On a party-line vote, a key Senate committee on Thursday approved the nomination of Gina McCarthy to head the Environmental Protection Agency, a significant step forward for the controversial nominee and one that ends, at least temporarily, a bitter fight between Republicans and Democrats.
Senate hearings, even confirmation hearings, don't always live up to their billing (except in the movies). Not every committee can deliver Watergate-era theatrics, either from the panel of senators or in a retort from the witness table, as in Joseph Welch's famous question to Joe McCarthy: "Have you no sense of decency?"
It could end up being taxpayer money going down the drain.
If you saw a man standing outside the grocery store swinging a baton and glowering at passers-by, would you go inside?
Nearly three years after Congress passed the most far-reaching new regulations on Wall Street since the Great Depression, worries have resurfaced that the biggest U.S. banks have only grown in size and remain bailout candidates because they are "too big to fail."
Republicans are raising questions about the timing and costs of President Obama's decision to bypass Congress and designate five additional national monuments, coming as it does amid dire warnings of the most recent round of budget cuts, including the National Park Service.
President Obama on Monday nominated civil rights attorney Thomas E. Perez to be the next labor secretary, immediately drawing Republican opposition and another contentious confirmation fight on Capitol Hill.
There will be no breath of fresh air at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). On March 4, President Obama introduced Gina McCarthy, a veteran of the EPA bureaucracy, as his choice to run the 17,000-employee agency during his second term.
Internal EPA emails released Tuesday show an agency hostile to new energy production in the U.S. and an effort at "shaming" states into complying with Obama administration environmental priorities, according to the top Republican on the Senate environment committee.
