For all the talk of the “fiscal cliff” or “Taxmageddon,” precious little attention has been paid to one element of it – the automatic cuts, not to defense, but to the discretionary budget. Republicans – and the Defense Department – have been quick to denounce the defense cuts and look for a replacement plan. That [...]

Perhaps there’s a limit to how many caves can occur in a week, because Democrats are actually taking a stand on the FAA authorization mess. The backstory here is that House Republicans basically left town without extending the FAA, which has been in partial shutdown since last week. As a result, 4,000 FAA personnel are [...]

I mentioned this in last night’s Roundup, but it’s just a testament to how the new Washington operates. Lawmakers in both houses of Congress have passed an FAA authorization bill. The particulars are in the range of 90% the same. While they work something out on the last 10%, they could pass an extension of [...]

Add another $1.2 billion in lost revenue to the contracting fiscal policy we’re embarking on in the midst of a low-growth jobs crisis. After passing the debt limit deal today in the Senate, Congress plans to take a vacation for a month. That’s despite some unfinished business. The FAA is still without authorization, and 4,000 [...]

I flew through Pittsburgh, PA back in October, and had my first encounter with the full-body scanner. Outside of grumbling that it took quite a long time to get through the system and that TSA didn’t seem to have a good grasp of how to use the machines without getting a lot of false positives, [...]

A few updates in the thus-far failed mail bomb plot that the President spoke about on Friday. (By the way, notice how that wasn’t a feature of this midterm election campaign whatsoever, that the fear card was never played, even with the announcement of an attack on the Friday before the election?) First, investigators are [...]

For a President who may be losing the public on the question of whether he cares about their problems, this is a pretty smart move. Responding to horror stories of stranded travelers, the Obama administration ordered airlines today to allow passengers to disembark from planes that have been stuck on the tarmac for more than [...]