At some point in the next few months, Senate Republicans will decide whether to exercise the so-called "nuclear option," which would end the use of filibusters to block judicial nominees.
For as long as I can remember, excitement and freshness have nearly always been in the air when a new Congress is about to be sworn-in (and I have seen 16 of these since moving to Washington). The one exception was in 1997, after President Clinton was re-elected and the Congress remained in Republican hands.
As Democrats prepare to select a new party chairman next month, they should think not only about what went wrong in 2004 but about what went right. After all, a party that carried 19 states in four consecutive elections (with a total of 248 electoral votes, just 22 short of the 270 needed to win) is not fundamentally broken, it just needs some work.
Saying that the next major speech to be given by a president is "the most important of his career" has become a tired cliche. After all, no president gets the job without having delivered a number of very important speeches. But George W.
It's impossible to tell whether the story last week that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was contemplating a bid for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination was a real trial balloon or just some savvy publicist's great idea for drawing attention to Gingrich's new book.
Now that both President Bush and the 109th Congress have been sworn in, the real work is just beginning. It's hard to remember when a new Congress and a re-elected president faced such monumental challenges under such difficult circumstances.
Sometimes the best questions that should be asked after each election are the ones that never are, and maybe they are never asked for a reason: No one wants to hear the answers.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, R-Calif., may well be the prickliest and most explosive lawmaker on Capitol Hill, but the White House would be well advised to listen to him on Social Security and tax reform. What Thomas may lack in social graces, he makes up for in his understanding of these issues and their politics.
It's not too often that you see an elected official make a really interesting, even daring political move, one that potentially antagonizes an element of that politician's base. But that's exactly what Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., did.
