By John Solomon
How the government's punishing of the exposure of official wrongdoing can linger for years
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
While President Obama keeps pounding away to get votes to pass gun restrictions in the Senate, pro-Second Amendment supporters are pushing the upper chamber in the opposite direction. Sen. Tom Coburn introduced two amendments to strengthen the rights of gun owners and keep the federal government in check.
Gun owners who cheered when the Senate failed to pass numerous anti-gun bills last week should temper their enthusiasm. The liberal wing of the Democratic party, led by President Obama and funded by New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, has already started to use the votes to oust pro-Second Amendment senators in 2014.
Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota plans to announce on Tuesday that he will not seek re-election in 2014, according to news reports — opening up a prime opportunity for Republicans to pick up a seat in a red state and cut into the Democratic majority in the Senate.
President Obama has often used executive authority to get around Congress — and he has promised to continue that approach in his second term.
![** FILE ** Work has begun on the Keystone XL Pipeline near Winona, Texas, but whether it will ever carry oil sands from central Canada to Gulf Coast refineries awaits a decision by President Obama. (Tyler [Texas] Morning Telegraph via Associated Press)](http://media.washtimes.com/media/image/2013/03/15/20130117-195944-pic-543473233_5_mugshot_four_by_three_s101x76.jpg?38f271e3d49cdfd5d0ef8cac5cad23b117d14f23)
President Obama has often used executive authority to get around Congress. Now, a bipartisan group of lawmakers wants to turn the tables.
On the heels of President Obama's finger-pointing at Fox News, and Rush Limbaugh, for supposedly holding up legislative progress on the national debt, now comes Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu, who lambasted the network for its coverage of entitlement spending.
U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller will not seek a sixth term representing West Virginia.
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner did what Washingtonians call the "full Ginsburg" on Sunday. The term refers to Monica Lewinsky's lawyer, William H. Ginsburg, who was the first to appear on all five network Sunday interview shows in one day.
As Isaac's drenching rains and cooling winds drifted north of the Gulf Coast, heat and humidity moved back in — along with frustration, exhaustion and uncertainty.
As Tropical Storm Isaac bears down on the Gulf Coast, there should be plenty of money — some $1.5 billion — in federal disaster aid coffers, thanks, in part, to a new system that budgets help for victims of hurricanes, tornadoes and floods before they occur.
The Virginia lawmaker and self-described Republican "young gun" has emerged as a favorite foil.
President Obama is asking Congress to raise taxes on job creators to pay for his "jobs" bill. On Monday, Mr. Obama said the Joint Select Committee for Deficit Reduction should find another $450 billion in deficit reduction (i.e., tax hikes) to bankroll his American Jobs Act, further impoverishing the nation while doing nothing to alleviate the 9.1 percent unemployment rate.
The Obama administration, under heavy pressure from the oil industry and others in the Gulf Coast, on Tuesday lifted the moratorium on deep water drilling that it imposed in the wake of the disastrous BP oil spill.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is expected to bring the immigration "compromise" bill back to the floor for debate as early as tomorrow, and Mr. Reid wants to ram something he can plausibly spin as "reform" through the Senate by the the Fourth of July. But Mr. Reid, President Bush, Sen. Ted Kennedy and the Democratic and Republican politicians supporting this bill have a little problem called the American people, who are speaking by phone, fax and e-mail in one voice: Give us a bill that actually improves border security. Americans are rejecting the hodgepodge of restatements of existing policies and some genuinely harmful provisions that sound like they were concocted by Mr. Kennedy's Senate staff in conjunction with the ACLU.
"It really is encouraging to me that we have a nominee who has actually spent some time in the oil and gas arena, who has fracked a well," said Sen. Mary Landrieu, Louisiana Democrat.
"I am not going to keep cutting the discretionary budget, which by the way is not out of control, despite what you hear on Fox News," she reportedly said.
