Despite protests from Tea Party activists regarding high taxes, a USA Today analysis of federal data has found that “Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman’s presidency.” Federal, state, local, property, sales, and other taxes “consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950.”
Hundreds of veterans will lobby for the repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” today. The approximately 350 veterans from 44 states will focus on moderate Democrats and Republicans on the House and Senate Armed Services committees, as lawmakers prepare to write the 2011 defense authorization bill.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, expressed his belief yesterday that Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan could wrap up by early August. “The president asked us to try to finish by the August recess,” Sessions told CNN. “I think that’s a good goal and that’s achievable.”
Nearly three of every four incidents that triggered federal investigations of deepwater oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico since 2008 have been on rigs operated by Transocean, the company that owned the rig responsible for massive spill there, a Wall Street Journal analysis found. Executives from Transocean, BP, and Halliburton will appear before two Senate committees investigating the disaster today.
On CNN last night, top White House adviser David Axelrod said that “President Obama was amenable to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s call for a new law allowing interrogators to question terrorism suspects for lengthy periods without informing them of their rights.” Axelrod said Obama was “open to looking at” changing the Miranda rule. It “would be in the area of adjustments, not a wholesale revision.”
Gordon Brown announced yesterday that he will resign as British Prime Minister in an attempt to secure a Labour power sharing agreement with the Liberal Democrats. Conservatives then offered Liberal Democrats cabinet positions and a proposal for a referendum on an alternative vote electoral system. A Labour-Liberal Democrats coalition would need help from smaller parties to gain a majority in Parliament.
“The nation’s six largest banks and their trade associations have hired more than 240 former government officials-turned-lobbyists to represent them in the fight over Wall Street reform,” according to a new report by a coalition of progressive groups. The lobbyists include former Democratic House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt and Jimmy Ryan, a former aide to Senate Majority Harry Reid.
The Interior Department will announce today its intentions to “split the Minerals Management Service into two divisions, one focusing on gathering royalties from oil and gas companies and another focused on safety inspections.” The reorganization follows the tragic Gulf of Mexico oil spill and reflects Interior’s concerns about better responding to disasters.
The Obama administration’s counter-narcotics approach is emphasizing a shift from fighting a “war on drugs” to treating the problem as a national health issue. “It’s a disease, it’s diagnosable and it’s certainly something that can be treated — but it’s not a war,” said Obama drug czar Gil Kerlikowske.
And finally: While introducing his pick for a new Supreme Court justice yesterday, President Obama interjected baseball allegiances into the event. Obama, a die-hard White Sox fan, introduced Kagan as a die-hard Mets fan “serving alongside her new colleague-to-be, Yankees fan Justice [Sonia] Sotomayor.” Obama joked that Sotomayor “has ordered a pinstripe robe for the occasion.”
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