Capitol Hill Bureau Chief
Good morning, Capitolists! The Palin Express pulls into your television today, with Lady Palin's Oprah interview just hours away. She'll be in bookstores tomorrow when her memoir goes on sale and will travel the country talking about it for the next several weeks.
While Washingtonians count down the hours till they can look themselves up in the index of "Going Rogue," why don't you catch up on what's happening in the capital? Here's what's making news in Washington today:
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The Story Everybody's Talking About. The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza
writes up the latest Pew poll that shows voters ready to throw the bums in Congress out in 2010. "Only 34 percent said they want most incumbents to be reelected in the midterms. Pew describes those numbers as among the most negative in two decades of collecting data," Cillizza says. A Capitolist tip to incumbent members of Congress: Update the resume and keep it to one page.
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Pelosi's Read the Bill. While speaking at
Harvard's Institute of Politics on Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked if she had read the 1,990-page beast of a health care bill that the House passed a week ago Saturday. The speaker's answer: Yep -- she told Harvard students, "I have, I have."
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Health on the Shelf. The House and Senate both gavel into session at 2 p.m., but the Senate will be debating the military construction bill,
not the health care, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had promised. The hold-up comes from the Congressional Budget Office, which has not yet delivered Reid a cost estimate for the legislation that he's ready to go public with. Stay tuned.
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Obama Not Newsworthy for Chinese. President Obama is in China today as a part of his eight-day Asian tour. Earlier, he held a town-hall meeting with Chinese students, but
the BBC reports it was downplayed or blocked on most Chinese media outlets. Chinese state television did mention Obama's visit, though it came a full 25 minutes into the newscast.
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Levi's Hockey Mom "Tribute" Sarah Palin will tell Oprah today that she was "devastated" to learn of her daughter's pregnancy with Levi Johnston and can anyone really blame her?
The New York Daily News reports that Johnston's naked
Playgirl shoot took place over the weekend and, according to his manager, it was "fantastic," "involved a hockey stick" and was "a tribute to hockey moms." What potential mother-in-law wouldn't be proud?