Weiner to officially resign Tuesday
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on June 21st, 2011 4:38 am by HL
Weiner to officially resign Tuesday
Anthony Weiner may have announced his resignation last week, but he’s technically not a former member of Congress – yet.
The New York Democrat, who last Thursday announced his plans to step down amid pressure from senior Democrats and a nearly three-week-long media firestorm over lewd photos he sent online to at least six women across the country, will formally resign Tuesday, according to a letter he sent Monday to New York Secretary of State Cesar Perales, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
House earmarks morph into ‘programmatic requests’
Cutting the $553 billion base Defense Department budget is made that much harder when House members continue their long-standing habit of slipping into it “little” multimillion-dollar items that once were called earmarks.
In the House version fiscal 2012 Defense Authorization Bill they became en banc amendments approved without public discussion in committee (Armed Services) and on the House floor, and financed from a $650 million Mission Force Enhancement Transfer Fund, which was created by reducing other programs.
NY Senate stalls on gay marriage vote as hundreds of demonstrators rally in Albany
ALBANY, N.Y. — Old-time, backroom politics faced down hundreds of chanting protesters from each side of the highly charged gay marriage debate in New York on Monday as the issue stalled again over whether religious groups could be protected from discrimination charges under a same-sex marriage law.
And Albany’s notoriously entrenched politics won, for now.
After a three-hour conference behind closed doors, while groups from each side waited in a stifling hot hallway, Senate Republicans emerged without comment. A vote within the conference to even move the bill to the floor for final legislative approval was pushed to at least Tuesday as private negotiations continue between Republican Senate leader Dean Skelos and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who made same-sex marriage a major initiative.
Obama’s negation of ‘hostilities’ in Libya draws criticism
The White House has officially declared that what’s happening in Libya is not “hostilities.”
But at the Pentagon, officials have decided it’s unsafe enough there to give troops extra pay for serving in “imminent danger.”
The Defense Department decided in April to pay an extra $225 a month in “imminent danger pay” to service members who fly planes over Libya or serve on ships within 110 nautical miles of its shores.
