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Barack Obama is down but not out. You could tell as much from the contrast between his petulant post- election press conference and his peppy pre-Christmas press conference. In the former, he was crabby about accepting Republicans' demands that income-tax rates on all taxpayers not be raised. In the latter, he was celebrating the lame-duck Congress' acceptance of his stands on the New START treaty, repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and even the previously reviled tax deal. Obama has obviously figured out that Americans prefer to see their president describe the glass as half full rather than half empty....

So the year ends with the media pushing the notion that Barack Obama -- having had one of the worst years in presidential history -- has salvaged both his presidency and his re-election chances with his stunning "comeback" in the dwindling hours of the lame-duck session. Don't believe a word of it. If generals are always fighting the last war, then the pundits are always reaching for the last cliché. Did Bill Clinton face a similar dilemma back in 1994, after Newt Gingrich and the Republicans ate his lunch? Did he not come back to marginalize Gingrich and -- that...

Russian lawmakers gave preliminary approval Friday to an arms agreement with the United States, but signaled they would slow progress on the so-called New START treaty to a crawl after it was rushed through Congress earlier this week with some 11th-hour arm-twisting by President Obama.

Riding the lamest of ducks, President Obama just won the Triple Crown. He fulfilled (1) his most important economic priority, passage of Stimulus II, a.k.a. the tax cut deal (the perfect pre-re-election fiscal sugar high - the piper gets paid in 2013 and beyond); (2) his most important social policy objective, repeal of "don't ask, don't tell"; and (3) his most cherished (achievable) foreign policy goal, ratification of the New START treaty with Russia. Politically, these are all synergistic. The bipartisan nature of the tax deal instantly repositioned Obama back to the center. And just when conventional wisdom decided the...

Well. We've just seen, the fruits of our corrupt, lame, spineless and wimpy "Republicans" idea of how to deal with democrats: Surrender. Abject surrender. How deeply disappointing this month has been.

Politics: As the President crows about his accomplishments, a key Republican senator says the GOP has once again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in a Congress the voters repudiated. Before jetting off to a family vacation in Hawaii, President Obama took time at a year-end news conference to hail what he called a "season of progress" capped off by "the most productive post-election period we've had in decades" after "the most productive two years that we've had in generations." So much for getting "shellacked" in the midterm elections. ObamaCare is still a nightmare that has to be dealt...

The media are eager to dub President Obama the "come back kid." Too eager, probably. He's had a very good month, without question -- but he really would've had no excuse for a bad month. This was a brief and politically peculiar reprieve from the new political reality th new political reality that came upon him and Washington in November. The question going forward will be how he governs when he's living in that political reality. The first peculiarity was that federal taxes were set to rise automatically on Jan. 1 unless Congress acted. Federal unemployment benefits were also due...

At the beginning of 2009, the choice before Democrats who controlled the 111th Congress was whether they would enact historic legislation, even at the risk of their majority, or whether they would play it safe. They gave the safe option a pass, with two results: This will go down as the most productive Congress since the 89th, which was even more Democratic because of Lyndon Johnson's 1964 landslide. And 52 Democratic House incumbents, most elected in 2006 or 2008, lost their seats. The departing Democrats are, as one in their ranks put it, "Obama's Orphans." So many of them cast...

Senate Republican Lame Duck Session Voting Pattern Senate Republican Voting Yea in Lame Duck Session S.510 FDA Food DADT Repeal START Treaty HR3082 Budget 11-30-10 12-18-10 12-22-10 12-21-10 Alexander (R-TN) Yea Yea Barrasso (R-WY) Yea Bennett (R-UT) Yea Yea Brown (R-MA) Yea Yea Yea Yea Bunning (R-KY) Yea Burr (R-NC) Yea Yea Cochran (R-MS) Yea Yea Collins (R-ME) Yea Yea Yea Yea Corker (R-TN) Yea Yea Ensign (R-NV) Yea Yea Enzi (R-WY) Yea Yea Grassley (R-IA) Yea Yea Gregg (R-NH) Yea Yea Hutchison (R-TX) Yea Isakson (R-GA) Yea Johanns (R-NE) Yea Yea Yea Kirk (R-IL) Yea Yea Yea Kyl...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) lashed out at fellow Republicans Tuesday for a "capitulation ... of dramatic proportions" to Democrats and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in the lame-duck Congress. Graham said Republicans have no one to blame but themselves for allowing ratification of the New START Treaty and other legislation in the period before new lawmakers are sworn in in January. "When it's all going to be said and done, Harry Reid has eaten our lunch," Graham said on Fox News radio. "This has been a capitulation in two weeks of dramatic proportions of policies that wouldn't have passed...

Republican Rep. Tom McClintock offered the House a history lesson today as he urged members to wrap up their business and get out of town. "This lame duck session is rapidly descending into farce," McClintock, of Elk Grove, said in a speech on the House floor. "I believe this House is now in danger of becoming a caricature of everything the American people rejected in November: incompetence, arrogance, and a complete detachment from reality. "Nearly two months ago, the American people said very clearly they don't want this Congress legislating for them any longer. And instead of graciously and humbly...

Instead of pressuring reluctant Republican senators for rapid ratification of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia, the Obama administration should just drop it, says Richard Perle, a key architect of President Ronald Reagan’s strategy to end the Cold War. “It’s a seriously flawed treaty,” Perle, now a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, says during an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV. “It’s certainly not the kind of treaty Ronald Reagan fought for and accomplished.” The pact is very weak on verification, he says. “For example, our right to inspections is limited to sites the Russians declare . . ....

ICYMI: Lame-Duck Session Churns Out Surprising Successes Key point: "I think actually you could make the case that this is the most productive lame duck even without START," said Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "If you get food safety through and I think there's a pretty strong chance they'll get some version of the 9/11 bill through, so if you put that together with the tax agreement and "don't ask, don't tell", it's a smashing set of achievements, whether you like them or don't like them." _________________________________________________________ I was beyond angry when I read this...

Last week, on the vote to begin debate on the New START treaty, the White House got the nine Republican votes they will need to ratify it...So now that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has filed for cloture, is Tuesday’s vote a foregone conclusion? No. This Sunday, Senator Graham told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that he will vote against the treaty. Graham explained his mostly procedural objections to New START: “If you want to have a chance of passing START, you better start over and do it in the next Congress, because this lame duck has been poisoned.” And Graham...

I am sending the following to my new congressional representative and, if you agree, please do likewise. This country is in ENOUGH trouble without defeated and often embittered officials vindictively getting in a few licks at the folks who sent them packing -- not to mention the REST of us! Representative XXXX, The recent "lame duck" activity in the House and Senate makes clear the need for legislation to prevent ousted incumbents from introducing or voting on legislation prior to the seating of the new member. When an incumbent elected public official is not returned to office, it is the...

Governance: It is an anachronism a constitutional amendment tried to kill. It lets defeated legislators wreak political and economic havoc without consequence. Like the dodo, the lame duck should be extinct. Elections are supposed to have consequences, one of them being occasionally throwing the rascals out. Yet here the rascals we threw out on Nov. 2 are still running the roost and deciding the fate of our republic in ways we have already rejected. Enter the 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Ratified on Jan. 23, 1933, it was designed to end forever the excesses of lame duck sessions, but...

Joy Tiz ©2010 It was to be expected that the worst congress in the history of the republic would give us the worst lame duck session, an event which has devolved into a lengthy infomercial in support of repealing the 20th Amendment. Mercifully, the Ominous spending bill died quickly as did the nightmarish Dream Act which survived long enough for the nation to get a glimpse into the mind of a liberal. In the dangerous and delusional world of modern liberalism, spending two years partying at San Diego State is the moral and functional equivalent of fighting for your country...

It's the season of good cheer and if you want a really good belly laugh then check out David Weigel's August prediction in Slate that the Democrats in the lame duck session of Congress would NOT attempt to ram through legislation in the final days as their term winds down. Here is Weigel proving he is something less than another Nostradamus with his August assertion that the conservative suspicion at the time that Congress would attempt such a maneuver was really nothing but silly political paranoia: ...The latest attack comes from Republicans who demand that Democrats promise not to 1)...

H.R.5281 Latest Title: Removal Clarification Act of 2010 Sponsor: Rep Johnson, Henry C. "Hank," Jr. [GA-4] (introduced 5/12/2010) Cosponsors (3) Related Bills: H.RES.1756 Latest Major Action: 12/8/2010 Resolving differences -- House actions. Status: On motion to to agree to the Senate amendments numbered 1 and 2, and that the House agree to the Senate amendment numbered 3 with an amendment Agreed to by the Yeas and Nays: 216 - 198 (Roll no. 625). Latest Action: 12/16/2010 Motion by Senator Reid to refer to Senate Committee on the Judiciary the House message to accompany the bill (HR 5281) with instructions to...

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 17, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The US Senate will take a vote on Saturday morning to begin repeal the 1993 law that bans homosexuals from serving in the armed forces. The law is commonly referred by the name of an accompanying Pentagon enforcement policy called “Don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT). The Senate will take up the stand-alone bill passed by the US House of Representatives on Wednesday by a vote of 250 in favor to 175 against. The bill passed by the House is a “privileged motion”, which means the US Senate cannot add amendments and the time...