blogging the beltway

Amid protests in Egypt demanding the ouster of the country’s longtime authoritarian president Hosni Mubarak, and violent clashes between demonstrators and police, on Friday night President Obama delivered a statement on the situation. Although Mubarak ordered his Cabinet ministers to resign, he has vowed to remain in power. In carefully chosen words Obama said that…

The times are a’changing at the White House, with more than a dozen new staffing changes announced on Thursday. Jay Carney, communications director for Vice President Biden and a former Time magazine reporter, will replace Robert Gibbs as White House press secretary. Carney was one of several names swirling around the Beltway for the past…

In the days and weeks following the Tucson shooting, lawmakers and activists have viewed the tragedy as an opportunity for reviving debate around gun control. New York Representative Carolyn McCarthy, for example, introduced a bill prohibiting high-capacity ammunition magazines. Activists who have long organized around the toll of gun violence in urban black communities, such…

Being in the House chamber during a State of the Union address, rowdy and packed with the entire federal government, is often compared to being at a high school pep rally. Despite this year’s mixed-seating arrangement — designed to restrain the usual “rival football teams” show of cheers and grumbles from opposite sides of the…

Now that every analyst and political junkie has weighed in on which themes President Obama should strike in the State of the Union tonight (or at least stocked up on liquor for the drinking game), all that’s left to do is tune in. Rather than have folks merely sit at home and listen, the White…

As House Republicans fixate on dismantling health care reform, President Obama is readying his counter-offensive for Tuesday’s State of the Union address—pushing the jobs issue back to the forefront. “My number one focus is going to be making sure that we are competitive, that we are growing, and we are creating jobs not just now…

Sounding more impassioned than he has since saying he was looking to “kick ass” during the BP oil spill, President Obama held a press conference at the White House today to talk about his controversial new tax package. Settled on with Republican leaders late yesterday, the tax plan will extend refundable tax credits (i.e. the…

An Obama administration official has hinted that the House will today vote on the long-running Pigford-Cobell lawsuits, thus coming one step closer to concluding cases that have been drawn out for decades now. The possibility of a vote on the suits, which would give $4.6 billion to American Indian and African-American litigants slighted by the…

I trust in Portlanders sense of fairness; that bad actions by one member of any group does not and should not be generalized or applied more widely to other members of that same group. Otherwise, as part of the biggest racial group in Portland, European-Americans, producing many crimes daily, would be in deep trouble. That’s…

Republican Steve Cooley has just conceded to Kamala Harris in California’s attorney general race, making Harris the first African-American attorney general in the state’s history. Cooley declared victory in the initially too-close-to-call election almost three weeks ago, but today, trailing by more than 50,000 votes, he bowed out. Cooley will return to his job as…