Farm Bill Moves Forward in Senate with Final Passage Expected Tuesday

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Photo Credit: ThinkstockThe Senate moved forward Monday on long-awaited legislation to authorize farm spending, voting to end debate on the measure so that the chamber can vote on final passage Tuesday.

Two years in the making, the $1 trillion bill ends a decades-old policy of providing taxpayer subsidies directly to farmers.

The five-year plan cuts spending by $16.6 trillion over a decade, including an $800 million annual reduction to the food stamp program.

The vote was 72-22, and included opposition from Republicans who wanted deeper cuts and Democrats who opposed the food stamp reduction.

The House approved the measure last week by a bipartisan 251-166 vote.

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Farewell to Henry Waxman, Maker of Bad Laws

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott ApplewhiteAfter 40 years in Congress, California Democrat Henry Waxman is calling it quits. His legacy includes a toxic fuel additive (a boondoggle known as ethanol), a failed pork-fest of a climate bill and the devastation of small businesses — to name a few of his legislative accomplishments.

Washington Post correspondent Karen Tumulty praised Waxman, calling him “one of the last to whom the word ‘lawmaker’ still applied.”

But here’s the thing: If you spend four decades making laws, you’re going to make some bad laws. And Henry Waxman made a lot of bad laws.

Waxman deserves praise for many things. Together with Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, Waxman passed a reform that improved the prescription drug patent system. He also passed a postal reform.

Waxman kept his hands impressively clean of K Street’s tainting influence. Despite being in Congress longer than “Wheel of Fortune” has been on the air, Waxman has only six former staffers in the “Revolving Door” database at the Center for Responsive Politics. Since 1989, Waxman averaged less than $30,000 from lobbyists per election – a modest sum for a committee chairman.

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Obama on IRS Scandal: ‘Not Even a Smidgen of Corruption’

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Photo Credit: APPresident Obama, in an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, tried to put behind him the scandals that have hung over his second term, suggesting his administration did not mislead the public on the Benghazi attack and going so far as to say the IRS targeting scandal had “not even a smidgen of corruption.”

Obama addressed concerns over Benghazi, the launch of HealthCare.gov and the IRS, during the interview Sunday before the Super Bowl. He adamantly rejected the suggestion that the IRS was used for political purposes by singling out Tea Party groups seeking tax exemption.

“That’s not what happened,” he said. Rather, he said, IRS officials were confused about how to implement the law governing those kinds of tax-exempt groups.

“There were some bone-headed decisions,” Obama conceded.

But when asked whether corruption, or mass corruption, was at play, he responded: “Not even mass corruption — not even a smidgen of corruption.”

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Obama to O’Reilly: Fox News Reason for My Problems

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President Barack Obama twice blamed Fox News Channel for misinforming the public on issues that have bedeviled his presidency in the past year during a pre-Super Bowl interview with the network’s Bill O’Reilly.

The two sat down in the White House on Sunday for a live pregame interview that started about 4:35 p.m. and aired for about 10 minutes.

O’Reilly first noted that Obama’s detractors believe he did not initially say the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi, Libya, that left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead was terrorism because it happened in the heat of an election.

Obama had just weeks earlier said al-Qaida was on the run after U.S. Navy SEALs assassinated its leader, Osama bin Laden.

“That’s what they believe,” O’Reilly said of Obama’s detractors.

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Does the Right to Self-Defense Have Boundaries?

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Photo Credit: WNDThe U.S. Supreme Court repeatedly has sided with defenders of the Second Amendment, ruling that the Constitution protects an individual’s right to bear arms and that states cannot unreasonably restrict that right.

There’s also a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court considering whether or not states can limit the right to self-defense to a citizen’s private home.

Now, in a related move, U.S senators have proposed a law to establish that the right to bear arms cannot be restricted by political boundaries. The bill would establish that a permit to carry a concealed weapon in one state is valid in all states that allow concealed-carry.

Mississippi Republican Sens. Roger Wicker and Thad Cochran recently signed on as co-sponsors of the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2014.

The bill, they explain, “is intended to defend the 2nd Amendment rights of individuals with conceal carry permits, allowing them to carry those privileges from their home state to other states that also have conceal carry laws.”

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Obama on Benghazi: ‘We Revealed What We Knew at the Time’

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Photo Credit: APPresident Obama said the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya occurred because “not all the precautions that should have been taken were taken’ and denied any effort in the immediate aftermath to downplay the role terrorism played.

“That is inaccurate,” Obama said of Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly’s suggestion that the administration sought to sweep under the terrorist-nature of the attack in the final months of his 2012 re-election campaign.

“We revealed to the American people what we knew at the time,” said Obama.

n a contentious pre-Super Bowl interview with O’Reilly, Obama said early on during the attack — when then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta informed him about the assault — that U.S. officials did not tell him exactly who was involved.

“People understood at the time that something very dangerous was happening,” Obama said. “In the aftermath what became clear was the security was lax — not all the precautions that should have been taken were taken.”

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Namath Honors Navy SEAL Chris Kyle at Super Bowl

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Photo Credit: TPNNNFL legend Joe Namath honored fallen soldier Chris Kyle as he did the coin toss at the Super Bowl on Sunday, February 2nd. Namath tweeted a picture of what he would be wearing in honor of Kyle, who died one year ago on February 2, 2013

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Philip Seymour Hoffman, Oscar-Winning Actor, Found Dead in NY Apartment

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Photo Credit: The Washington Post Philip Seymour Hoffman, the stage and screen actor who progressed from scene-stealing supporting roles to an Oscar-winning portrayal of writer Truman Capote in “Capote,” has died. He was 46.

Mr. Hoffman was found dead in his apartment in Lower Manhattan shortly before noon Sunday, and his death is being investigated as a possible drug overdose, said Detective James Duffy, a spokesman for the New York Police Department. The New York City medical examiner’s office is expected to perform an autopsy as early as Monday, and that examination will include a toxicology report.

Police said they received a 911 call about 11:36 a.m. Sunday. When they arrived at the apartment, they found Mr. Hoffman unconscious and unresponsive on the floor of a bathroom. According to an unnamed police official who was not authorized to comment publicly, Mr. Hoffman was found with a needle in his arm and several bags of what appeared to be heroin. The official said Mr. Hoffman was supposed to meet a colleague Sunday morning and did not show. An associate went to his home and found him there. Police were still at the scene Sunday afternoon.

In interviews, Mr. Hoffman acknowledged a history of drug abuse.

“I got sober when I was 22 years old” and went into a drug rehabilitation program at the time, Mr. Hoffman told CBS’s “60 Minutes” in 2006. Asked whether he abused drugs or alcohol, Mr. Hoffman said: “It was all that stuff. Yeah. It was anything I could get my hands on. Yeah. I liked it all.”

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Where Does Your State Rank? Gallup’s Most Conservative to Most Liberal

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Photo Credit: APThe percentage of people living in Washington, D.C., who call themselves liberals is far greater than the national percentage, and significantly greater than the percentage in any of the fifty states, according to polling data released today by Gallup.

Nationally, 23 percent of American adults call themselves liberals, according to Gallup, and 38 percent call themselves conservatives.

But in Washington, D.C., 38.1 percent call themselves liberals–65.6 percent more than in the nation as a whole.

After D.C., Vermont is the most liberal jurisdiction, with 32.4 percent of people there calling themselves liberals.

The top five most conservative states are: Wyoming, Mississippi, Idaho, Utah, and Arkansas.

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Chris Christie Attacks N.Y. Times, David Wildstein

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Photo Credit: APNew Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, after a low-key initial response to Friday’s explosive allegations about his involvement in a bridge-closing scandal, mounted an aggressive defense late Saturday afternoon, attacking The New York Times and a former political ally in an email to friends and allies obtained by POLITICO.

“Bottom line — David Wildstein will do and say anything to save David Wildstein,” the email from the governor’s office says, referring to the former appointee who reignited the controversy.

A letter from Wildstein’s lawyer, Alan L. Zegas of Chatham, N.J., asserted Friday that “evidence exists … tying Mr. Christie to having knowledge of the lane closures, during the period when the lanes were closed, contrary to what the Governor stated publicly in a two-hour press conference.”

The subject line of the 700-word email from the governor’s office is: “5 Things You Should Know About The Bombshell That’s Not A Bombshell.” It offers a harshly negative portrayal of Wildstein’s character and judgment.

The Christie camp begins by criticizing The Times for its initial characterization of the Wildstein letter: “A media firestorm was set off by sloppy reporting from the New York Times and their suggestion that there was actually ‘evidence’ when it was a letter alleging that ‘evidence exists.’”

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