Don Wolfensberger
| July 30, 2013, 12:58 p.m.
It is ironic that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., two days after he brokered the compromise on filibusters of executive nominations to avert the “nuclear option,” threatened to hold up the nomination of Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey for a second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. McCain was angered that Dempsey, during his public confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, refused to offer his personal opinion on what to do about Syria.
Don Wolfensberger
| July 16, 2013, 12:42 p.m.
Back in the late 1940s and ’50s, as scores of witnesses were “taking the Fifth” in public hearings before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Speaker Sam Rayburn and friends were privately “striking a blow for liberty” by taking their fifth (bourbon and branch) in the speaker’s Capitol hideaway — the infamous “Board of Education” room.
Don Wolfensberger
| June 25, 2013, 1:15 p.m.
In this age of the Internet and high-tech surveillance, is individual liberty irrelevant, obsolete or just undervalued? The answer could well be all of the above, judging from tepid public and congressional reactions to recent government intrusions into individual privacy, speech, press and association rights.
Don Wolfensberger
| June 11, 2013, 1:12 p.m.
On June 7, Rep. John D. Dingell became the longest-serving member in the history of Congress. The Michigan Democrat evolved into a master of congressional procedures and traditions over his nearly six decades of service. As a devout institutionalist, Dingell ranks alongside the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, whose longevity in office he just surpassed.
Don Wolfensberger
| May 21, 2013, 1:31 p.m.
Bashing Congress has been a popular sport since the beginning of the republic. Ohio Republican Rep. Nicholas Longworth described this national pastime in his acceptance speech as speaker in 1925: “I have been a member of the House of Representatives ... 20 years. During the whole of that time we have been attacked, denounced, despised, hunted, harried, blamed, looked down upon, excoriated, and flayed. I refuse to take it personally.”
Don Wolfensberger
| May 7, 2013, 1:35 p.m.
When you hear cries for a “return to the regular order” from both parties in both chambers, you know there is either a bipartisan consensus about the causes of disorder and its cure or a selective invocation of the term by different folks with differing agendas. Alas, it is the latter — a political Rorschach test in which each group perceives the ink blot according to its peculiar “ink-linations.”
Don Wolfensberger
| March 19, 2013, 6:14 p.m.
GOP Sen. Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois was asked by a reporter in 1964, when he was minority leader, what he thought of a proposed change in filibuster rules. “Well,” he replied in his distinctive basso profundo, “Ha, ha, ha; and, I might add, ho, ho, ho.”
Don Wolfensberger
| March 5, 2013, 5:46 p.m.
A rubber band is a continuous elastic cord designed to hold things together. If stretched too far, it either breaks or slips in a stinging snapback. In either case, the bundle falls apart. Congress and the White House have been playing rubber-band politics with budget issues for the past two years, hoping to hold things together with new gimmicks that only cause further stretching of the band.
Don Wolfensberger
| Feb. 12, 2013, 5:45 p.m.
House Republicans deserve muted applause for backing away from another fiscal cliff over the debt limit. They get only half a clap for now because: (a) the fix is only temporary — a three-month suspension of the debt limit, and (b) the fix swaps the fiscal cliff for another geo-metaphoric hazard — the marital rift.
Don Wolfensberger
| Jan. 22, 2013, 6:24 p.m.
Back in the 1960s, a group of House Republicans was guided by the axiom “Procedure is substance; process is policy.” The Young Turks recognized that those who make the rules control the policy outcomes.
Don Wolfensberger
| Jan. 2, 2013, 7:39 p.m.
I used to hold an open house at the Wilson Center on the first day of a new Congress so staff and fellows could drop by and observe on a big screen the pomp and pageantry of the world’s greatest democratic legislature organizing itself. In addition to providing coffee and doughnuts, I put together helpful handouts and provided a running commentary on what was transpiring in the House chamber.
Don Wolfensberger
| Dec. 11, 2012, 7:30 p.m.
Early in his second term as vice president, John Adams lamented to his wife, Abigail, that he held “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”
Don Wolfensberger
| Nov. 27, 2012, 10:59 p.m.
A group of former Senators and House members, senior staff and congressional scholars have called on Congress to change its ways.
Don Wolfensberger
| Nov. 27, 2012, 5:55 p.m.
A group of former Senators and House members, senior staff and congressional scholars have called on Congress to change its ways.
