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On Thursday, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) made his first-ever appearance on NBC’s “The Tonight Show” in which he discussed his background and some of the issues of the day. “I don’t have any problem with the Tea Party,” Boehner said. “Those people have brought great energy to the political process. Most of them have never been involved before. You know, when you agree with someone 90 percent of the time, they’re not your enemy. My problem was with some Washington organizations who purport to represent the Tea Party who I think mislead them. There’s nothing I could...

Federal Gov't Closes Due to Threat of Snow Why? Because the forecast calls for snow. (Currently there is no snow falling or on the ground.)

During the month of January 2014, IREHR will publish a multi-segment special report on the current status of the Tea Party movement. We will publish a track the membership of the principal organizations in the movement—a task undertaken by no organization or agency other than IREHR. We will look at geographic regions where this membership is concentrated. And we will look at some of the money that keeps this movement in the public eye. In the piece below, we follow the Tea Parties over the course of 2013. It was a year of countervailing winds and storms. A drive against...

While members of Congress ended 2013 congratulating themselves for passing a budget, the media missed the fact that the agreement doesn't actually avoid a government shutdown. The deal reached by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) provides simply a blueprint for government spending. Congress must still pass legislation detailing specific spending before January 15, when government's spending authority expires. Government still faces a potential shutdown in a little over a week. The budget agreement passed by Congress in the closing days of last year provides what is called the "top-Line" number, setting the overall level of discretionary...

Late last week it was learned that some 40 million charge cards were obtained using physical processing systems located in Target retail locations nationwide. Though no details of the how the hack attack was executed have been released by Target, the FBI or other agencies investigating the breach, it is likely that the processing machines themselves were compromised. Target claims that the hack was sophisticated, but on the technical side, once hackers found a way into the credit card processing machines, probably via remote entry from servers somewhere in Eastern Europe or Russia, the theft of credit card data itself...

While the federal government was squeezed on one side by sequester and the other by a looming partial shutdown, the State Department was spending heavily on booze for its embassies abroad. The Washington Times reports that the department spent about $180,000 on alcohol in September and $400,000 in all of 2012—that’s three times the $118,000 spent in 2008. The booze tab reportedly has risen every year since 2008, but the end of fiscal 2012 saw a particular spike. …

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican up for re-election in 2014, told the Washington Examiner in an interview published Friday that he believes it is time for the GOP establishment to stop conservatives and Tea Partiers. McConnell argued it is “utter nonsense” for groups like the Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF), which has endorsed his primary challenger businessman Matt Bevin, to argue that Republicans like him in Congress are not fighting hard enough to defeat Democrats. In the interview, McConnell focused on deriding Tea Partiers for leading the effort to defund Obamacare—something that, coupled with the Democrats’ refusal to...

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Tuesday that the country doesn’t need to worry about another government shutdown in January when the current stopgap spending bill runs out. The government shutdown lasted for 16 days in October, after Republicans demanded that President Obama defund his signature healthcare law. To avoid another shutdown, Ryan said either he and Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) would strike a budget deal or Congress would pass a stopgap keeping existing spending levels. “Either of those two scenarios will prevail, and we will not have a government shutdown,” he said at the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government started the first month of the 2014 budget year with a smaller budget deficit, signaling further improvement in the nation's finances at a time when lawmakers are wrestling to reach a deal to keep the government open past January. The Treasury Department said Wednesday that the deficit in October was $91.6 billion. That's 24 percent lower than the $120 billion imbalance recorded in October 2012. The deficit is the gap between the government's tax revenue and spending.

The Republican Party’s loss of the Virginia Governor’s race has sparked extensive analysis searching for “lessons learned” while heading into the crucial upcoming 2014 Congressional elections. Conventional wisdom argues that the government shutdown drama hurt Ken Cuccinelli and his running mates, although later the flawed ObamaCare roll-out helped Virginia Republicans regain some lost ground. Facts Do Not Support Shutdown Hurt Cuccinelli But the facts don’t support the theory that the government shutdown and debt ceiling battle hurt Ken Cuccinelli. Virginians who voted in the November 6 elections about equally blamed both President Barack Obama and Republicans in Congress, according to...

It’s Nov. 16, 2013, and the partial government shutdown ended one month ago today. In those four weeks, and the two prior, everything conservatives said would happen has happened. What’s more, the Democrats’ united stand against them has turned into a retreat — and is primed to become a rout — as they amend Obamacare’s disastrous rollout, President Barack Obama apologizes for his failures, and electorally vulnerable Democrats break ranks and flee. Hell, even the polls that D.C.’s Republican pundits shrieked, wept and clawed over show the Grand Old Party has bounced back while the Democrats have fallen behind. Because,...

(CNN) - Sen. Ted Cruz argued Thursday that people are starting to understand why he and other conservative activists embraced a strategy that tried to derail Obamacare this year but instead resulted in last month's government shutdown. Speaking at the Aspen Institute's Washington Ideas Forum in Washington, the Texas Republican said the troubled rollout of HealthCare.gov and revelations of people losing their health care insurance have led to changed feelings about his strategy. "A few weeks ago there were lots of people - particularly in Washington - that were saying, 'Why are you guys fighting so hard on this?' And...

Going by age demographics, the October 2013 Employment Situation Report released last Friday revealed the following numbers. 578,000 fewer adults (Age 25 and above) were counted as having jobs in the household survey portion of the report.22,000 fewer young adults (Age 20-24) were counted as being employed in October 2013.135,000 fewer teens (Age 16-19) were working in October 2013. The big story, of course, was the partial federal government shut down that saw 815,932 government workers be furloughed at the beginning of October 2013. Here though, that number was quickly cut nearly in half as the Defense department recalled most...

John McCain is apparently fielding a “spate of e-mails and letters and phone calls” from people who want him to run for president again. But, the Republican senator from Arizona told the Arizona Republic that he’s not really considering another run for the White House: “‘Particularly since the shutdown, I’ve had a spate of e-mails and letters and phone calls saying, ‘Run for president again,” McCain told The Arizona Republic. ‘As you know, I’m seriously thinking about running for re-election to the Senate. But I think, in the words of the late Morris K. Udall, as far as my presidential...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/11/10/will-sarah-palin-have-a-second-act/3489845/

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who rallied members of the Tea Party in their failed effort to defund Obamacare, lashed out on Saturday against members of the Republican Party who agreed to end the government shutdown. The 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee's comments during a speech in Des Moines come at a time of division within the party over the strategy conservative members of Congress adopted in forcing a 16-day shutdown of the federal government last month. (snip) Palin told the Christian conservatives in attendance it was time to "stiffen our spines" for the 2014 elections. "I want to encourage...

If Texas Sen. Ted Cruz were in California, we would start a recall on him. Cruz is wasting hard-working Americans' money in our Senate. It was immoral for Cruz and the other Republicans to shut down government to keep Americans from getting affordable health care. America is tired of the Republicans' hating President Barack Obama so much that they want to keep 50 million Americans from being able to afford health care. When the health care reform law becomes fully operational it will bring the cost of America's health care down. In time, we can make changes and put into...

President Barack Obama is marking Veterans Day by making it his mission to ensure America has the back of its veterans. In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama says now that more veterans are coming home from wars, the U.S. must serve them as well. He’s promoting programs to hire and educate veterans. …

The threat of default and 16-day government shutdown that ended Wednesday night left the American people -- and President Obama -- frustrated. "You don't like a particular policy or a particular president? Then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election," Obama said. "Push to change it.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and his Republican colleagues won the shutdown drama in October. However, the effects are still gradually rippling through the electorate. And the full results will depend upon Republicans understanding the strategy (they don't) and continuing to implement conservatives' obvious plan consistently for maximum impact (unlikely). Approval has dropped five percent for President Barack Obama since the October government shutdown, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal opinion survey. Obama's disapproval rating has reached a toxic 51 percent -- as even Obama-worshiping NBC News admits. Over 50 percent of voters disapproving is considered fatal for an...