's bid to become the Minority Leader by hanging above their entrance a “Hire Pelosi” banner; and on election night in Long Island, a retired New York policeman and his sons beat a 38-year-old Turkish immigrant with American flags, telling the recently naturalized man to “get out of my country.”
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
Talking Points Memo
Source 3:
New York Pos
|
| November 3, 2010 | -
Republicans took control of the House after picking up 60 seats in midterm elections, the largest gain in the House since 1948. Democrats maintained control of the Senate (though they lost six seats), and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid did not lose to Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle. “Harry Reid isn't just Dracula. He isn't just Lazarus; he's our leader,” said Senator John Kerry. “Our whole caucus is thrilled that he's unbreakable and unbeatable.”
| Source 1:
Time
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| October 31, 2010 | - President Obama declined to endorse Frank Caprio, the Democratic candidate for governor in Rhode Island, who is running against former Republican senator and Obama supporter Lincoln Chafee. Caprio replied that Obama could “shove it.”
| Source:
LA Times
|
| October 30, 2010 | - Among the vulnerable Democratic incumbents was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, whose opponent, Sharron Angle, campaigned in Las Vegas with Jon Voight.
| Source:
Politico
|
| October 29, 2010 | - Jennifer Frutchy, philanthropic advisor to billionaire Peter B. Lewis, who gave more than $20 million to the Democrats in the 2004 election, explained that Mr. Lewis was witholding funds this year to concentrate on building progressive infrastructure and marijuana reform. “That’s just where his head is right now,” she said.
| Source:
NYT
|
| October 14, 2010 | - Zimbabwean farmers were selling their daughters for maize, the United Nations reported that some fifteen thousand rapes were committed last year in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and a tenth of Germans said that they would prefer that a “Führer” take over their government.
| Source 1:
Daily News (Zimbabwe)
Source 2:
Al Jazeera
Source 3:
NYT
|
| October 6, 2010 | - Photos emerged of Democratic Virginia congressional candidate Krystal Ball at a Christmas party wearing a leotard and a Santa hat and holding a leash attached to the neck of her then husband, and
| Source:
The Hill
|
| October 4, 2010 | - Reports showed that interest groups have spent $80 million so far on the 2010 congressional elections, five times as much as they had at this point in the 2006 midterms. Over half of this was given by donors who did not disclose their identities, and Republican-leaning groups outspent Democratic allies 7 to 1; Democrats called for the Internal Revenue Service to investigate.
| Source 1:
Bloomberg
Source 2:
The Washington Post
|
| September 2, 2010 | - A UCLA study found that people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are 20 times more likely to contract monkeypox than they were in 1986, and the rise in hydraulic fracturing, or “frakking,” in the Northeast United States was causing fears that the process would render drinking water flammable.
| Source 1:
MSNBC
Source 2:
CNN
|
| August 28, 2010 | -
Democratic congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, admitted to steering 15 CBC scholarships to her own relatives and the children of aides. Johnson said she “unknowingly” broke the CBC's anti-nepotism rules and was working to “rectify the financial situation.”
| Source:
Politico
|
| July 25, 2010 | -
President Barack Obama signed into law the Restoring American Financial Stability Act, which expands federal regulation to derivatives markets and other previously unregulated areas of the financial system and creates a panel to monitor risks to the financial system. “These reforms represent the strongest consumer financial protections in history,” Obama said. Analysts estimated that three quarters of the bill's substance would be determined later, and congressional Democrats and labor leaders pushed for Elizabeth Warren, the architect of the consumer financial protection bureau created by the bill, to be named its first head. “Symbolically, it does seem incredibly important to pick somebody who not only invented the idea,” said Stephen Lerner of the Service Employees International Union, “but someone who doesn’t claim to be a neutral.”
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
New York Times
Source 3:
Forbes
Source 4:
New York Times
|
| June 17, 2010 | - A study commissioned by Mayor Michael Bloomberg revealed that New York City's administrators know far less about rats than previously assumed, and Andrew Cuomo, a gubernatorial candidate in the state, clarified his stance on pasta cookery. “As an independent Democrat,” he said, “I eat everybody’s lasagna. I eat conservatives' lasagna. I eat liberal lasagna.”
| Source 1:
NY Times
Source 2:
Gothamist via eater
|
| June 10, 2010 | - Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina won the Republican Senate nomination in California, and Alvin Greene, a 32-year-old unemployed military veteran who was recently charged with a felony for showing pornography to a university student, became South Carolina's Democratic Senate nominee. “The people of South Carolina have spoken,” Greene said. “The people of South Carolina have spoken. We have to be pro-South Carolina. The people of South Carolina have spoken. We have to be pro-South Carolina.” Democrats questioned how the unknown candidate could have beat his opponent, a former legislator and judge, and some speculated foul play. “I don't know if he was a Republican plant,” South Carolina Representative Jim Clyburn said. "What is an unemployed guy doing paying $10,000 to run for the United States Senate? That just doesn’t add up.”
| Source 1:
Los Angeles Times
Source 2:
Washington Post
Source 3:
Politico
|
| May 18, 2010 | - Commentators declared that a wave of “outsiders” was toppling incumbents in the Senate, as Democratic Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania lost a primary to Representative Joe Sestak, Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln was forced into a runoff with Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter, and Rand Paul won the Republican Senate nomination in Kentucky.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 16, 2010 | - Conservative Party leader David Cameron became the British prime minister after agreeing to form a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. Cameron and the Tories joined with Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats after Clegg began negotiating with Labour Party leaders about ruling through a minority coalition. Clegg's bluff forced the Conservatives to concede to the Liberal Democrats' demand that Britain hold a public referendum on electoral reform. London Mayor Boris Johnson called the maneuvering “ludicrous skullduggery” that was “absolutely spectacular and scandalous.” After four out of five Britons said they approved of the coalition government, Johnson praised the arrangement: “I just said it was like a cross between a bulldog and chihuahua, but what I meant is it will have a fantastic hybrid vigor.”
| Source 1:
NYT
Source 2:
NYT
Source 3:
BBC
Source 4:
NYT
|
| May 6, 2010 | - In the Democratic push for finance reform, democratic-socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont compromised on a proposal for public audits of the Federal Reserve, and Representative Ron Paul (R., Tex.) said that Sanders had “sold out.”
| Source:
Businessweek
|
| April 19, 2010 | - A “Restore the Constitution” rally was held in a National Park area near the U.S. Capitol, with speakers including Mike Vanderboegh, a former militiaman who encouraged readers of his blog to throw bricks through the windows of Democrats who voted for the health-care bill, and former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack, who refused to enforce the Brady handgun-control law.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| March 15, 2010 | -
Democrats predicted that they would pass healthcare reform by reconciliation next week, with the House voting on the Senate bill this Friday or Saturday. Opponents of the bill, led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, were expected to spend as much as $30 million in advertising targeting vulnerable House Democrats. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who claimed to have supported single-payer healthcare “for longer than many of you have lived on the face of the Earth,” regretted that there would be no public option in the bill.
| Source 1:
WP
Source 2:
WP
Source 3:
TNR
Source 4:
LAT
Source 5:
Time
Source 6:
NYT
|
| March 15, 2010 | - Senate Democrats also introduced a modest finance-reform bill that failed to include provisions for an independent consumer-protection agency; in a concession to Republicans, against the advice of members of the Fed's own Consumer Advisory Council, the bill would make the agency a part of the Federal Reserve.
| Source 1:
WSJ
Source 2:
LAT
Source 3:
NYT
Source 4:
Reuters
Source 5:
NYT
|
| March 8, 2010 | - House Democrat Eric Massa resigned over his treatment of a staffer at a recent wedding, admitting that he grabbed the man and said, “'Well, what I really ought to be doing is fracking you.'” He then “tousled the guy’s hair and left, went to my room, because I knew the party was getting to a point where it wasn't right for me to be there.”
| Source:
CNN
|
| March 7, 2010 | -
Democratic fundraiser Julianna Smoot, known as “The $75 million woman,” replaced Desiree Rogers as White House social secretary.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 26, 2010 | -
Democrats and Republicans met for the first-ever health-care summit, a televised event that ran well past its scheduled six hours and in which lawmakers, led by President Barack Obama, debated the merits of health-care legislation. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) complained that Democrats were being given more time to speak, a point Obama conceded. “You're right,” he said, “there was an imbalance on the opening statements because I'm the president.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| February 21, 2010 | - Evan Bayh of Indiana became the latest Democratic senator to announce that he would not seek reelection. “I love helping our citizens make the most of their lives,” said Bayh, “but I do not love Congress.”
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
CNN
|
| January 27, 2010 | -
President Barack Obama skipped jury duty to deliver his first State of the Union address. In the 70-minute speech, Obama blamed Republicans for “saying no to everything,” Democratic leaders in Congress for “horse-trading,” and the Supreme Court for a recent decision that will allow elections to be “bankrolled by special interests.” Justice Samuel Alito shook his head and mouthed the words “not true.” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dozed. Obama also criticized banks, lobbyists, his own political strategy, and, indirectly, root canals; an objection from the American Society of Endodontists was duly noted. The president announced that leftover stimulus money would generate 1.5 million new jobs for the 15 million out-of-work Americans and called for a new bill to create jobs by giving tax credits to small businesses that hire new workers. He planned to cut the federal deficit with a freeze on domestic spending that, if successful, would reduce the United States' expected shortfall by less than 3 percent over the next ten years. Thirty-two minutes into the address, Obama reiterated his commitment to health-care reform. He also said he wanted to end the Iraq war. “Make no mistake,” he said. “All of our troops are coming home.” He also committed 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan for December. MSNBC host Chris Matthews was impressed: “I forgot he was black tonight,” he said.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
New York Times
Source 3:
Washington Post
Source 4:
UPI
Source 5:
Bureau of Labor Statistics
Source 6:
New York Times
Source 7:
New York Times
Source 8:
New York Times
Source 9:
New York Times
Source 10:
MSNBC
|
| January 22, 2010 | -
Democratic senators and representatives were scrambling to find a way to push reforms forward, though many admitted that the health care bill was essentially dead. President Barack Obama said he understood why people “were all in a tizzy trying to figure out what this means for health reform” but did not suggest a plan.
| Source:
CNN
|
| January 20, 2010 | -
Republican Scott Brown defeated Democrat Martha Coakley to become a Massachusetts senator, nabbing the seat previously held by Ted Kennedy and ending the Democrats' filibuster-proof majority. With his two daughters, Arianna, 19, and Ayla, 21, standing behind him, Brown (who once posed nude for Cosmopolitan) announced during his victory speech that both children were “available.” Brown then corrected himself after Ayla whispered into his ear: “Only kidding,” he said, “Arianna definitely is not available. But Ayla is!”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 6, 2010 | -
Democratic Senators Christopher Dodd and Byron Dorgan and Governor Bill Ritter announced that they would not seek re-election in 2010.
| Source:
LA Times
|
| 0, 2009 | -
Democratic senators believed that a health-care bill with some sort of public option would soon pass in Congress. “Blue Dogs bark,” explained a disappointed Senator John McCain, “but never bite.”
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| 0, 2009 | - The U.S. Senate voted 60‒39 to bring the $848 billion health-care plan, with a diminished public option, to the floor for debate, but only after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid agreed to concessions for centrist Democrats, such as providing as much as $300 million in extra Medicare funding to Senator Mary Landrieu's state of Louisiana. No Republicans voted for the measure. A poll found that only 38 percent of Americans support the plan, an all-time low; another poll found that 52 percent of Republicans believe community organization umbrella group ACORN stole the 2008 election for President Barack Obama, with an additional 21 percent undecided.
| Source 1:
USA Today
Source 2:
Examiner.com
Source 3:
Talking Points Memo
|
| 0, 2009 | - A group of congressional Democrats put forth the Share the Sacrifice Act of 2010, calling for an increase in the income tax to fund the war in Afghanistan, now in its ninth year, and four men died trying to defuse a bomb left over from the Vietnam War.
| Source 1:
AP via Raw Story
Source 2:
AFP via Google
|
| December 24, 2009 | - Voting on Christmas Eve for the first time since 1895, the Senate passed a sweeping health-care bill that does not include a public option. Majority Leader Harry Reid accidentally voted “no” before instantly reversing his vote (“It was just--I am bushed,” he explained); ultimately, Democrats supplied every one of the 60 votes needed to pass the bill, leaving Republican Senator Orrin Hatch to complain that some of those votes were obtained with “a grab bag of back-room Chicago-style buyoffs.” The Senate bill will be merged next month with the version that passed the House, which does include a public option; among the issues to be reconciled are abortion coverage, the severity of fines for those who don't buy coverage, and the amount of government subsidies to those who are unable to afford insurance.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
New York Times
Source 3:
New York Times
Source 4:
NPR
|
| December 20, 2009 | - Senate Democrats succeeded in producing an “historic” health-care reform bill that will force millions of people to buy insurance and will tax existing benefits if they are too generous, but will not include a public option or force the pharmaceutical industry to lower its prices. Liberal Democrats were upset with Senator Joe Lieberman for playing bad cop in the Senate negotiation process, thus ensuring that both the public option and the Medicare “buy-in” options were scuttled.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
Talking Points Memo
Source 3:
Washington Post
Source 4:
Time Magazine
|
| December 11, 2009 | - Karl Rove predicted that the Democrats would shortly cease to be “masters of the political universe.”
| Source:
Wall Street Journal
|
| December 2, 2009 | -
President Barack Obama, after a meal of Chesapeake striped bass and mango sorbet, visited West Point and announced his plan to send 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan in order to “deny Al Qaeda a safe haven,” “reverse the Taliban's momentum,” and “strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan's security forces and government”; and then, after eighteen months (more than a year before the 2012 election), to start withdrawing troops. Republicans in Congress worried that the announcement of a withdrawal date would allow the Taliban and Al Qaeda to plan for the American military's departure, while Democrats questioned whether a significant drawdown in U.S. forces would actually occur. “Can any of you tell me, after July 2011, that we won't have tens of thousands of troops years beyond that date?” asked Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey. “We will have 100,000 forces, troops there,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates explained later in the week. “And they are not leaving in July of 2011. Some handful, or some small number, or whatever the conditions permit, will begin to withdraw at that time.” Representative Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona, suggested that the combined escalation and exit strategy was engineered to please critics. “There's an old adage that a camel is a horse designed by committee,” Flake said. “This looks to be a policy designed by committee, a little something for everyone.” Hillary Clinton pointed out that camels are sturdy, ancient, and, though plodding, will get you where you need to go.
| Source 1:
The Atlantic
Source 2:
NYT
Source 3:
NYT
Source 4:
NYT
Source 5:
Politico
|
| November 29, 2009 | - News leaked that President Barack Obama would send roughly 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, with the possibility of sending 10,000 more in a year, even as NATO allies spoke about withdrawing their own forces. Both Democrats and Republicans were skeptical of the strategy; Republican Senator Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) said that the call for phased deployment was “reminiscent of Vietnam.” Obama is expected, in a forthcoming speech at West Point, to provide a time frame for when American forces will leave the country and to stress that the goal in Afghanistan is to “defeat” Al Qaeda.
| Source 1:
The Daily Beast
Source 2:
Talking Points Memo
Source 3:
Talking Points Memo
|
| November 4, 2009 | - After forcing legislation to end term limits and spending $90 million of his personal fortune--fourteen times the budget of his Democratic opponent--Michael Bloomberg won a third term as mayor of New York.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 20, 2009 | - Twitter closed the accounts of 33 Connecticut
Republicans who had registered under the names of Democratic state representatives and posted tweets that state Republican chairman Chris Healy described as “satire.” “I'm not quite sure what the issue is,” said Healy of Twitter's decision, “other than that the Democrats were successful in stopping free speech.”
| Source:
Hartford Advocate
|
| October 6, 2009 | - House Democrats pledged to write into health-care-reform legislation a ban on the practice whereby some insurers deny coverage to battered women because domestic violence is designated a “pre-existing condition.”
| Source:
CNN
|
| September 19, 2009 | - After months of negotiation by the bipartisan “gang of six” in the Senate, Senator Max Baucus unveiled his $776-billion health-care reform bill, which is supported by none of the gang's three Republican members and received a lukewarm response from Democrats. Baucus's plan, which includes member-run insurance co-operatives but no public option, would mandate that all Americans buy insurance and would provide subsidies for those who can't afford it. The subsidies would be paid for in part by an excise tax on so-called “Cadillac” insurance plans, including those provided to firefighters, coal miners, and many other union workers. “That's not really a smart idea,” said Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller. The bill will now be taken up by the Senate Finance Committee, whose members have already drafted at least 564 amendments.
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
Minnesota Star Tribune
Source 3:
The Note
Source 4:
Newser
|
| September 12, 2009 | -
President Barack Obama addressed a joint session of Congress and implored Democrats to pass their own health-care legislation. During the speech, the president noted that the bill would not extend health insurance to illegal immigrants, at which South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson shouted, “You lie!” Afterwards, Wilson received $1 million in campaign contributions. Shares in health insurance companies went up, and the number of Americans without health insurance rose to 46.3 million.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
CNN
Source 3:
Marketwatch
Source 4:
CNN
Source 5:
New York Times
Source 6:
The Hill
Source 7:
CNN
Source 8:
Fox News
Source 9:
Politico
|
| September 4, 2009 | - Polls showed that the level of public support for health-care reform was plummeting, a result of both Democratic capitulation--as when Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D., Mont.), after a year of preparation, released a proposal that lacked a public option--and a Republican campaign of lies regarding “death panels,” the cost of medical care, cuts in Medicare benefits, and “rationing.” President Barack Obama indicated that the White House may give up on Congress and draft its own bill; he also telephoned representatives who support the public option, including Raul Grijalva (D., Ariz.), to talk about the bill. “I didn't come away from this discussion feeling that we were dead,” said Grijalva. The president scheduled a health-care speech before a joint session of Congress, and FOX News announced that it would not air it. A fight at a pro-health-care rally near Los Angeles ended when a pro-reform protester bit off the finger of an anti-reform protester.
| Source 1:
Who Runs Gov.
Source 2:
Politico
Source 3:
Washington Post
Source 4:
New York Times
Source 5:
KTLA
Source 6:
Black Star News
Source 7:
CNN
|
| August 9, 2009 | - With Congress in recess, opponents of and advocates for health-care reform stepped up their media campaigns. Angry citizens, led by industry front groups, former “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” organizers, and Rush Limbaugh, shouted down Democratic lawmakers at “town hall” meetings across the country. “Tyranny! Tyranny! Tyranny!” shouted protesters in Tampa, Florida. “Forty million illegals!” (Even though the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. are specifically excluded from the health-care plan.) Protesters waving “Don't Tread on Me” flags gathered at the closed offices of the Service Employees International Union in St. Louis, claiming that union members had attacked conservative activist Kenneth Gladney at a recent health-care forum. Gladney, who does not have health insurance, took up a collection for the treatment of his injuries.
| Source 1:
WaPo
Source 2:
TPM
Source 3:
WaPo
Source 4:
Huffington Post
Source 5:
USA Today
Source 6:
TNR
Source 7:
St. Petersburg Times
Source 8:
CNN
Source 9:
WaPo
Source 10:
Bloomberg
Source 11:
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Source 12:
Washington Examiner
Source 13:
Businessweek
Source 14:
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
|
| August 1, 2009 | -
Congress defied President Barack Obama and adjourned for the summer without passing a health-care-reform bill. The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved its own version of the bill 31-28 (with five Democrats and all 23 Republicans voting against it); its bill is one of five already produced or soon to be produced by the House and Senate. President Obama and congressional Democrats planned to tour the country to talk about the issue, while Republicans planned to identify the health-care plan as a failure akin to the $787 billion stimulus package, which after six months has yet to reverse unemployment. Health-insurance companies, described by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as “immoral” and “the villains in this,” were spending $1 million a day to lobby lawmakers. A poll found that 60 percent of Americans disapprove of Congress. Thirty-nine million Americans were on food stamps.
| Source 1:
FOXNews.com
Source 2:
CNN
Source 3:
CNN
Source 4:
The New York Times
Source 5:
CQ Politics
Source 6:
Politico
Source 7:
Fox News
Source 8:
Politico
Source 9:
USA Today
|
| July 24, 2009 | - The Congressional Budget Office announced that a proposed plan to control health-care spending would save only $2 billion over ten years, compared to a proposed $1 trillion in spending, although the agency also pointed out that the legislation could increase the proportion of people receiving insurance through their employers, despite Republican claims to the contrary. Democrats, with control of both the House and Senate, fought among themselves. House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman threatened to move the bill to the floor without a committee vote if the Blue Dogs, seven conservative Democrats, refused to cooperate; Nancy Pelosi vowed that the bill would pass without them. In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid simply caved to Republican pressure and announced that there would be no vote on a new health-care bill until after the August recess.
| Source 1:
Politico
Source 2:
The New York Times
Source 3:
Talking Points Memo
Source 4:
CBS News
|
| July 13, 2009 | - Sonia Sotomayor, who is expected to be confirmed to the Supreme Court in August, was interrogated for four days by Democratic and Republican senators of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Republicans grilled Sotomayor on her legal positions. Democrats lauded her; Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) said that her life story gave him “piel de gallina,” or goose bumps. Sotomayor was, however, not able to answer when Senator Al Franken (D., Minn.) asked her to name the one case that Perry Mason lost. “Didn't the White House prepare you for that?” he said. Reporters noted that Sotomayor was “a big toucher” who responded to Republican senators' proffered handshakes with a warm smile and a squeeze of their shoulders, and they also pointed out that on the second day of the hearings, when the judge was asked by Senator Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) to explain her “wise Latina woman” comment, she blinked at least 247 times while answering, averaging 90 blinks per minute in the morning; that rate decreased to 50 blinks per minute in the afternoon. At least four anti-abortion protesters were arrested at the hearings, including 61-year-old Norma McCorvey, better known as Jane Roe, the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that made abortion legal.
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
Washington Post
Source 3:
Washington Post
Source 4:
Washington Post
|
| May 25, 2009 | - Horst Koehler, of Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, was re-elected as president of Germany,.
| Source:
The Telegraph
|
| May 21, 2009 | -
Democrats in Congress denied President Barack Obama the $80 million he sought to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and move its prisoners to maximum-security prisons in the United States. “We don't want them around,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said of the prisoners. Obama, speaking in the rotunda at the National Archives where the Constitution is kept, insisted that he would move the prisoners despite resistance from Congress and put forth a new policy of “prolonged detention,” whereby terrorism suspects can be held indefinitely without trial. Vice President Joe Biden said that the White House had been evaluating Guantanamo prisoners with a “fine tooth comb.” “It's like opening Pandora's Box,” he said. “We don't know what's inside.”
| Source 1:
Fox News
Source 2:
New York Times
Source 3:
Newsweek
|
| May 19, 2009 | - After a Republican-written energy bill failed in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, committee chairman Henry Waxman (D., Calif.) and Edward Markey (D., Mass.) drafted 946 pages of compromise legislation that proposes to reduce CO2 emissions to 17 percent of their 2005 level by 2050; House Democrats hired a speed reader in case Republicans force the bill to be read aloud.
| Source 1:
Wall Street Journal
Source 2:
Houston Chronicle
Source 3:
Wall Street Journal
|
| May 8, 2009 | -
President Barack Obama said that his staff went “line by line” through the $3.4 trillion federal budget and found 121 programs that could be cut to save taxpayers $17 billion, or half a percent of the budget's total. Democratic lawmakers immediately protested the cuts, and Representative Maurice Hinchey (D., N.Y.) vowed to force the White House to accept delivery of a new presidential helicopter even though Obama says he doesn't need or want it.
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
Washington Post
|
| February 21, 2009 | - President Obama signed the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and unveiled a $275 billion plan to help some of the 6 million homeowners facing foreclosure in the next three years. Some Republican governors said they would refuse stimulus aid that required their states to expand unemployment insurance. “If Republican governors do not want this money,” said Nathan Daschle, executive director of the Democratic Governors Association, “Democratic governors will put it to good use.”
| Source 1:
LAT
Source 2:
CNN
Source 3:
CNN
Source 4:
Bloomberg
Source 5:
CBS via CQ
Source 6:
Economist
Source 7:
Chicago Tribune
Source 8:
The Washington Post
Source 9:
The New York Times
Source 10:
The New York Times
Source 11:
The New York Times
|
| February 9, 2009 | - The Senate passed an $827 billion stimulus package with the help of three Republicans who forced Democrats to cut billions of dollars that would have provided aid to states and education programs. Economists said the cuts were “outrageous” and “disastrous.” “The point is to keep lots of extra Americans from being unemployed for the next two years and have them, instead, do useful things for the country,” said Berkeley economist J. Bradford DeLong. “[Senators Ben] Nelson and [Susan] Collins, well, it's not clear what their objective is.” The House and the Senate were negotiating differences in their packages in the hopes of presenting President Barack Obama with a final bill by Friday. “If this is a harbinger of the future, God save us,” said Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute and former director of the Congressional Budget Office. “Here we are shoveling out the goodies and we can't agree on that. What happens when you have to shift the car in reverse, or deal with something like health reform or energy policy?”
| Source 1:
MSNBC
Source 2:
Alternet
|
| December 30, 2008 | - More than 400 people--most of them women, children, and elderly men, two of them Catholic priests--were murdered in Christmas Day massacres by Lord's Resistance Army rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Five people had their lips cut off as a reminder not to speak ill of the rebels.
| Source 1:
BBC
Source 2:
CNN
|
| November 10, 2008 | -
Democratic New Jersey councilman Steven Lipski was charged with assault after urinating off a balcony onto a crowd at a Grateful Dead tribute show in Washington, D.C..
| Source:
New York Daily News
|
| November 7, 2008 | -
Democrats added to their majorities in both houses of Congress, while Senate races in Minnesota, Georgia, and Alaska remained undecided.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 6, 2008 | - Former Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta was named the head of Obama's transition team, former Clinton political director and House Democratic caucus chairman Rahm Emanuel accepted an offer to become Obama's chief of staff, and it was reported that top Obama aide Robert Gibbs would be named White House Press Secretary.
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
Washington Post
Source 3:
Politico
|
| November 2, 2008 | -
Democrats were outvoting Republicans in all nine states that track the party affiliations of early voters, indicating a likely election victory for Barack Obama.
| Source:
George Mason University
|
| October 30, 2008 | -
Republicans claimed that Democrats were coercing dementia patients to cast absentee ballots.
| Source:
Des Moines Register
|
| October 30, 2008 | - Kay Hagan, a Democratic candidate for Senate in North Carolina, filed an application to sue her opponent, the incumbent Republican Elizabeth Dole, for an ad associating Hagan with the Godless Americans Political Action Committee. “Godless Americans and Kay Hagan,” says the ad. “She hid from cameras. Took ‘Godless' money. What did Kay Hagan promise in return?” The spot, which lawyers for Dole called “100 percent factually accurate and truthful,” concludes with an image of Hagan and a female voiceover that states, “There is no God.”
| Source:
CNN
|
| August 24, 2008 | - The Democratic National Convention opened at the Pepsi Center in Denver, with later events to be held at Invesco Field. “I have a lot of doubts that this convention is going to be as persuasive as it should be,” said former national Democratic chairman Donald Fowler, “because they've got this damn thing with Hillary.” The major news networks agreed to share the $100,000 cost of a “flying” wire-guided overhead camera intended to capture such dramatic moments as Obama's acceptance of the Democratic nomination on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's “I Have a Dream” speech, and hundreds of protesters marched on the Pepsi Center. “The Democrats,” said one graduate student, “are an imperialist party too.”
| Source 1:
The Boston Globe
Source 2:
The New York Times
|
| August 15, 2008 | - In a joint statement, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton announced that her name would be included in a state-by-state roll-call vote at the Democratic Convention.
| Source:
International Herald Tribune
|
| August 8, 2008 | - Economists at the University of Maryland found that more than one million votes for Obama in the Democratic primaries could be attributed to Oprah Winfrey's endorsement.
| Source:
Political Wire
|
| August 1, 2008 | - Wal-Mart warned thousands of its managers that a Democratic president would likely make it easier for their subordinates to unionize. “I am not a stupid person,” said a customer-service supervisor from Missouri. “They were telling me how to vote.”
| Source:
WSJ
|
| July 25, 2008 | - Members of the Ute Mountain Ute and Southern Ute tribes performed a Native American blessing near the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, site of the upcoming Democratic Convention.
| Source:
DNCC
|
| July 17, 2008 | -
Republican Senator Orrin Hatch announced that his ballad “Headed Home,” written in tribute to his longtime friend Senator Edward Kennedy, who has a malignant tumor in his brain, will be performed at the Democratic National Convention. “The words 'headed home,'” said Hatch, “mean he is headed home to the Senate.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| June 28, 2008 | - Robert Mugabe, ruler of Zimbabwe since 1980, was sworn in as president after he ran unopposed and won more than 85 percent of the popular vote, a percentage roughly equal to the national unemployment rate. He called for “unity” and invited former candidate and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to attend his inauguration. “This,” said a spokesman for Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), “is an unbelievable joke.” Mugabe supporters entered the house of an MDC councillor and shouted “Let's kill the baby” as they shattered the legs of his 11-month-old son, Blessing; a plan was discovered that called for 2 million MDC members to be “internally displaced”; and 3 million Zimbabweans were living in South Africa, where 62 people were killed in recent anti-immigration rioting.
| Source 1:
Times Online
Source 2:
AFP
Source 3:
CBS News
|
| June 19, 2008 | - Breaking an earlier vow, Senator Barack Obama announced that he will opt out of the public campaign-finance system, in order to be able to spend unlimited amounts of money in the last two months of his presidential campaign, rather than merely $84 million, the amount to which Senator John McCain will be limited under public-funding laws. “It'll be like George Steinbrenner's Yankees in the 90s,” Democratic consultant Chris Lehane said of Obama's campaign, which could spend as much as $500 million, “against the 90s Kansas City Royals.”
| Source 1:
ABC
Source 2:
NYT
Source 3:
IHT
Source 4:
Politico
Source 5:
AP via MSNBC
|
| June 5, 2008 | - Senator Barack Obama, having amassed more than the 2,118 delegates needed to secure a majority, was acknowledged as the Democratic presidential nominee and claimed victory before a crowd of almost 20,000 people in St. Paul, Minnesota, knocking knuckles with his wife, Michelle, in a gesture known as “dap.” “It thrilled a lot of black folks,” said author Ta-Nehisi Coates. “He wears his cultural blackness all over the place. Barack is like Black Folks 2.0.”
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
Washington Post
|
| June 4, 2008 | - A messenger delivered a handwritten note from McCain to Obama's Chicago offices inviting the Democratic presidential nominee to a series of Goldwater-Kennedy-style debates. Bill Burton, an aide to Obama, told the messenger, “You know, you could have just emailed this.”
| Source:
Politico
|
| May 21, 2008 | - Barack Obama won the Democratic primary in Oregon, while Hillary Clinton won in Kentucky.
| Source:
CNNPolitics.com
|
| May 16, 2008 | - A 19-year-old college freshman was elected mayor of Muskogee, Oklahoma. “Right now I'm between girlfriends,” said John Tyler Hammons, who is president of both the Young Republicans and the Young Democrats at his university. “I'm looking to fill that position.”
| Source:
MSNBC.com
|
| May 8, 2008 | - Senator Barack Obama crushed Senator Hillary Clinton in the North Carolina
Democratic primary, lost by a small margin in Indiana, and then took the lead in pledged superdelegates. Clinton pointed out that she still enjoys support from hard workers and white people. “A woman is like a teabag,” she said, quoting Eleanor Roosevelt. “You never know how strong she is until she's in hot water.”
| Source 1:
New Yorker via MSNBC
Source 2:
USA Today
Source 3:
ABC
Source 4:
The Los Angeles Times
Source 5:
The Washington Post
Source 6:
The Hill
Source 7:
Chicago Tribune
Source 8:
The New York Times
|
| May 3, 2008 | - The Democratic National Committee determined that delegates from Michigan and Florida will be allowed half-votes at the party's convention. “At least slaves were counted as 3/5ths a Citizen,” read a sign at a protest by supporters of Hillary Clinton outside the Washington hotel where the decision was made. Demonstrator Larry Sinclair, a Minnesotan who has posted videos on YouTube alleging that he took drugs and had oral sex with Barack Obama in 1999 but failed a polygraph test about his allegations, handed out a pamphlet titled “Obama's DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS: Murder, Drugs, Gay Sex.”
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
The New Republic
|
| May 2, 2008 | - Speaking to North Carolina
Democrats,
Clinton promised, “If Senator Obama is the nominee, you better believe I'll work my heart out for him.”
| Source:
CBS
|
| May 1, 2008 | - After Hillary Clinton proposed that she and Barack Obama compete in a Lincoln-Douglas-style debate, Fox News broadcast an image of Abraham Lincoln facing off against ex-slave Frederick Douglass instead of 1860 Democratic presidential nominee Stephen A. Douglas.
| Source:
The Atlantic
|
| April 18, 2008 | -
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told superdelegates that they had to decide between Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton “starting now.”
| Source:
CNN
|
| April 16, 2008 | - The Pope turned 81, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens turned 88, and 75-year-old Democratic Representative John Murtha said that 71-year-old John McCain is too old to be president. “Let me tell you something,” said Murtha. “It's no old man's job.”
| Source 1:
Supreme Anxiety
Source 2:
Breitbart
|
| April 11, 2008 | - Zodiac Vodka announced that Obama, a Leo, will defeat Clinton, a Scorpio, in the race for the Democratic nomination. “Leo has never lost to a Scorpio,” said the company. “Scorpio, however, has lost to 11 of the 12 signs.”
| Source:
Washington Times
|
| March 17, 2008 | - The Democratic presidential candidates split six primaries and caucuses, and abandoned the veneer of civility recently attributed to their campaigns. By most counts, Barack Obama maintained a lead of more than 100 delegates, but Hillary Clinton implied to an interviewer that she would win the party's nomination when delegates pledged to her opponent changed their minds and voted for her. “Even elected and caucus delegates,” she said, “are not required to stay with whomever they are pledged to.”
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
The New Yorker
Source 3:
Newsweek
|
| March 8, 2008 | - A bomb went off at a military recruiting station in New York's Times Square, shattering glass doors and breaking a window but injuring no one; surveillance camera footage showed a hooded bicyclist near the scene of the attack. Suspicions briefly fell on a man who sent antiwar letters, containing a picture of the station and the text “we did it,” to more than 200 Democratic congressmen, but the FBI said the message referred to the Democrats' victory in the 2006 election. “This was a citizen,” said FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller, “exercising his right to make a political comment to his representatives.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| March 6, 2008 | - Responding to the Obama campaign's calls for Clinton to release her tax returns, Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson said, “I for one do not believe that imitating Ken Starr is the way to win a Democratic primary election for president.”
| Source:
AP
|
| February 14, 2008 | - Senator Barack Obama beat Senator Hillary Clinton by huge margins in primaries in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, and Senator John McCain beat former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. The close Democratic race worried party superdelegates, who will play a decisive role in choosing a candidate. Nancy Larson, a lobbyist and superdelegate from Minnesota, characterized superdelegates in general as “big schmucks.” Alaskan superdelegate Cindi Spanyers received a call from former president Bill Clinton, who recalled his wife's work on a fish cannery slime line there, and Obama was endorsed by the fishing village of Obama, Japan. McCain was endorsed by former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and ex-president George H. W. Bush.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
Washington Post
Source 3:
Los Angeles Times
Source 4:
Washington Post
Source 5:
AP via Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Source 6:
Los Angeles Times
Source 7:
Star Tribune
Source 8:
Anchorage Daily News
Source 9:
Guardian
Source 10:
LAT
Source 11:
AP via Google
|
| February 7, 2008 | -
Democratic primaries left neither Senator Barack Obama nor Senator Hillary Clinton with a clear lead over the other, and operatives inside the Clinton campaign speculated that if the Democratic presidential nominee were not chosen until the convention, Al Gore could emerge as a compromise candidate. “There's a 5 percent chance of that happening,” a Clinton source said, “but that's 5 percent too high.” “He can still try next time,” said Obama's Kenyan grandmother, Sarah, of her grandson, “if he doesn't make it this time.”
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
Telegraph
Source 3:
New York Times
Source 4:
Honolulu Advertiser
|
| January 26, 2008 | - Stanching rumors circulating in a widely forwarded email that he is a radical Muslim, Senator Barack Obama repeatedly professed his faith in an “awesome” Christian God and defeated former President Bill Clinton's wife in the South Carolina Democratic primary.
| Source 1:
Boston Globe
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| January 19, 2008 | - The Supreme Court decided that Texas could exclude Dennis Kucinich's name from the ballots in the Democratic primary because Kucinich refused to take a party loyalty oath.
| Source:
AP via Google News
|
| December 8, 2007 | - A new National Intelligence Estimate by all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Iran ended its secret nuclear weapons program in 2003, in contrast to a 2005 report that claimed with “high confidence” that such a program was still active. Former CIA officials explained that at the time the earlier report was written the agency's Iran Task Force had been reduced from nearly a hundred analysts and officers to fewer than a dozen, and National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, attempting to explain why the earlier report was not “so wrong,” reminded reporters that Iran is “very good at this business of keeping secrets.” “It is all right,” responded Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “It is enough that you are confessing to your mistakes.” In Iowa,
Democratic candidates debated the Iranian nuclear threat as well as the safety of toys made in China. “My toys,” said Senator Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.), “are coming from Iowa.” At a dinner in Des Moines, a reporter summarized the Iranian nuclear report for Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who hadn't heard the news. Huckabee, a Southern Baptist preacher, also recalled that he was still learning about the AIDS virus in 1992, when he proposed putting AIDS patients in quarantine.
| Source 1:
WP
Source 2:
White House
Source 3:
LAT
Source 4:
NYT
Source 5:
WP
Source 6:
LAT
Source 7:
Politico
Source 8:
AP via Yahoo
|
| December 7, 2007 | - It was revealed that the CIA destroyed at least two videotapes of harsh interrogations of suspected Al Qaeda operatives. CIA director Michael Hayden claimed that this was done to protect CIA employees from possible retaliation by militants, and that congressional oversight committees had been notified. Representative Rush Holt, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, recalled asking “many times” whether such tapes existed. "They said, 'What tapes?'”
| Source 1:
NYT
Source 2:
WP
Source 3:
NYT
Source 4:
LAT
Source 5:
NYT
|
| August 30, 2007 | - Polling revealed that Democrats despise President Bush more than any other executive in history. “No one,” said Gary C. Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, “comes close.”
| Source:
NY Times
|
| August 23, 2007 | -
Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards dubbed himself the “candidate for change.”
| Source:
Daily Herald
|
| August 21, 2007 | - Patrick Leahy, the 67-year old Democratic senator from Vermont who as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is pressing the Bush Administration to turn over documents relating to its warrantless wiretapping program, revealed that he has a small part in the upcoming Batman movie, and that he had to let his remaining hair grow out for the role.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| August 12, 2007 | - Nominally antiwar Democrats Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards admitted that if elected to the White House they would worry about terrorism launched from a failed Iraqi state, threats to the Kurds, and the prospect of Shiite-on-Sunni genocide, and because of these fears they would continue the occupation of Iraq for a long time.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 24, 2007 | -
YouTube and CNN co-hosted a debate for the Democratic presidential candidates at The Citadel in South Carolina. After a YouTuber asked the candidates to say something they liked and something they disliked about the candidate to their left, John Edwards said that he approved of Hillary Clinton's record of national service, but perhaps not her salmon-colored jacket. Additional questions came from a Viking, a five-year-old, a snowman, and a man in a chicken costume.
| Source:
CNN
|
| July 18, 2007 | - Despite an all-night debate, Democratic
senators failed to invoke cloture and bring to vote a measure requiring the majority of U.S. troops to be withdrawn from Iraq.
| Source:
Time
|
| July 5, 2007 | - The White House rejected demands to hand over documents related to the firings of eight U.S. attorneys and said Democratic lawmakers should spend their time passing bills that solve domestic problems.
| Source:
AP via Yahoonews.com
|
| June 28, 2007 | - “Is it a surprise to anybody in this room that if you don’t have any money, you don’t get any justice?” asked Alaska Senator Mike Gravel at the third debate of the Democratic presidential candidates. Gravel called for the abolition of the income tax and the war on drugs, Ohio
Congressman Dennis Kucinich called for the abolition of NAFTA and the WTO, and Hillary Clinton predicted that global warming would create jobs for millions of Americans. Joseph Biden and Barack Obama reminisced about getting tested for HIV.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 12, 2007 | - Senate Democrats pushed for a “vote of no confidence” in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, but were blocked by Republicans who reminded them that the U.S. government does not engage in no-confidence votes. “To paraphrase Shakespeare,” Senator Orrin Hatch said, “whether this debate amounts to sound and fury, it signifies nothing.”
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
Washington Post
|
| June 8, 2007 | - Violence erupted in the Alabama state senate when a Democrat called Republican Charles Bishop a son of a bitch. “I responded to his comment with my right hand,” said Bishop.
| Source:
CNN
|
| June 3, 2007 | - Eric Alterman, author of the “Altercation” blog, was arrested after an altercation with police at the Democratic debate.
| Source:
CNN
|
| May 25, 2007 | -
Congress passed a bill allocating $100 billion for war spending without a timetable for troop withdrawal. Congressional
Democrats allowed the vote to reach the House and Senate floors despite widespread opposition among their ranks because they didn't want to go on Memorial Day break while soldiers remained wanting. Ten Democratic senators including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton voted against the bill. “I was very disappointed to see Senator Obama and Senator Clinton embrace the policy of surrender,” said Senator John McCain. “This vote may win favor with MoveOn and liberal primary voters, but it's the equivalent of waving a white flag to Al Qaeda.” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told reporters she would “never vote for such a thing” just before finalizing the bill with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who called the legislation proof of “great progress.” Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin told his Democratic colleagues that he would reluctantly support the measure because “we do not have it within our power to make the will of America the law of the land.”
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
Reuters via Yahoo! News
Source 3:
New York Times
Source 4:
Washington Post
|
| May 17, 2007 | -
Senate
Democrats called for a vote of no confidence in Gonzales, and Senator Charles Schumer called the Attorney General a puppet.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| May 9, 2007 | -
Democratic presidential contender Mike Gravel was speaking passionately in defense of gay marriage. “Love between a woman and a woman is beautiful,” he said. “Love between a man and a man is beautiful, too. What this world needs is a lot more love.”
| Source:
WMUR via Rawstory.com
|
| April 27, 2007 | - The nine Democrats running for president held a debate in South Carolina. Hillary Clinton faulted the people of Iraq for not making good on “the chance to have freedom, to have their own country” provided by the U.S. invasion, and John Edwards suggested that hedge funds could help alleviate poverty. Asked why he was at the debate, Mike Gravel, a 76-year-old who represented Alaska in the Senate from 1969 to 1981, pointed to the rest of the candidates and said, “Some of these people frighten me,” especially “the top-tier ones.” He singled out Joseph Biden for his “arrogance” and asked Barack Obama, “Barack, who do you want to nuke?” Obama replied, “I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike. I promise.” “Good,” said Gravel, “then we're safe, for a while.”
| Source:
WCNC
|
| April 25, 2007 | - Campaigning in New Hampshire, Rudolph Giuliani said, “I listen a little to the Democrats, and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense. We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation, and we will be back to our pre-September 11 attitude of defense.”
| Source:
Politico
|
| April 13, 2007 | - It was reported that almost a year before seven U.S. attorneys were fired, an email from D. Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, proposed replacement candidates for them. Four years' worth of email from Karl Rove, sought by Democrats investigating Rove's role in the firings, was missing from the Republican National Committee server.
| Source 1:
NYT
Source 2:
WaPo
|
| March 24, 2007 | - The U.S. House of Representatives passed a timetable for ending the Iraq war by a six-vote margin. The bill mandates American withdrawal in September 2008 if the Bush Administration meets certain benchmarks, earlier if it does not. Several Democrats voted against the timetable because it was not sufficiently antiwar, and Republicans derided the inclusion of domestic provisions benefiting spinach growers, citrus farmers, salmon fishermen, and peanut storers. “What does throwing money at Bubba Gump, Popeye the sailor man, and Mr. Peanut have to do with winning a war?” asked Representative Sam Johnson of Texas. “I will veto it,” said President George W. Bush, "if it comes to my desk.”
| Source 1:
New Tork Times
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| March 21, 2007 | -
Al Gore returned to Capitol Hill to testify that global warming is a planetary emergency. Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts called Gore a prophet, and Rep. John Dingell of Michigan addressed him as “Mr. President.” Joe Barton of Texas, the leading Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told Gore he was “totally wrong” and that, if need be, Republican lawmakers would stay late for an “all-out cat fight” with Democrats. Ralph Hall, also of Texas, speculated that Gore's attack on the energy industry could result in war “when and if OPEC nations abandon the U.S.A.,” and Roscoe Bartlett (R., Md.) said that he thought it was “probably possible to be a conservative without appearing to be an idiot.”
| Source 1:
AP vie Breitbart
Source 2:
Huffington Post
|
| March 19, 2007 | - Two Democratic
Congressmen were calling for renewed inquiry into why Frank Black, the former U.S. attorney in Guam, was removed from his position after he began investigating Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff in 2002.
| Source:
Guam Pacific Daily News
|
| March 14, 2007 | - A Zogby poll found that 97 percent of Republicans believe that the media has a liberal bias, while two-thirds of Democrats believe there is a conservative bias.
| Source:
Zogby
|
| March 8, 2007 | - House Democrats proposed legislation that would mandate an Iraq withdrawal no later than August 2008.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| March 1, 2007 | - On
The Late Show with David Letterman
, Senator John McCain confirmed that he is running for president. Candidly discussing the war in Iraq, he said, “We've wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives.” In response to Democrats who scolded him for using the word ”wasted,” McCain replied, ”I should have used the word 'sacrificed'.”
| Source:
CNN
|
| December 7, 2006 | -
Democrats in Congress announced that beginning in January members of the House would work five days a week. “Keeping us up here eats away at families,” said Rep. Jack Kingston (R., Georgia), who spends more than half his week at home. “Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families--that's what this says.” The Democrats were also trying to stop smoking on the Hill, and attempting to block a $3,300 congressional raise.
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
Washington Post
Source 3:
Washington Post
|
| November 19, 2006 | -
Democratic
Representative Charles Rangel called for the reinstatement of the draft.
| Source:
Boston.com
|
| November 16, 2006 | - Despite the best efforts of Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi, Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland was elected House Majority Leader over Representative
John Murtha.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| November 12, 2006 | -
Democratic
senators made it clear that they would not confirm John Bolton (who was installed as U.N. ambassador via recess appointment) to his position in 2007.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| October 24, 2006 | - Charlie Brown was running for Congress as a Democrat in Roseville, California.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| October 18, 2006 | - During a debate with his Democratic rival, Senator Conrad Burns of Montana said that President Bush (who this week compared Iraq to Vietnam) has a secret plan for winning the war, but that Bush is not going to share his plan with the world.
| Source 1:
Billings Gazette
Source 2:
FT
|
| September 22, 2006 | -
President Bush predicted that, given the opportunity, Democrats would raise taxes.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| September 21, 2006 | - In Maryland, the National Black
Republican Association ran radio ads claiming that Martin Luther King was a Republican and that Democrats founded the Ku Klux Klan.
| Source:
nbc4.com via google news
|
| September 7, 2006 | - Joseph Lieberman returned to the Senate for the first time since losing the Connecticut
Democratic primary, and Senator Susan Collins (R., Maine) offered to buy him a dog.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| August 20, 2006 | -
Shimon Peres had dinner with Connecticut
Democratic Senate nominee Ned Lamont.
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
The Penninsula (Qatar)
Source 3:
The New York Times
|
| August 8, 2006 | -
Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman lost the Democratic
Senate primary election to anti-Iraq-war candidate Ned Lamont. Lieberman then announced that he would run as an independent candidate, and that “Team Connecticut” would “surge forward to victory.” Vice President Dick Cheney said that Lamont's victory was encouraging to “Al Qaeda types.”
| Source:
Chicago Sun-Times
|
| June 9, 2006 | - Tom DeLay, the former Republican majority leader who was forced to resign because he is corrupt, said farewell to the House of Representatives. Dozens of Democrats walked out during his speech. “I did a good job,” DeLay said. “I helped build the largest political coalition in the last 50 years.”
| Source:
UPI
|
| May 24, 2006 | -
President Bush ordered that the documents seized by the FBI in a raid on the offices of Representative William Jefferson, a Louisiana Democrat, must be sealed for 45 days, so that Congress and the Justice Department can determine exactly how material seized from Congressional offices should be reviewed. The Justice Department denied reports that Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (who publicly criticized the FBI for raiding Jefferson's offices) was under investigation for his relationship with former lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Hastert said that the FBI was planting stories in the media to discredit him.
| Source 1:
ABC News
Source 2:
ABC News
|
| April 22, 2006 | - Representative Alan B. Mollohan (D., W.Va.), whose real estate holdings and other assets reportedly rose in value from $562,000 to at least $6.3 million between 2000 and 2004, temporarily stepped down from the House
ethics committee after being accused of misusing funds.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| March 26, 2006 | - Both Democrat and Republican strategists agreed that if midterm elections were held now, the Democrats would gain control of the House of Representatives.
| Source:
Time
|
| November 25, 2005 | -
George McGovern said that “all kinds of mutual friends” had told him that George Bush Sr. had been against the Iraq war from its beginning.
| Source:
The Alan Colmes Show (via Crooks and Liars)
|
| November 19, 2005 | - The Senate refused to consider a Democratic resolution to honor Bruce Springsteen.
| Source:
Common Dreams
|
| November 1, 2005 | -
Democratic leaders called for a closed session on the Senate floor, which they used to force the creation of a bipartisan committee; the committee will report on the ongoing Congressional investigation (which the Democratic leadership believes is being purposefully delayed) into the Bush Administration's misuse of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq. “They have no convictions,” Senator Bill Frist said of the Democrats. “They have no principles. They have no ideas.”
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| October 10, 2005 | - Both Democratic and Republican senators were questioning the qualifications of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, who has never argued a case before the Supreme Court but has been often referred to as President Bush's “work wife.”
| Source 1:
The Seattle Times
Source 2:
Slate.com
|
| June 17, 2005 | -
Ralph Nader said that the efforts of the Democratic Party against him had made him feel like a nigger.
| Source:
Daily News Daily Dish
|
| March 1, 2005 | - A poll found that Americans want a Democrat to be elected president in the next election on the television show “The West Wing.”
| Source:
Zogby International
|
| February 12, 2005 | -
Howard Dean was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| December 23, 2004 | - The Democrats were thinking of dropping abortion rights from their platform, in order to appeal to “values” voters; many Democratic leaders want to promote adoption over abortion.
| Source:
LA Times
|
| November 11, 2004 | - Centrist Democrats launched “Third Way,” an advocacy group that they hope will create a “moderate majority.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| July 25, 2004 | -
Democrats said they were planning to be "positive" at their convention in Boston.
| Source:
Newsday
|
| April 13, 2004 | - A Democratic club in south Florida took out a newspaper ad saying that Donald Rumsfeld should be "put up against a wall" and shot.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| February 1, 2004 | - Reporters continued to notice sartorial oddities among the Democratic presidential candidates.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 22, 2004 | - Republican staff members of the Senate Judiciary Committee were still under investigation for improperly infiltrating
Democratic computers and reading strategy memos, which were then leaked to the press. Several computers, including a server from Senator Bill Frist's office, have been confiscated by the Senate's Sergeant-at-Arms.
| Source:
Boston Globe
|
| November 6, 2001 | -
Democrats and Republican moderates said they were more concerned about preventing terrorist
attacks.
| |
| September 18, 2001 | - Congressional Democrats who previously were opposed to President Bush's missile-defense scheme, which would have proved utterly useless on September 11, said they were unlikely to oppose the President in this time of national crisis.
| |
| July 17, 2001 | - Conservative Republicans are three times more likely than liberal Democrats to have nightmares, a new study found.
| |
| June 12, 2001 | -
Senate
Majority Leader Tom Daschle, perhaps seeking to demonstrate the true grit of his party, promised that Democrats would not block President Bush's judicial nominees—unlike the Republicans, who blocked almost half the judges appointed by Bill Clinton.
“I don't believe in it,” Daschle said.
“We have to break the cycle.”
| |
| June 12, 2001 | -
Trent Lott, the outgoing Senate majority leader, wrote a memo to his Republican colleagues declaring war on the Democrats.
| |
| May 29, 2001 | - Senator James M. Jeffords of Vermont defected from the Republican Party, handing control of the Senate to the Democrats, who promptly voted to confirm Theodore B. Olson as solicitor general, suggesting that the White House cabal had little to fear after all.
| |
| March 20, 2001 | -
Democrats, who lately have been raising record amounts of soft money, were worried that campaign-finance reform might actually pass this year.
| |
| February 13, 2001 | -
Democrats were said to be confused by the contradiction between President Bush's sweet-talking, inclusive rhetoric and his hardline, right-wing deeds.
| |
| February 6, 2001 | - The Democratic Party demonstrated its seriousness of purpose by failing to mount a filibuster to block the confirmation of former senator John Ashcroft, who was defeated by a dead man in the last election; Ashcroft was sworn in as Attorney General by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in a private ceremony.
| |
| January 16, 2001 | - Liberal political groups were attempting to rally Senate
Democrats to oppose the nomination of John Ashcroft to be attorney general of the United States, though few seriously believed that members of the Democrat Party were brave or principled enough to do what it would take to defeat the right-wing Christian extremist.
| |
| 0, 2000 | - Senior executives from Goldman Sachs testified before Congress about the realities of the American financial system, noting that major banking firms have no ethical, fiscal, or legal obligations to act in the best interest of their clients. Democrats, who were trying to pass a finance-reform bill, acted aghast to learn that banks often bet against investments that they sell to their clients. “They were all doing this,” said Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri. “It was lemminglike.”
| Source 1:
NY Times
Source 2:
NY Times
|
| 0, 2000 | - Members of his administration expressed surprise that liberal Democrats had made the health-care debate their “Waterloo.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| December 5, 2000 | - An investigation of Florida ballots found that at least 445 felons voted illegally in the presidential election, mostly in Palm Beach and Duval counties; many were registered Democrats, including 7 kidnappers, 16 rapists, 45 killers, 56 drug dealers, and 62 robbers.
| |
| December 0, 2000 | -
Democrats in Congress called for a $150 billion economic stimulus plan to rebuild America's crumbling infrastructure.
| Source:
Yahoo! News
|
| November 21, 2000 | - New Jersey Republicans accused Democrats of providing crazy people in mental hospitals with absentee ballots; it was suggested that the crazy vote may have decided a close congressional race.
| |
| August 22, 2000 | - Richard Ray, Kenneth Starr's successor as independent counsel, has convened a new grand jury to determine whether President Clinton should be prosecuted; a Chicago judge admitted that he accidentally leaked the existence of the grand jury to a reporter, who published the story a few hours before Al Gore accepted the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party and announced that he was his own man.
| |
| August 22, 2000 | - Members of the Democratic Party's liberal base were known to be grumbling at their party's centrist platform.
| |
| August 22, 2000 | -
Democrats received higher overall Nielsen ratings for their convention than did Republicans; journalists noted that ratings were higher in 1996.
| |
| August 15, 2000 | - The National Rifle Association accused the Democratic Party of wanting to destroy the Second Amendment.
| |
| August 8, 2000 | -
Democrats complained that George W. Bush plagiarized President Clinton in his nomination acceptance speech.
| |
| April 0, 2000 | -
Pennsylvania
Senator Arlen Specter rejoined the Democratic Party after more than 40 years as a Republican. “There's more than being reelected here,” he insisted. “There's the factor of principle.”
| Source:
Politico
|
| February 0, 2000 | -
Republicans launched an organization called National Council for a New America. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush urged his party to “listen a little bit, learn a little bit”; former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney called the Democrats “the party of the monarchists.”
| Source:
CNN
|
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