The New Republic

About a year and a half ago, one of Elise Foley’s colleagues at The Huffington Post’s Washington bureau went searching for a photo of Louie Gohmert, the Republican congressman from Texas. Gohmert is not a member of Congressional leadership or the head of a major committee—some on the Hill might consider him a back-bencher—but his frequently outlandish comments have made him a favorite punching bag of the progressive media. READ MORE >>

Marco Rubio's role as the Republican point man on immigration reform is remarkable if you think of the senator who played the part before him. John McCain had been in the Senate for nearly twenty years when he took up the issue in President Bush's second term; Rubio has been in Washington only a little more than two. Of course, Rubio has something McCain lacked: credibility with the GOP’s right-wing base. And so Rubio is seen as the key to forming the bipartisan coalition that has eluded those who have worked on this issue. READ MORE >>

It’s election night, November 2, 2010, and Jeb Bush is all alone on stage at Marco Rubio’s victory rally. As supporters and photographers await the arrival of the new conservative star, Bush takes his substantial six-foot-three-inch frame a few steps toward the audience, clapping and cajoling them to join him in a chant: “Mar-co! Mar-co! Mar-co!” He moves stage left, where the cameras are waiting, still alone, still chanting, like a helicopter parent cheering from the sidelines. READ MORE >>

“We’ve all done it,” begins one of the spicier dialogues in the new Netflix political thriller, “House of Cards.” Janine Skorsky, a veteran political reporter, is revealing to her young colleague, Zoe Barnes, how female journalists in Washington snag their scoops. READ MORE >>

I have a question I like to ask journalist friends whenever they're stressed about misspelling the name of some obscure interest group flack or mistakenly writing percentage instead of percentage points: "Have you ever misidentified a United States Senator in a newspaper?" READ MORE >>

Over the last couple of weeks, tensions between the Congressional Black Caucus and the Obama administration boiled over, with ten CBC members on the financial services committee skipping a key vote on regulatory reform legislation and threatening to scuttle the reform bill altogether if the president didn’t take greater steps to addresses unemployment and home foreclosures in the African American community. READ MORE >>

Jonathan Martin brings us yet another former McCain adviser stepping forward to accuse Sarah Palin of being a dunce. In this telling, Palin canceled a sit down with Spanish-language channel Univision because she felt uncomfortable talking about Hispanic issues. A campaign aide described it as “a near-crisis situation, with McCain officials worried that [Univision anchor Jorge] Ramos would say on the air that Palin wasn’t appearing because she was not capable of discussing” the issues. READ MORE >>

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Like Michelle, we’re happy to see The New York Times giving front-page space to the new recommendations for mammograms and pap smears. READ MORE >>

Politico reports that residents in New York’s 23rd district are getting hammered by them. TPM’s Eric Kleefeld has the goods on the messages recorded by Giuliani and Pataki. READ MORE >>