The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Blumenthal a likely ‘no’ vote on AG nominee
Rep. Jahana Hayes, DConn., has been in office, oh, for two weeks now, but she’s already linked up with sister-in-arms Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. (the cool people simply call her “AOC”) in a quest to end the government shutdown.
Hayes, Ocasio-Cortez and a handful of other House Democratic freshmen crossed the U.S. Capitol in search of Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Their goal was to personally deliver a letter signed by 30 fellow frosh to fully reopen the government.
“Leader McConnell, all we want is a vote ... vote Y, vote N???” Hayes posted on Twitter. “Just vote #wheresmitch.”
The House has voted twice to reopen the government, shuttered for close to four weeks by President Donald Trump in a gambit to get congressional funding for his $5 billion border wall. (Yes, he said in the campaign that Mexico would pay for it.)
But McConnell has refused to bring the measure up for a Senate vote unless and until Trump signs off on it.
On Wednesday, a McConnell staffer took the letter and promised to deliver it to the boss, according to The Hill, a Capitol Hill publication. But that wasn’t good enough.
Hayes, Ocasio-Cortez — at age 29 an avowed leftwing firebrand from the Bronx — and the others searched McConnell out in the Senate cloakroom and even gained access to the Senate floor. But McConnell, Waldo-like, was nowhere to be found.
They split up, with some of the team going to a nearby Senate building where McConnell has his personal office.
But that’s not even close to the most controversial thing Hayes has done this week.
In hailing “National Pizza Week,” Hayes tweeted: “I know I am going to get slammed (again) for this, but Domenick & Pia Downtown Pizzeria in Waterbury is the best pizza in CT. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”
Wow! Forget about AOC. In Connecticut, that’s radical!
Too low a Barr?
William P. Barr, President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, may get a few Democratic votes on his way to easy Senate confirmation. But the vote of Sen. Richard Blumenthal is unlikely to be one of them.
Barr certainly went out of his way to reassure the Senate Judiciary Committee (of which Blumenthal is a member) how chummy he is with Mueller, and how President Donald Trump would bring the curtain down on Mueller prematurely over his dismissed body.
But Blumenthal was not happy with Barr’s legalistic answers about how the ultimate report on the Trump-Russia investigation would be his, not Mueller’s, and whether he would tell Congress the reasons for withholding any part of the report from public view.
“The American people deserve the Mueller Report, not the Barr Report,” he tweeted.
And in Blumenthal’s second round of questioning later Tuesday, Barr said he saw “no need” to depart from government practice of 40 years that sitting presidents cannot be indicted.
Barr doesn’t need Democratic votes in the Senate to win confirmation. But there’s an argument that Barr is the closest thing to a straight shooter that this bomb-dropping president could pick.
When I asked Blumenthal about that, he thought long and hard and finally said “best we can expect” is too low a bar for confirmation of such an important government post. But he said he would keep an open mind about Barr. Open, that is, until he decides to close it one way or the other.
Bartiromo takes on Himes
Some of us go to church Sunday morning. Others sleep off hangovers, drink copious cups of coffee, go on long runs or bike rides (weather permitting), or, heck, even read the Sunday newspaper. But regardless of your political preferences, you have to feel a bit sorry for Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn.
The poor guy forsook his family, his oysters, honey bees and maple trees for a “hit” on Fox News this past Sunday. And “hit” it was.
Himes played the role of walking piñata as host Maria Bartiromo, she of the Brooklyn brassy set, threw grenade after grenade — barely allowing Himes to duck for cover.
To be sure, Himes bravely stood his ground and labeled Bartiromo’s attacks “Republican talking points.”
But Bartiromo kept the selector switch on fully auto, serving up a withering rata-tat-tat on what she viewed as a flawed “dossier” on Trump financed by Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director Jim Comey and subordinates targeting Trump. (“Absurd on its face,” Himes managed to get in.)
Her ultimate target was special counsel Robert Mueller’s impending report on Trump 2016 campaign contacts with Russian intelligence — the source of no small amount of nail-biting in the White House.
There has been “a circus of this constant talk of collusion in the zeitgeist … at some point the American people need some honesty,” she said. “The truth is there is nothing and there hasn’t been anything in a yearand-a-half.”
Himes offered a gentlemanly tut-tut with “let me try one more time” to explain the dot-connecting that Mueller is presumably fleshing out. When that didn’t work, he tried: “So you’ve now twice asked me the question. Do you want to hear me answer it?”
Ultimately Bartiromo closed with another cut-off and “you’re not looking at both sides, Congressman. I hope you’ll come back soon to finish the conversation. Thank you, sir.”
Himes chuckled as the camera faded.
“How I spent my Sunday morning,” Himes tweeted later. “Playing right wing fever dream bingo with @MariaBartiromo on @FoxNews.” But, he added, “I do think it’s important to go on @FoxNews to push back on the Trump talking points.”