Thus is refreshing news.

Justice Department officials told Arizona's attorney general and aides to the governor Friday that the federal government has serious reservations about the state's new immigration law. They responded that a lawsuit against the state isn't the answer.

"I told them we need solutions from Washington, not more lawsuits," said Attorney General Terry Goddard, a Democrat.

The Justice Department initiated separate meetings by phone and face-to-face in Phoenix with Goddard and aides to Republican Gov. Jan Brewer to reach out to Arizona's leaders and elicit information from state officials regarding the Obama administration's concerns about the new law.

The strong message that the Justice Department representatives delivered at the private meetings – first with Goddard, then with Brewer's staff – left little doubt that the Obama administration is prepared to go to court if necessary in a bid to block the new law, which takes effect July 29.

Goddard said he noted that five privately filed lawsuits already are pending in federal court to challenge the law.

"Every possible argument is being briefed," said Goddard, who is running unopposed for his party's nomination for the governor's race.

Brewer, who is seeking re-election, later said in a statement that her legal team told the Justice Department officials that the law would be "vigorously defended all the way to the United States Supreme Court if necessary."

The department officials, Brewer said, "were advised that I believe the federal government should use its legal resources to fight illegal immigration, not the state of Arizona."

Maybe Orrin Hatch can come up with a Kris Kobach Amendment and send a person or persons to jail for up to six months if they are instrumental in passing state legislation that allows racial profiling.
Anyway, even the WSJ admits that the Arizona law is unconstitutional.
Is Arizona’s new immigration law constitutional?

We hit the question briefly on Friday in this post, and the initial answer to the question seemed to be no, that in passing an immigration law, Arizona was improperly stepping into the domain of the federal government.

The NYT’s John Schwartz on Wednesday takes a deeper look at the question. His finding: that, yes, the law probably — though not definitely — runs violates preemption principles, and is therefore unconstitutional.

“The law is clearly pre-empted by federal law under Supreme Court precedents,” said UC Irvine’s Erwin Chemerinsky.

For decades, the role of controlling immigration and enforcing immigration laws has fallen to the federal government, not the states. And the law will likely fail on those grounds, said Chemerinsky.

Can we afford to put bipartisan compromise with these people over actual and effective financial regulation reform? Pardon my cynicism, but it looks like we won't have much of a choice:

Key members of both parties said Wednesday that they are close to agreeing on the main elements of a bill to overhaul the nation's financial regulations, raising the prospect that the Senate could begin formal discussion of the landmark legislation early next week.

"I'm more optimistic than I've ever been," said Sen. Richard C. Shelby (Ala.), the lead Republican negotiator. "I think we can put a bill together pretty soon." His counterpart in months of talks, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the banking committee, agreed that they were on the cusp of a consensus.

If no last-minute hurdles arise, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) plans to hold a test vote Monday, aides said. If he gets 60 or more votes, he could move ahead with formal debate on the bill, which among other things would create an agency to protect consumers against abuses in mortgages and other loans, set up a council of regulators to watch for risks to the financial system, and give the government power to wind down large, troubled financial firms.

The likely emergence of a bipartisan consensus is a notable departure from the fractious debate over health-care legislation, which passed last month without a single Republican vote. This time, some Republicans say they are looking forward to supporting the financial bill, which arose out of an economic crisis that has left millions of Americans angry and bereft of their jobs, homes and savings.

With both parties eager to claim that they are tackling financial excesses, Republicans have been focusing their objections on specific tenets of the legislation rather than on its overall thrust, allowing for more compromise.

In another example about how Republicans cannot be trusted to responsibly address national security (or domestic security) issues, Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Joe Lieberman (R-at Heart) are threatening the Defense Department with subpoenas if it does not release documents that they requested through the Senate's homeland security committee.

"The painful fact is that 13 Americans died in the Fort Hood massacre," Lieberman said. "We owe it to them and their survivors and everyone else in our country to determine whether our government could have prevented their deaths -- and if so, why it did not -- so that we can make sure it does the next time."

Collins faulted administration aides for "an inexplicable determination to stalemate and slow-walk our investigation."

Appropriately, SecDef Bob Gates has told the two to go pound sand, since there are, in fact, a few other pressing defense issues on his agenda, and there is no story here.

Gates, speaking to reporters after attending a Caribbean security conference in Barbados, said the US government had no interest in hiding information from Congress but the legal case against Major Nidal Malik Hasan had to take priority.

“Anything that does not have any impact on that prosecution, we are more than willing to share,” Gates said. “But what’s most important is this prosecution. And we will co-operate with the committee in every way - with that single caveat, that whatever we provide doesn’t compromise the prosecution.”

Of all the possible homeland security or military issues that one could address, keeping the Major Hassan story alive shouldn't be the top priority of this Senate's committee. Why these two want to keep this non-story alive is beyond me. Neither is up for re-election prior to 2012 - that's a long way off - so the only other explanation (because I don't buy the idea of misplaced concerns about DOD or DoJ practices and policies) is to embarrass the Obama administration at the cost of screwing the government officials who are correctly addressing the situation right now.

UPDATE: Ah, this is still the same Obama we're used to. Apparently the appointments that went through aren't the most important ones - he's still letting them block NLRB appointees Craig Becker and Mark Pearce.

Who knew? Apparently the president does indeed have a spine:

The Senate confirmed a huge group of administration nominees on Thursday, following a tense exchange between President Barack Obama and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

At a White House meeting with bipartisan congressional leaders on Tuesday, Obama warned that he would make recess appointments if the logjam over nominees wasn’t broken before the Senate left for the Presidents’ Day break.

“Mitch, this is unprecedented,” the president said, gesturing forcefully on the Cabinet Room table, according to aides. “If you don’t move any, I’m going to do some appointments.”

The 27 confirmations mean no recess appointments will be needed during this break, top administration officials said. Recess appointments, which a president can make when Congress is not in session, are temporary and generally last to the end of the year.

In a statement Thursday night, Obama said: "At the beginning of the week, a staggering 63 nominees had been stalled in the Senate because one or more senators placed a hold on their nomination. ... And so on Tuesday, I told Senator McConnell that if Republican senators did not release these holds, I would exercise my authority to fill critically-needed positions in the federal government temporarily through the use of recess appointments. ... Since that meeting, I am gratified that Republican senators have responded by releasing many of these holds and allowing 29 nominees to receive a vote in the Senate. While this is a good first step, there are still dozens of nominees on hold who deserve a similar vote, and I will be looking for action from the Senate when it returns from recess. If they do not act, I reserve the right to use my recess appointment authority in the future."

This is good news, because the Baucus-Grassley version was a $80 billion bipartisan boondoggle that was packed with tax breaks and did very little that would actually, you know, create jobs:

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) announced Thursday that his chamber would move quickly to pass four popular provisions aimed at creating jobs, potentially with the bipartisan backing that has proven elusive in recent months.

The provisions were plucked from a broader package of business incentives and unemployment aid negotiated by Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and his GOP counterpart, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa). But instead of advancing the bigger bill, Reid announced that he would break it into two parts, bringing the jobs-related incentives to a vote on Feb. 22. The remaining measures would move later as a separate bill.

"We feel that the American people need a message," Reid told reporters Thursday. "The message that they need is that we're doing something about jobs."

All the fast-tracked provisions have bipartisan support, but GOP senators were caught off-guard by Reid's bifurcated strategy, announced just as Republicans were releasing statements in praise of the larger bill. Senior Democratic aides said Reid made the move to quell squabbling among Democrats about the contents of the larger bill amid rising criticism that the legislation included too many special-interest perks.

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(Here's video of Shelby being called out about his lack of ethics during the Auto rescue Plan by Carl Levin with Chris Wallace.)

Sen. Richard Shelby does his part to block all things Obama:

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary "blanket hold" on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate, according to multiple reports this evening. The hold means no nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a 60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold.

"While holds are frequent," CongressDaily's Dan Friedman and Megan Scully report (sub. req.), "Senate aides said a blanket hold represents a far more aggressive use of the power than is normal." The magazine reported aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid were the source of the news about Shelby's blanket hold.

Ms. McConnell didn't even know what Shelby was doing, but much of this is based on blocking business for Boeing. It's all about giving the business to a foreign corporation.

He just loves Airbus:

The key issue is that Shelby wants the Air Force to tweak an RFP for refueling tankers so that Airbus (partnered with Northrup Grumman) would win the bid again over Boeing. The contract had been awarded in 2008, but the GAO found that the Air Force had erred in calculating the award. After the Air Force wrote a new RFP in preparation to rebid the contract, Airbus calculated that it would not win the new bid, and started complaining. Now, Airbus is threatening to withdraw from the competition unless the specs in the RFP are revised.

If you remember, back in 2002, Shelby was the one who allegedly leaked NSA intercepts to Carl Cameron of FOX News and the media and then refused to take a lie detector test about it right after 9/11.

"A sharp disagreement ensued between the FBI and senior Justice Department officials overseeing the case, according to federal law enforcement officials. The FBI was convinced not only that Shelby leaked the information regarding the intercepts, but also that the senator might have misled the FBI when he was interviewed about his actions, according to sources. They advocated that Shelby be prosecuted." Read the whole article. Pat Roberts helps ruin the investigation.

He got off because Pat Roberts screwed up the investigation like he usually does. And he's the one on TV the most trying to force the auto industry to go belly up.

And we can't forget that he acted like Herbert Hoover during the Auto crisis by using a "filibuster."

CREDO has a petition going that says:

It's time for Democratic leadership to stand up to Republicans, starting with Sen. Shelby. Senate Majority Leader Reid should refuse to honor Shelby's "blanket hold" on more than 70 nominees. If Republicans want to block every single Obama appointee, they must filibuster them one-by-one and deal with the very public consequences of their obstructionism. Sen. Shelby should be ashamed -- but he is not.

Sign up if you can.

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Nancy Pelosi held a conference call today on health care and spent about 30 minutes discussing what's happening now and taking Q's. (I think it's important to get these conference calls up to our readers.)

The HOUSE does not trust the Senate and will not move forward unless Harry Reid gets the Senate rolling first. She's not alone. The Senate has lost the trust of the American people completely. She reaffirmed that the Senate bill has no chance of passing the HOUSE as is.

Brian writes:

Pelosi has insisted for some time now that the Senate health care bill can not pass the House unamended, but that she can probably round up the votes if the Senate and the House both pass a sidecar bill making a number of pre-emptive changes to it.

"Don't even ask us to consider passing the Senate bill until the other legislation has passed both houses so that we're sure that it has happened, and that we know that what we would be voting for would be as effected by a reconciliation bill or whatever parliamentary initiative they have at their disposable," Pelosi said on a conference call this afternoon.

Senate aides have complained that her plan presents them with a big parliamentary difficulty: they don't know if they can pass legislation amending a bill that hasn't been signed into law yet.

Pelosi says that's simply not true.

"No. It is not an obstacle to this path forward."

She talks about repealing the anti-trust exemption, fixing the excise tax and the public option, "reconciliation' as well as some other issues about HCR. I didn't have time to write up a detailed review on today's call so please listen to the above audio.

She was surprisingly confident today about getting something done and says we're close. We'll see. She didn't want to talk for the Senate at all either.

And the operator was awful handling the call because a lot of us had questions and she didn't translate that to the Speaker so it appeared that there were hardly any questions coming in for the Speaker, That led to question hogs.(LOL) I was going to either ask about the public option or the Stupak amendment.

(photo courtesy of AP)

Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe is the Grand Poobah of right wing nutjobs in the Senate, and is probably the leading Global Warming denier on Capitol Hill. On Friday, he proved yet again why he is nothing short of an embarrassment to the United States. Using taxpayer money he flew to Copenhagen with no schedule, no plans or arrangements made, and did little more than put on a right wing sideshow for anyone who would listen. He found the European press a little less accommodating than the media lap dogs here in the good old USA:

COPENHAGEN — Sen. Jim Inhofe flew across the Atlantic and — on little sleep — braved the snow, the cold and the dark to deliver his skeptical message at the international climate conference.

What he found when he got here: a few aides and a single reporter.

“I think he’s going to be a little disappointed,” one of his aides remarked.

When he was finally able to find a few reporters to listen to him, he went full on lunatic fringe:

“We in the United States owe it to the 191 countries to be well-informed and know what the intentions of the United States are. The United States is not going to pass a cap and trade,” he said. “It’s just not going to happen.”

A reporter asked: “If there’s a hoax, then who’s putting on this hoax, and what’s the motive?”

“It started in the United Nations,” Inhofe said, “and the ones in the United States who really grab ahold of this is the Hollywood elite.”

One reporter asked Inhofe if he was referring to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Another reporter — this one from Der Spiegel — told the senator: “You’re ridiculous.” Read on...

The vote on bringing the bill to the floor may happen by the end of this week:

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid scrambled Tuesday to lock down votes behind a health-care bill that he may present as early as Wednesday.

The Nevada Democrat would not confirm that he had received commitments from all 60 members of his caucus to overcome GOP procedural objections and bring the bill to the Senate floor, saying only, "I feel cautiously optimistic that we can do that. I think we're together as a caucus."

[...] Preliminary estimates by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the legislation's official scorekeeper, have indicated that the Senate measure would cost far less than the bill the House approved last week, while lowering the federal deficit further over the long term, said several senior Democratic aides who have reviewed the CBO data.

Which, of course, makes me wonder: Who did the Senate leave out?

Democrats are hopeful about winning over at least one Republican, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, on a vote for final passage. But the Maine moderate has pledged to support a GOP filibuster at the outset because Reid's bill is expected to include a public-insurance option that she opposes.

UPDATE from TPM:

Under the terms of the bill, Medicaid would be expanded to cover everybody up to 133 percent of the poverty line. And in a move that will disappoint progressives, tax credits to buy health insurance would be limited to those between 133 and 300 percent of poverty line. (People between 300 and 400 percent of poverty would not be provided any direct federal assistance, but insurers would not be able to set their premiums at more than 9.8 percent of their annual income.)

Here we go again. That's not going to be enough to make it affordable to most people, and it has to change in the final version. Call your Congress critter!

The Democrats are so strangely self-destructive at times, I have to say this: Please tell me they're not only investigating Democrats, but Republicans, too. Because that would just be stupid. I mean, we didn't bother going after Republican war criminals - so why single out Democrats?

House ethics investigators have scrutinized the activities of more than 30 lawmakers and several aides in inquiries about issues including defense lobbying and corporate influence peddling, according to a confidential House ethics committee report prepared in July.

The report, disclosed on a publicly accessible computer network, was made available to The Washington Post by a source familiar with such networks.

The ethics committee is one of the most secretive panels in Congress, and its members and staff members sign oaths not to disclose any activities related to its past or present investigations. Watchdog groups have accused the committee of not actively pursuing inquiries; the newly disclosed document indicates the panel is conducting far more investigations than it had revealed.

Shortly after 6 p.m. Thursday, the committee chairman, Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), interrupted a series of House votes to alert lawmakers about the breach. She cautioned that some of the panel's activities are preliminary and not a conclusive sign of inappropriate behavior.

"No inference should be made as to any member," she said.