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The 59-41 Senate vote was just shy of the 60 votes needed to pass the bill, following a dramatic six days of whipping by the embattled Louisiana Democrat on an issue that almost all of Washington had expected to sit idle until next year. The defeat deals a blow to Landrieu’s campaign ahead of her Dec. 6 runoff against GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy, whom polls show running comfortably ahead.

Six years into a wait for the approvals to operate the newest section of the Keystone Pipeline system, TransCanada has already spent $2.4 billion on the project. TransCanada had hoped that it would have the permits for its Keystone XL pipeline within two years, since the first phase of the Keystone Pipeline system was reviewed and approved in 23 months. But it’s been more than six years since TransCanada filed its application to build the Keystone XL expansion, and it has still not been approved. Facing environmental pressures from his liberal base if he approves the pipeline and strife from...

Harry Reid personally voted against Landrieu and screwed his own party. Checking the Roll Call this morning, Harry Reid's vote is Nay. Why did he allow the vote (since he rules the Senate with an iron fist) and then vote against her and ruin her chances in Louisiana? Nothing short of the Bills passage would have saved her down there. She's too little to late now and the union jobs are being pooched. And Obama stands above it all to pooch the Union jobs with a veto promise. This might have been the last chance for the Democrat Party (notice...

One by one, Mary Landrieu’s paths to victory in her Louisiana Senate runoff are closing off. Rely on the old Democratic coalition? She got a paltry 18 percent of the white vote in the first round.

Remember the global financial crisis, triggered six years ago when billions of dollars of dodgy loans - doled out by banks to subprime borrowers and then resold numerous times on international debt markets - began to unravel and default? Stock markets plunged, banks collapsed and the entire global financial system teetered on the brink of catastrophe. Well a similarly chilling economic scenario could be set off by the current collapse in oil prices. Based on recent stress tests of subprime borrowers in the energy sector in the US produced by Deutsche Bank, should the price of US crude fall by...

Republican oil mogul Harold Hamm says Congress is wasting its time debating the Keystone XL pipeline. “It’s not relevant at all, in my opinion. And here we are making it relevant now? Forget it,” the billionaire CEO of Oklahoma-based Continental Resources told Politoco in an interview Friday, just before the House passed a bill aimed at approving the pipeline. […] Hamm said his company, which had planned to use Keystone to ship some of its North Dakota crude, is already using other pipelines for half of its oil. And the percentage is growing. “We’re supporting other pipelines out there; we’re...

There is an idiom that parents and employers likely put in practice when an important task has to be completed correctly; “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” President Obama certainly understands that sentiment with a slight variation; if the nation wants anything done at all, the President has to do it himself due to Republicans who have done nothing since January 2009. Sometime next week, after waiting patiently for Ted Cruz to order House Republicans to take up, and pass, the Senate’s bipartisan immigration reform, the President will take action on immigration reform. The...

Like other remaining Democratic candidates around the country, U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu knows she must increase her support among black and white females to emerge victorious on Dec. 6. That’s why Norma Jane Sabiston, Kristin Palmer, Angele Wilson and others are again reaching out to 5,000 key women supporters statewide to build Mary’s Army, highly committed grassroots warriors who will knock doors and work phones non-stop for the next three weeks. Armed with pink t-shirts and lists of likely voters, these women clearly understand the campaign’s success rests largely on their ability to persuade voters one person at a time....

The Republican unity tour with former rivals Rep. Bill Cassidy and Rob Maness will continue Saturday (Nov. 15) afternoon with a rally featuring the two of them, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and "Duck Dynasty" star Phil Robertson. Maness drew 14 percent of the vote in the primary, and Cassidy needs that to defeat Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu. Though Palin and Robertson are sometimes controversial figures outside the most conservative circles, political observers believe Cassidy is doing the right thing by aligning himself with the right wing of the party to earn that support.LSU political scientist Robert Hogan said he...

Do you remember the Louisiana Senate runoff election of December 1996? Conservative Woody Jenkins sure does. He was the Republican Senate candidate who got mugged out of a Senate seat by Mary Landrieu. Flashback to 18 years ago — reporting in the December 23, 1996, and February 10, 1997, issues of National Review — Rich Lowry tells the story of how Mary Landrieu won ‘The Big Sleazy’ Senate runoff election of 1996. Now just 2 1/2 weeks away from the the 2014 Louisiana Senate runoff, Lowry’s investigative reports from nearly two decades ago are a sober reminder of what can...

'Her campaign is running on fumes': Final Senate race looks to be a Louisiana laugher as internal polls show GOP's Bill Cassidy opening up 16-point lead over Sen. Mary Landrieu Poll commissioned by GOP candidate's campaign shows massive advantage leading up to Dec. 6 runoff Win by GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy would bring total Republican pickup to a whopping 10 seats Landrieu is hoping a long-awaited vote on the Keystone XL pipeline will improve her fortunes Poll was leaked in Washington to send a message to energy lobbyists who think she can prevail Survey is an 'automated' phone poll that...

Republican Senate contender Bill Cassidy and his conservative allies have outspent endangered Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu by roughly a 180-to-1 margin on television since their campaign went into overtime. It was a reverse from earlier in the campaign, when Landrieu blanketed the airwaves and conservatives held onto their cash. No outside groups so far have come to Landrieu's aid, while GOP groups have ramped up their support of Cassidy.

Hard to say how credible this poll is, but all political observers following the Louisiana Senate runoff scheduled for December 6 agree that Republican Bill Cassidy has opened a significant lead over incumbent Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu. One aspect in favor of this poll's accuracy is that Landrieu recieved 42% of the vote on election day and shows her support at 40% in this new poll. And if you combine Cassidy's 40% on election day with the other conservative Republican candidate Maness's 14%, the total is well within the margin of error of the new poll The Hill: Rep....

Current news reports say that Harry Reid will allow a vote on the Keystone Pipeline so that Mary Landrieu can register her support, and thus improve her chances in the December Senate election in Louisiana, even as the Democratic majority votes it down. The theory behind this move is the usual Democratic assumption that voters are dumb, and will not realize that the Senate vote is a charade, designed to fool them into believing that Landrieu actually supports Keystone and is not in cahoots with Harry Reid and the enviro-zealots and billionaires who back and bankroll the party.  (Even...

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline on Friday as Senate supporters worked to line up 60 votes to send the measure to the White House. The 252-161 House vote came amid jockeying by two Louisiana lawmakers — Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy and Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu — to be seen winning authorization for the pipeline before voters decide which of them serves in the Senate next year. Cassidy said it’s past time for the United States to authorize Keystone XL, six years after Calgary-based TransCanada Corp. first asked for permits to construct the pipeline...

The House of Representatives passed a bill expediting the construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline on Friday, thrusting Congress back into the debate over a long-stalled project lauded by proponents as a job creator and reviled by foes as an environmental disaster. The bill passed by a margin of 252 to 161. This is the ninth time the House has passed such a bill on the pipeline. The Senate has planned a vote on a similar proposal next Tuesday. The long-simmering debate over the pipeline's construction reached a sudden boil earlier this week when a group of lawmakers, led...

As expected, the US House of Representatives voted on and passed legislation today approving the Keystone XL Pipeline. This is the ninth time they have done so: The House on Friday voted 252 to 161 to approve a bill that would direct the federal government to move forward on the Keystone XL oil pipeline, ahead of a vote scheduled for Tuesday in the Senate that could send the measure to President Obama’s desk. There is little chance that the votes will clear the way to construction of the long-fought, long-delayed pipeline, which would carry petroleum from the Canadian oil sands...

FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 519 (Republicans in roman; Democrats in italic ; Independents underlined ) H R 5682 RECORDED VOTE 14-Nov-2014 12:52 PM QUESTION: On Passage BILL TITLE: To approve the Keystone XL Pipeline … … … … … 221 … 1 11 Democratic 31 161 … 9 Independent … … … … TOTALS 252 161 1 20 ---- AYES 252 --- Aderholt Amodei Bachmann Bachus Barr Barrow (GA) Benishek Bentivolio Bilirakis Bishop (GA) Bishop (UT) Black Blackburn Boustany Brady (PA) Brady (TX) Brat Bridenstine Brooks (AL) Brooks (IN) Broun (GA) Buchanan Bucshon Burgess Byrne Calvert Camp Capito...

On Friday, an overwhelming majority of House members passed legislation sponsored by Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) which approved construction of the long-delayed Keystone XL Pipeline. By 252 to 161, the House opted to send the measure to the U.S. Senate, where it will face a vote from the upper chamber next week which could, for the first time, force the president to determine whether to approve or veto the oil transit route. 31 Democratic representatives voted with every Republican member of Congress save Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), who voted present, to approve construction of the pipeline. It is an...

President Obama is fond of telling Congress that it should pass things with the overwhelming support of the American people, including (among other things) comprehensive immigration reform, increasing the minimum wage, and increasing gun background checks. And yet, Obama could soon be in a position of vetoing something with a similar amount of support: the Keystone XL pipeline. Poll after poll has shown support for Keystone is somewhere between very strong and overwhelming. A Pew Research Center survey this month showed support for the project at nearly two-to-one, 59 percent to 31 percent. And that was about the lowest level...