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WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans blocked another of President Barack Obama's picks for one of the nation's top courts on Tuesday, the latest skirmish in a nominations battle that has intensified partisan tensions in the chamber. The vote derailed Obama's selection of Georgetown University law professor Cornelia Pillard to fill one of three vacancies on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The roll call was 56-41 in favor of ending GOP procedural delays that have blocked Pillard from winning confirmation — four short of the 60 votes Democrats needed.

Senate Republicans on Thursday filibustered one of President Obama’s nominees to sit on the federal appeals court in Washington, arguing that while the woman is well-qualified, confirming her would allow Democrats to shift the political balance to the left on the country's second-most important court. The vote was the latest skirmish in the fierce, though usually hidden, battle over federal judgeships, which are increasingly becoming a part of the political spoils system. Republicans accused Democrats of trying to pack the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals by adding Patricia Millett to the bench, saying Mr. Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry...

Republican Sen. Mark Kirk has said he'd vote for a clean debt limit raise. His colleagues are less forthcoming As Salon’s Brian Beutler and others have reported, Senate Democrats are moving to test Republican claims that the votes aren’t there in the Senate to raise the debt ceiling without Democratic concessions. (Beutler wrote Monday that Majority Leader Harry Reid plans to revive a gambit previously pitched by Mitch McConnell, under which over half of Congress could cast votes against raising the debt ceiling, and barring a two-thirds majority, the president could do it anyway.) An aide to Senate Assistant Majority...

The fabric of our entire nation is being torn to bits by what I call the "fringers," the small groups that have taken over as the mouthpieces of their organizations. They march to their own drums and drown out any dissenting voices. The most notable one is the Republican Party which is being held captive by the tea partiers, one of the most destructive entities that has ever bollixed up our democracy that has endured for so many years since its exciting creation. There have been roadblocks in the past, most notably the Civil War, but at no time has...

Even though his filibuster against Obamacare is no proof that Ted Cruz is a real conservative, he deserves much credit for doing what he did. And his Republican opponents are equally deserving of criticism, for their response to Cruz’s “red line”—and to be sure, Cruz did indeed draw the proverbial red line—is most certainly proof that they are not the conservatives who they claim to be. First, it is “limited government,” and the individual liberty that this entails, for which Republicans are supposed to stand. Obamacare, though, is perhaps the most glaring affront to limited government and individual liberty that...

How fitting that Senator Ted Cruz’s 21-hour anti-Obamacare speech on the Senate floor in Washington, D.C., happened to coincide with the opening of the U.N. General Assembly and the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City. Rarely is the distance separating the caste that rules our world from its few, heavily despised critics so literal.

McCarthyism is on the march again from within the leadership of the Republican Party. Oh no, you say, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is from the Tea Party, not a Republican leader. Tell that to Sarah Palin and others who argue that Cruz is the new leader of the Republicans. They point out how Cruz took the Senate floor for 21 hours, arguing that he had to stop Obamacare funding by shutting down the government. They are proud that he said that, unlike the world that refused to stop the Nazis in 1940, he would be the hero of America and...

Senators from both parties linked arms to defy Sen. Ted Cruz, overcoming his attempt to filibuster the stopgap spending bill, which allowed Democrats to add back in full funding for Obamacare and power the bill through the chamber. The 79-19 vote saw 25 Republicans join with all Democrats to advance the bill, easily overcoming Mr. Cruz and his allies who had argued this was the key point that would determine whether major parts of President Obama’s health care law take effect next week. Once that hurdle was cleared, the rest of the votes were preordained. The Senate waived budget rules,...

So, this week history was made. I say we look at some different perspectives... Let's start out with who made history... He laid out some great arguments for what America should be And what America is turning into because of bad legislation To many, watching Ted Cruz speak, and say the things he said, we felt like And when Reid & Co. finally showed up on the Senate floor the next morning...it wasn't pretty And don't forget about the lecture from McCain, a Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war... And of course....the Democrats and their words, get ALL the...

This is as low as it gets in politics. Sen. John McCain literally offering himself to become the mouthpiece of the Democratic attack machine against Sen. Ted Cruz. Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer even gleefully was the one to yield time to McCain so he could get up and make his attack today after Sen. Ted Cruz concluded his 21 hour, 19 minute filibuster against ObamaCare. What came out of McCain’s mouth were pure Democratic talking points. He lauded Democrats for the way they conducted the original process that passed ObamaCare into law (which was partisan and used Reconciliation to pass...

Watching Ted Cruz's majestic, twenty-one hour speech in defense of defunding ObamaCare was thrilling. Observing all the small-minded critics on both sides of the aisle go after him as though he were a serial killer was so distressing. I am reminded of a fine film, made in 1941, titled People Will Talk. In the film, a horrible little man, played by Hume Cronyn (looking eerily like Harry Reid), strives to bring down a fine man, a doctor (Cary Grant). The man tries every dirty trick in the book and fails. But just before the end, the doctor's friend, Shunderson, played...

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BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The crux of his message throughout the 21 hours...I think it's important to point out that in all those 21 hours, he didn't say one critical or personal thing about anybody, Republican or Democrat. Despite the fact that the only opposition to him was personal, vicious, and mean, he did not sink to that level. Obviously he didn't need a teleprompter for any of it. But the points that he tried to make over and over again was this legislation, this health care reform is a disaster. It doesn't deserve to be implemented because it's so bad....

In the aftermath of Senator Ted Cruz’s epic performance on the Senate floor, a few observations: After his disgraceful attacks on Cruz, including his reach-across-the-aisle, dog-in-the-manger response today, this should be the end of Senator John McCain as a voice of influence in the Republican party. Ditto his mini-me, Senator Lindsey Graham. Indeed, the entire Old Guard of business-as-usual “comity” fans passeth. When you care more about what the other side thinks, it’s probably time either to switch teams or step down. There is new leadership in the GOP, whether the party wants to admit it or not: Cruz, Rand...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)As Sen. Ted Cruz continues his marathon talk on the Senate floor, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said, “He can always just read the Obamacare bill itself.” “Hey, you know if Ted Cruz runs out of material there to speak of in this filibuster of his he can always just read the Obamacare bill itself, because I bet you no one else there on the Senate floor has actually read it,” Palin said Tuesday on Fox News’s “Hannity.”“If he would read it though, then perhaps Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) she’d be watching the C-SPAN station there and she’d be able to...

Headlights on for TED.

Tea Party Republicans in the Senate are running out of options in their frantic effort to defund Obamacare, meaning the task will likely be handed back over to the House for a final showdown. The campaign to bleed the Affordable Care Act dry, championed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), suffered a near fatal blow when Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, announced that he would not support a filibuster to bottle up a House-passed continuing resolution that provides temporary funding for the federal government while simultaneously blocking the financing of the wide-ranging health care...

Cruz’s floor speech technically isn’t a filibuster because he can’t delay today’s vote on the House CR, but so what? Davis wasn’t going to stop the Texas legislature from passing new restrictions on late-term abortion either. Part of the romance of the long floor speech is that it is ultimately futile; you speak for your cause even though it’s lost because you believe in it that deeply. But of course, of course, the coverage is different this morning than it was for Davis: See Tim Carney, John Sexton, or especially the Right Scoop for more. If you want to dismiss...

Senator Ted Cruz strolled into the Senate chamber alone at around 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, carrying a large binder and ready to make his case to the American people via an informal filibuster, still ongoing at the time of this article’s publication. Mike Lee (R., Utah) would join him moments later, but not after the majority of their Senate colleagues had already thwarted their efforts to block a vote on a House-passed continuing resolution (CR) that would strip funding for Obamacare. “I think we’d all be hard pressed to explain why we’re opposed to a bill we’re in favor of,”...

The story of Gideon is all about God sending a man in to battle with what appeared to those around him to be a weak army. God continued to whittle his army down until such time as Gideon felt he was going into battle with an enemy FAR greater than him and his 300 men. But God had a perfect plan; that Gideon WOULD win and Our Lord would receive all the glory as there was no way Gideon would recieve glory based on strength of his army. Continue or start, to pray fervently for success! We can win this...