Unemployment Extension Defeated In House
WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives on Thursday voted down a measure that would have reauthorized extended unemployment insurance for another three months, leaving no clear path forward to prevent the benefits from lapsing as scheduled on Nov. 30.
Without a reauthorization, the Labor Department estimates that two million long-term unemployed will prematurely stop receiving benefits before the end of the year.
"I think it's a sad moment," said Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) after the vote. "It appalls me that the Republicans keep pitching and pitching and pitching the tax cuts for the rich and won't join in a bill to help people keep their homes and not have to live in their cars."
Republicans Push To Defund NPR
WASHINGTON -- The Republican campaign to take away all federal funding from National Public Radio (NPR) was over before it began, with GOP lawmakers' procedural trick to force a vote on the issue failing on Thursday. It was the first GOP-ordered House vote since the election.
The proposal to defund NPR was the latest winning item on the Republicans' gimmicky YouCut site, which allows the public to pick the cuts they would like to see receive an up-or-down vote on the House floor. In order to get these votes, they try to make a procedural vote on an unrelated piece of legislation the vote on the YouCut item.
Rick Perry Willing To Send US Troops Into Mexico To Fight Drug War
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, soon to be the leader of the Republican Governors Association, continued his argument Thursday that the federal government needed to halt their intervention in the private sector and refocus their energy toward securing the border -- even if that means sending U.S. troops into Mexico.
While pushing his small government economic message on issues such as the auto industry and social security during an interview with MSNBC, Perry seemed to express a willingness to massively increase the U.S. military's involvement in foreign affairs by deploying American forces across the southern border to fight in the Mexican drug war.
Leo Berman, Texas State Legislator, Introduces 'Birther' Bill
Texas State Representative Leo Berman (R) furthered his campaign against President Obama Tuesday, a man that he has before characterized as "God's punishment on us," by introducing a bill that would require future presidential and vice-presidential candidates to produce "the original birth certificate indicating that the person is a natural-born United States citizen" to the Texas secretary of state.
Berman told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal that the bill, House Bill 295, is a compulsory step to take in order to correct an alleged gap in the law that allowed Barack Obama, who he believes could be foreign-born, to run for president.
"This bill is necessary because we have a president whom the American people don't know whether he was born in Kenya or some other place," Berman told the Avalanche-Journal. "If you are running for president or vice president, you've got to show here in Texas that you were born in the United States and the birth certificate is your proof."
