“In politics, stupidity is not a handicap,” Napoleon is reputed to have said more than two centuries ago. Boundless ignorance is also not a handicap, as Congress demonstrated last December by approving a 5593-page bill without reading it. Plenty of activists and editorial pages howled over the sloppy procedures propelling $2.3 trillion in new federal spending. read on...
If you could mash-up all that is disgusting, evil, hypocritical, and idiotic in the US Congress, the resulting conglomeration would look a lot like House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD). His entire career has been spent gorging himself at the trough of the US taxpayer: he's never had an honest job. read on...
Special interests already elbowed their way into including government subsidies for businesses and racial preference requirements in national marijuana legalization legislation in the form of the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act (the MORE Act) approved in the United States House of Representatives in December, toward the end of the last congress. Now, with legalization momentum so strong that a national law change appears to be around the corner, expect more and more special interests to rush in to advance their goals in the crafting of the bill that will end decades of national prohibition. read on...
“This is a farce; it’s a sham.” That is how Rep. Thomas Massie, in a Monday interview with host Kennedy at Fox Business, concluded his assessment of the expedited impeachment of President Donald Trump in the United States House of Representatives before Trump’s presidential term ended and the similarly rushed trial of the now former president that is taking place this week in the US Senate. read on...
The United States House of Representatives is having a floor vote this week on H.Res. 72, a resolution to strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) of her committee memberships. This is a novel and severe punishment for a House floor vote to impose on a House member. read on...
It is outside the routine to hear an interest group publicly claim it drafted legislation that has been passed on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. An interest group may let it be known that it worked with the sponsoring representative on preparing legislation or that the sponsoring House member drafted legislation in part due to the organization’s request. But, an organization publicly declaring it drafted legislation approved on the House floor is a bigger and less usual claim. read on...
When you do not have a good case supporting taking an action, one tried-and-true strategy of persuasion is to pile up a mountain of trivial and ridiculous assertions and point to it as proof that you are right. If someone diligently digs through the mountain, he will find that there is nothing of substance there. But, many people will just see a mountain of accusations and figure there must be truth behind the assertion. read on...
Two years back, when Republicans held the majority in the United States House of Representatives, Rep. Thomas Massie was criticizing the failure of the House Republican leadership to allow a vote of the House membership on ending the US government’s marijuana prohibition, which Massie predicted would have passed. Massie further argued that the Republicans could have maintained their majority in the House — lost in the November of 2018 general election — if leadership had just allowed a House floor vote on the popular proposition that marijuana policy be left up to the states. read on...
Earlier this month, I wrote about a bill including marijuana legalization that United States House of Representatives Democratic leadership had planned to bring to the House floor for a vote this month. The bill — the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act (HR 3884), I noted, appears to have no chance of being approved in the Republican majority US Senate or of receiving a signature from President Donald Trump. This is because the virtually “Democrats only” bill includes race-based provisions and marijuana business subsidies that are anathema to many Republicans, including those who favor legalization. read on...
The United States House of Representatives appears set to have a floor vote this month on the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act (HR 3884). The bill would legalize marijuana at the national level, but, as I pointed out in a July article, the MORE Act’s “inclusion of race-based provisions and marijuana business subsidies make the bill seem incapable of gaining much Republican support.” read on...
