House Republicans are honoring a deep tradition in American politics by trying to save their political skins and their majority through the passage of a highway bill. In past years these would be earmark-laden affairs designed to channel resources to particular districts and bolster the case for re-election. That’s not quite the case this year. [...]

The Obama Administration environmental agenda has underwhlemed progressive supporters over the past week, to say the least. The rollback of ozone regulations will keep the country on a 1997 standard, worse than what the Bush Administration proposed in the waning days of his second term, and will lead to more asthma cases, more public health [...]

The White House is getting an early jump on the House Republicans’ next potential hostage-taking event, and perhaps learning something in the process. In an event today, flanked by AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka, Chamber of Commerce COO David Chavern and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, President Obama will call for a clean extension of the Highway [...]

The Senate Ethics Committee referred the John Ensign corruption case to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation, saying that their findings show that Ensign “violated Senate Rules and federal civil and criminal laws, and engaged in improper conduct reflecting upon the Senate, thus betraying the public trust and bringing discredit to the Senate.” Senate [...]

John Ensign’s resignation was two-fold: a favor to Rep. Dean Heller, who will probably get his seat and also a leg up in the 2012 Senate race from being the incumbent; and a way to avoid a budding Senate Ethics Committee investigation. The Justice Department and the FEC closed their investigations against Ensign, but the [...]

The new trick for Republicans is to stick legislative items into spending bills. For three days on the House floor, Republicans have congratulated themselves on “debating the whole government,” giving attention to items like blocking the EPA from making a scientific ruling on its own to comply with a Supreme Court order and regulate greenhouse [...]

Jon has got you covered with the liveblog. I’ll be heading over to Hollywood for the local party headquarters, where Barbara Boxer will be spending Election Night. California may be the blue oasis in a sea of red tonight, and so it should be an interesting dynamic in the state of what looks to be [...]

So the energy bill is off the calendar for a vote tomorrow, but with lockstep Republican (and some Democratic) opposition, that was going to be a symbolic vote anyway. A far more consequential vote will come tomorrow, in the form of the state fiscal aid package. The Senate leadership postponed a vote on this yesterday [...]

One of the question I tried to ask several of the politicians at Netroots Nation was about this oft-remarked statement about small businesses not being able to secure lending. I’ve seen it expressed on both sides: one, that small community banks have tighter leverage requirements and have consequently tightened their lending standards, making it difficult [...]

Bill Nelson is now running on his website a live feed of the BP oil gusher on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. You can clearly see that there’s a much greater volume of oil coming out of that gusher than what BP has claimed, and that the pipe siphoning off oil, which BP [...]

Tom Campbell is seen as a moderate Republican, although he’s a Friedmanite conservative on economic issues. But his moderate pose has made him the most acceptable to the general electorate in California among the three candidates in the June GOP Senate primary. Campbell posts the best numbers against Barbara Boxer, basically in a dead heat, [...]