The vote was an overwhelming 89-8 and came well after midnight on New Year's Day.

A House vote is expected before Wednesday.

The White House-backed legislation would prevent middle-class taxes from rising, and raise rates on incomes over $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for couples.

It also blocks spending cuts for two months, extends unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless, prevents a 27 percent cut in fees for doctors who treat Medicare patients and prevents a spike in milk prices.

A last-minute addition would also prevent a $900 pay raise for members of Congress from taking effect in March.

Continue Reading...

While Pelosi described the meeting as "candid and constructive," little sense was given about concrete progress on the unlikely task of reaching a palatable deal.

According to Bloomberg News, President Obama "is seeking an up-or-down vote on his proposal to extend tax cuts for annual income up to $250,000, absent a counteroffer from congressional leaders" -- which basically means that if no counteroffer is put forward that is mutually agreeable, the president will seek a vote on his proposal that everyone must take part in and that cannot be procedurally evaded -- which doesn't sound wildly desperate at all.

Continue Reading...

The Friday afternoon meeting among congressional leaders and the president -- their first since Nov. 16 -- stood as a make-or-break moment for negotiations to avoid across-the-board tax increases and deep spending cuts on the first of the year.

Obama called for the meeting as top lawmakers alternately cast blame on each other while portraying themselves as open to a reasonable last-minute bargain.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid all but conceded that any effort at this late date was a long shot. "I don't know timewise how it can happen now," he said.

For Obama, the 11th-hour scramble represented a test of how he would balance the strength derived from his re-election with his avowed commitment to compromise. Despite early talk of a grand bargain between Obama and House Speaker John Boehner that would reduce deficits by more than $2 trillion, the expectations were now far less ambitious.

Continue Reading...

Topeka, Kan.,-based Westboro Baptist Church, better known as those "God Hates Fags" creeps, is already considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Most recently it made news for threatening to picket the funerals of the Newtown massacre victims. The hacker group Anonymous responded with attacks on the church's online presence.

Continue Reading...

Watch:

Continue Reading...

(Here’s a chart comparing 2010 and 2012.)

Analysts and others have identified redistricting as a key to the disparity. Republicans had a years-long strategy of winning state houses in order to control each state's once-a-decade redistricting process. (Confused about redistricting? Check out our song.)

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

According to CBS, Obama also "gets high marks for his handling of tax policy, but not for his handling of the federal deficit." Fifty-two percent say they approve of Obama on tax policy, compared with 37 percent who say they approve of his budget deficit policy.

Continue Reading...

Late last night, the White House offered a plan with two major concessions to Republicans. First, it would hike taxes on the wealthy, but only on income above $400,000, instead of the current $250,000 threshold. Second, and far more controversially, Obama offered to change the formula used to calculate Social Security benefits in a way that would cut outlays to seniors slightly while saving the program $225 billion over a decade.

The reaction from liberals, who have been demanding all along that social safety net programs be off the table, was swift and fierce. "This is a cut affecting every single beneficiary -- widows, orphans, people with disabilities and many others.  It is a cut which hurts the most those who are most vulnerable: the oldest of the old, those disabled at the youngest ages, and the poorest of the poor. Perhaps fittingly, this will be done during the holiday season, when the American people are distracted," Nancy Altman, the founding co-director of the advocacy group Social Security Works, said in a statement.

Continue Reading...

The goal of this petition is to force the Obama Administration to produce legislation that limits access to guns. While a national dialogue is critical, laws are the only means in which we can reduce the number of people murdered in gun related deaths.

Powerful lobbying groups allow the ownership of guns to reach beyond the Constitution's intended purpose of the right to bear arms. Therefore, Congress must act on what is stated law, and face the reality that access to firearms reaches beyond what the Second Amendment intends to achieve.

The signatures on this petition represent a collective demand for a bipartisan discussion resulting in a set of laws that regulates how a citizen obtains a gun.

Continue Reading...

If we do get our Death Star, then perhaps Americans will wage an intergalactic war with the hundreds of thousands of Jedi still using the Force in England.

Continue Reading...

In a letter to Gil Kerlikowske, the administration's director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Leahy wrote:

The Senate Judiciary Committee has a significant interest in the effect of these developments on Federal drug control policy. How does the Office of National Drug Control Policy intend to prioritize Federal resources, and what recommendations are you making to the Department of Justice and other agencies in light of the choice by citizens of Colorado and Washington to legalize personal use of small amounts of marijuana? What assurance can and will the administration give to state officials involved in the licensing of marijuana retailers that they will not face Federal criminal penalties for carrying out duties assigned to them under state law?

Continue Reading...

In a post called "WILL OBAMA BUILD A DEATH STAR NEXT? White House urged to construct 'Star Wars' space battle station," Joe Kovacs wonders if the White House will respond to a petition on its "We The People" website calling for construction on a Death Star to begin by 2016.

"It sounds like a case of 'May the farce be with you,'" Kovacs writes, "but at this moment, in a galaxy not far away, there is a real-life petition on a White House website pushing for the funding and construction of a Death Star like the one featured in the 'Star Wars' film saga."

The petition asks the Obama Administration to secure resources and funding for the construction: "By focusing our defense resources into a space-superiority platform and weapon system such as a Death Star, the government can spur job creation in the fields of construction, engineering, space exploration, and more, and strengthen our national defense."

Continue Reading...

In an ordinary negotiation, each side has things it wants, while it dislikes some or all of the things the other side wants. A union wants higher wages for its workers, while the company doesn't want to pay the higher wages. You'd rather have your partner do the laundry while you do the dishes, but your partner doesn't like doing the laundry either. The White House wants to increase taxes on the wealthy, which Republicans don't like, while Republicans want cuts to social programs, which the White House doesn't like.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

"Well, I think it's important to regularly meet with the unemployed. Glad you could make it."

What did Mitt Romney and Barack Obama talk about in their lunch meeting earlier today? Send your ideas to readermail@salon.com.

From the White House press release on the meeting:

This afternoon, President Obama and Governor Romney visited for an hour over lunch in the Private Dining Room adjacent to the Oval Office.  Governor Romney congratulated the President for the success of his campaign and wished him well over the coming four years. The focus of their discussion was on America's leadership in the world and the importance of maintaining that leadership position in the future.  They pledged to stay in touch, particularly if opportunities to work together on shared interests arise in the future.  Their lunch menu included white turkey chili and Southwestern grilled chicken salad.

Irin Carmon: "Could Romney's body language be any more awkward?"

Alex Seitz-Wald: "I love Obama's hand in the pocket. It seems a big FU to me, and an assertion of confidence, nonchalance."

Continue Reading...

The president evidently believes it’s to scare average Americans about how much additional taxes they’ll pay if the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule at the end of the year. He plans to barnstorm around the country, sounding the alarm.

The White House has even set up a new Twitter hashtag: “My2K,” referring to the extra $2,200 in taxes the average family will pay if all the Bush cuts expire. Earlier this week the Council of Economic Advisers published a report detailing the awful consequences of going over the so-called “fiscal cliff.”

Excuse me for sounding impertinent, but isn’t this fear-mongering likely to buttress Republican arguments that the Bush tax cuts should be extended for everyone — including the rich? Republicans will say (as they have a thousand times before), the rich are the “job creators,” so we should tackle the budget deficit by cutting spending rather than raising anyone’s taxes.

Continue Reading...

Obama promised in his victory speech on Nov. 6 to engage with Romney and consider his ideas.

The meeting comes as Obama and congressional Republicans negotiate a way out of automatic tax increases and deep spending cuts that have come to be known as the fiscal cliff.

Obama and Romney differed sharply during the campaign on how revive the economy. Obama called for higher taxes on the rich. Romney called for lower taxes on all.

The White House says the two men will meet in the White House's private dining room. There will be no press coverage.

Continue Reading...

The Times reported late last week that, concerned that an "amorphous" set of guidelines over targeted killings could be passed on to a new president, efforts were made ahead of the election to pin down a clearer set of rules about kill lists and drone strikes approvals.

However, as the Guardian reported, human rights groups have noted that such a drone "rulebook" does nothing to ensure that the U.S. act in line with international law nor would it increase transparency drone programs.

"To say they are rewriting the rulebook implies that there isn't already a rulebook," Jameel Jaffer, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Center for Democracy, told the Guardian. "But what they are already doing is rejecting a rulebook – of international law." Jaffer contined:

Continue Reading...

Obama had delayed deciding on the pipeline extension until after the election, but must now consider whether to approve the TransCanada-owned pipe, which would carry crude oil from Alberta’s tar sands to the Gulf Coast, while -- according to opponents -- producing lethal levels of carbon emissions, uprooting communities and lining the pockets of oil magnates the Koch brothers.

"In 2008, many environmentalists were ready to give Obama a honeymoon. After all, this was a candidate that had promised to 'end the tyranny of oil' and 'heal the planet.' But the immense power of the fossil fuel industry made those words ring hollow. It turned out that even after a historic election, the President wasn't powerful enough to stand up to Big Oil on his own," wrote Jamie Henn, co-founder of 350.org, the environmental group that helped plan Sunday's rally.

Continue Reading...