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Click here to visit the new home of Politics Daily!ORLANDO, Fla. -- President Obama issued an unequivocal promise during his second State of the Union address: "If a bill comes to my desk with earmarks inside, I will veto it." The pledge drew loud applause but also puzzlement. "I guess the big question is: What is your definition of 'earmarks'?" says Malia Hale, a Washington lobbyist for the National Wildlife Federation. Obama underlined his promise by issuing it twice during the address. The rhetoric was designed to appease Senate and House Republicans -- who already have banned earmarks -- and mollify an electorate leery of a federal ...
And then there were five. Two centrist Democratic senators from conservative or moderate states, Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Jim Webb of Virginia, have announced they will retire rather than run for reelection next year. That leaves Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Bill Nelson of Florida, Jon Tester of Montana, and Ben Nelson of Nebraska (who just hired a campaign manager and looks ready to run). Are they doomed, along with their party's fragile 53-47 hold on the Senate? Sometimes you really can gauge future elections by what happened in the last go-round. The ...
More on Ronald Reagan's Life and Legacy - Lou Cannon: Reagan Is Remembered for Good Reason - Pictures Tell Ronald Reagan's Life Story [PHOTOS] - 5 Things You Didn't Know About Ronald Reagan - Son Says Reagan Would See Today's GOP as 'Mean-Spirited' - Reagan Casts Long Shadow Over Clinton, Obama, Both Bushes - You Said It: Ronald Reagan [VIDEO] - Personal Memories: Reagan Was ... [VIDEO] - Reagan: Funniest President Ever? [VIDEO] - Peter Schweizer: The Genius of Ronald Reagan's Humor - What the World Was Like When Ronald Reagan Was Born - The Gipper Reconsidered: A Liberal's View - Ronald ...
WASHINGTON -- Many have called Jan. 28, 1986, a "fateful day." Bill Nelson is one of the few who saw in the breakup of the space shuttle Challenger a fate that might have been his own. Nelson had returned to Earth just 10 days earlier with the crew of the Columbia, the oldest shuttle in the fleet and one that years later would come to its own fiery end. The Democratic congressman from Florida, whose district encompassed the Kennedy Space Center, was back on Capitol Hill after moonlighting as a NASA payload specialist during Columbia's six-day mission orbiting Earth. The flight of ...
ORLANDO, Fla. -- Critics charge the Obama administration responded too slowly to the oil spill. Perhaps the administration should have listened more to Sen. Bill Nelson. Since the spill began -- back when we believed only 5,000 barrels of oil a day were seeping into the Gulf of Mexico -- Florida's senior senator, a Democrat, has been on TV, calling for more leadership from President Barack Obama, for more accountability from BP. He was the first to publicly post images of the leaking well online, after he and Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California pressed BP for the footage, putting a ...
While BP continues to take most of the flak for the Gulf oil spill, Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum has saved some choice words of his own for Attorney General Eric Holder. In a two-page letter sent to Holder today, McCollum admonished the Obama administration for leaving him out of a meeting of state attorneys general convened Tuesday to discuss the leak. "This omission would suggest that President Obama and his Administration do not fully understand and appreciate the imminent crisis Florida specifically is facing in the wake of the biggest environmental disaster in American ...
Words flew between Democratic Sens. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Bill Nelson of Florida over their divergent responses to the oil spill that will affect industries in both of their states, The Hill reports. Both are considered moderates, but their disagreement comes over which industry should be protected in the spill's aftermath: tourism, one of Florida's biggest income generators, or off-shore drilling, Louisiana's largest industry. Landrieu, the more conservative of the two, defended the oil industry last week, saying the explosion at a BP drilling rig was tragic but unlikely to happen ...
As a massive oil slick made its way toward the Gulf Coast Thursday, Florida's senior senator called on President Obama to put a emergency moratorium on all new offshore oil drilling. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, also introduced a bill to stop the Obama administration from moving forward with a plan to expand offshore oil drilling to the area of the Outer Continental Shelf. In a letter to the president, Nelson specifically asked for an immediate halt to operations on test wells and exploratory activities in all coastal waters until the cause of the Deep Water test well spill is known. That ...
Google on Tuesday released the top searches within the United States for 2009; the results are surprising and interesting. The top Google searches for senators show that people are more interested in reading about Democrats than Republicans -- only Chuck Grassley of Iowa at No. 9 made the list for the GOP. And it also shows that people are doing more searches for senators with key roles in legislation than for senators caught up in scandals. No surprise, Ted Kennedy tops the Senate Google searches, as he died this year. Second on the Senate list is Nelson, but the Google people don't tell us ...
In a speech before the Florida State Senate, U.S. Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), a supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary race, announced plans to introduce a Federal presidential election reform plan that contains features at odds with the Clinton campaign's rationale for securing the nomination. Nelson's plan would establish regional primaries that would take place between March and June and would rotate in order, eliminating the influence of early voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire. It would also allow early voting in all states and absentee voting for any reason, ...
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