Photograph by Mladen Antonov/AFP via Getty Images

Anti-abortion protesters pray outside the U.S. Supreme Court on the third day of oral arguments over the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on March 28, 2012 in Washington, DC.

From Bloomberg Government’s Congress Tracker

Republican Trent Franks, the Arizona congressman whose comment about rape and pregnancy revived a political uproar that dogged Republicans in the last election, is trying to capitalize on the episode for campaign donations.

Franks, sponsor of legislation to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, urged supporters in an e-mail to contribute because he is the “No. 1 target of abortionists,” the Arizona Republic reported on its web site.

“NARAL, Planned Parenthood and the taxpayer-funded abortion lobby is attacking me for one reason – I’m 100 percent unapologetically pro-life and I won’t back down,” Franks told supporters in the email, according to the newspaper. “Will you contribute $25, $50, $100 or even $500 to help me fight back?” the newspaper quoted the email as saying.

Citing a statement by NARAL Pro-Choice America, Franks said such abortion-rights advocacy groups “will spend whatever it takes to destroy me, remove me from Congress, and stop me from protecting any more unborn children.”

House leaders will bring up Franks’s bill, H.R. 1797, for floor debate and a vote next week, House Majority Leader EricCantor said on the House floor.

The leaders have decided that Franks won’t be the floor manager, though; that duty will fall to Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn, said a House Republican leadership aide who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Democrats had also criticized the all-male Republican majority of the House Judiciary Committee for approving the measure on June 12. White House spokesman Jay Carney weighed in the next day, telling reporter that the legislation “got a little attention” in “a way that I’m sure Republicans wish the public would forget.”

Franks made the comment during a debate over a Democratic amendment, which was rejected, to provide an exception for victims of rape and incest. Franks, acknowledging he misspoke, said he was trying to state that it’s rare that someone who becomes pregnant during a rape carries the fetus for six months before deciding to seek an abortion.

Original post is Can Franks Turn Rape-Comment Uproar Into Campaign Cash? by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Speaker of the House John Boehner, left, conducts a ceremonial swearing-in with U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC), center, and his mother Peggy Sanford, right, at the Capitol on May 15, 2013 in Washington, DC.

Original post is Sanford Takes Office, Declaring Himself ‘Humbled’ and Appreciative by Political Capital.

“On the basis of what I heard, the questions of the justices, the response of the participants, I am very optimistic that DOMA will be struck down,” Pelosi told reporters after attending today’s argument on the constitutionality of the 1996 law, which bars gay spouses from claiming the same federal benefits conferred on other married couples.

After attending last year’s argument on the constitutionality of President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul law, Pelosi correctly called the outcome, if not the vote tally. She told reporters than that the justices would vote 6-3 to uphold the Affordable Care Act. The court split 5-4 to affirm the law’s constitutionality.

“I got it right,” Pelosi said of her earlier prediction.

Original post is Pelosi ‘Very Confident’ Supreme Court Will Overturn Marriage Law by Political Capital.

The fight against fellow House Republicans to secure $60.2 billion so the Northeast region could begin rebuilding after Super-storm Sandy wreaked widespread devastation frayed the bonds of loyalty and trust that New York Rep. Peter King feels for colleagues in his own party.

“I am still a Republican,” King says. “It’s just going to be hard for me to trust them again” after almost 80 percent of House Republicans voted against the aid package to rebuild damaged hospitals, highways and other transportation infrastructure.

A delay in action by the Republican-run House from late December in the waning days of the previous Congress until Jan. 15, when the House approved the final installment of the aid package, sparked a revolt led by Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey. King spearheaded the region’s fight in Congress for the aid with help from Republican members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation.

Republican resistance to provide disaster assistance to help storm victims reflects the “puritanical, ascetic point of view” that allows no compromise from party principles of less spending, King said today at a Bloomberg Government breakfast in Washington.

“I never asked these guys for anything before,” King said. “They wouldn’t even listen to us.”

Almost three months after the storm ravaged shore communities in New York and New Jersey and flooded New York City’s subway system, Congress completed action Jan. 15 on the $60.2 billion aid package sought by President Barack Obama. The final $50.5 billion installment was passed by the House with the support of 179 Democrats and 41 Republicans. Another 179 House Republicans voted against the measure.

King said he particularly resented arguments by fellow Republicans that Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, “wanted to set up a secret slush fund for themselves” with community development block grants that would provide flexibility to spend money quickly. “They were using the cheapest political arguments when people were really suffering,” he said.

Since then, King said, he has “already voted `no’ on a few things” to put his colleagues on notice that they shouldn’t “ever take my vote for granted again because party loyalty goes both ways, This time it only went one way.”

Original post is Peter King: Sandy Cost Trust in Party by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican from Ohio, listens during a news conference following a vote at the Capitol in this file photo.

The blame game is in overdrive.

House Democrats, complaining that Congress is in recess just nine days before $85 billion of automatic spending cuts are set to take place, say they will convene an ad hoc hearing tomorrow to dramatize the impact of the so-called sequester — and blame Republicans for inaction.

Democrats are demanding a chance to vote on legislation that would replace the automatic cuts with a combination of more revenue and spending reductions, including the elimination of direct payments to farmers.

“Who is standing with their arms folded blocking the door of democracy right now? It’s the Republican Party in Congress,” Maryland Democrat John Sarbanes told reporters on a conference called convened by House Democrats to pressure Republicans to call Congress back into session this week. Sarbanes said his Baltimore-area constituents are “absolutely incredulous that we are on recess when this sequestration issue is hanging over us.”

Congress is scheduled to be in session next week.

Speaker John Boehner, the leader of House Republicans, accused Obama of inaction. “The president has yet to put forward a specific plan that can pass his Democratic-controlled Senate,” Boehner said in a statement.

Original post is Budgetary Blame Game: Crossfire by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union speech before a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on February 12, 2013 in Washington.

House Speaker John Boehner may have been notable for his unenthusiastic reaction to most of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, but two of the Ohio Republican’s guests were clearly thrilled to be at event — and to be in the same hall with the featured speaker.

The pair — fourth-grade girls from St. Anthony’s School in Washington — were among the most ectstatic in reacting to Obama as he entered the House chamber and made his way down the aisle to the podium. The girls stood and cheered excitedly when they first spotted the president.

They were seated in the first row of the vistor’s balconey with Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington.

Original post is Boehner’s Guests Express the Excitement He Didn’t for Obama by Political Capital.

Photograph by Charles Dharapak-Pool/Getty Images

Sen. John McCain, left, Sen. Charles Schumer, and Sen. Lindsey Graham during the State of the Union speech on Feb. 12, 2013 in Washington.

The green ribbons sported by many of those attending the State of the Union address – most obviouslyVice President Joe Biden, given his on-camera perch behind President Barack Obama – were designed to express solidarity with the victims of the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.

Democratic Senate leaders Harry Reid and Dick Durbin wore them, as did most House Democrats. The ribbons also had some bipartisan appeal — Republican senators wearing them included John McCain of Arizona, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Kelly Ayotte of New Hamsphire, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Ted Cruz of Texas.

Eschewing the ribbons, though, was the core of the Senate Republican leadership, including Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Roy Blunt of Missouri and John Cornyn of Texas. Also lacking one was Biden’s seatmate on the dais with Obama, House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican.

Original post is Ribbons Honoring Newtown Victims Have Bipartisan Appeal, Except for Republican Leaders by Political Capital.

New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, whose help for a political donor is under review by the Senate Select Committe on Ethics, ended up next to the panel’s chairman, California Senator Barbara Boxer, as President Barack Obama was about to begin delivering his speech. The two Democrats looked uncomfortable, and before they sat down Boxer moved one seat away. She beckoned Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, to take the vacant spot between her and Menendez.

Before Boxer arrived in the chamber, Menendez — the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — had found himself standing alone in front of the row of empty seats. He passed the time by frequently checking his watch.

UPDATE: The two didn’t totally avoid each other. When Obama in his speech touted their bill that, in his words, “would give every responsible homeowner in America”  the chance to refinance their home mortgages, Boxer and Menendez gave each other a high-five.

“What we we waiting for? Take a vote and send me that bill,” Obama said.

Original post is Boxer Makes Move, Avoids Listening to Obama Next to Menendez by Political Capital.

Photograph by Randy Snyder/Getty Images

Musician Ted Nugent plays the national anthem during a rally for Republican John Raese’s U.S. Senate campaign in Charleston, West Virginia, in this file photo.

At the National Rifle Association’s annual convention last April in St. Louis, rock musician and pro-gun activist Ted Nugent declared: “I will be either dead or in jail by this time next year,” if President Obama won re-election.

Obama did, of course. And although there’s a couple of months left for Nugent’s apocalyptic personal prediction to come true, he’s still alive, he remains a free man, and tomorrow night he’ll be there in person to witness the president — whom he has termed an “evil, dangerous man who hates America” and wants to “re-implement the tyranny of King George III” — deliver his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress.

Nugent, 64, will be in the spectator gallery, a guest of another harsh Obama critic, Representative Steve Stockman, a Texas Republican.

“I am excited to have a patriot like Ted Nugent joining me in the House chamber to hear from President Obama,” Stockman said in a statement on his website. “After the address, I’m sure Ted will have something to stay.”

That’s likely, given that Nugent – the former lead guitarist in The Amboy Dukes band who has had a lengthy solo career – is an impassioned foe of the gun control legislation Obama and others seek following the December massacre at a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school. Nugent’s attacks on Obama also include the charge that he “hires, appoints and associates with communists.”

Stockman, 56, won a House seat in 1994 when he defeated 21-term Democratic Representative Jack Brooks in a race that focused partly on the assault-weapons ban Congress passed that year. Brooks, as House Judiciary Committee chairman, helped shepherd the measure into law, and Stockman lambasted him over the issue.

Stockman was bounced from office in 1996, but re-emerged from political obscurity in last November’s election to return to the House. He now is among the leading opponents of the gun control push, including a bill to reinstate the assault-weapons ban that expired in 2004.

His efforts include trying to overturn executive orders issued by Obama in mid-January that include several designed to maximize prosecution of gun crimes and improve access to government data for background checks of gun purchasers. Stockman has said he will seek the president’s impeachment if Congress doesn’t pass his bill.

Original post is Ted Nugent, Pro-Gun Rocker, to Attend Obama’s Big Speech by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo

A copy of the U.S. Constitution on Capitol Hill in Washington.

Before Sandy aid came the Constitution.

Members of the House of Representatives today continued a ritual begun two years ago after Republicans took control of the chamber by reading from the full text of the U.S. Constitution.

Lawmakers of both parties were invited to come, on a first-come, first-served basis, to participate in the reading.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican, said in a statement that “as members of Congress we must never lose sight that we are committed to protecting the fundamental rights of the people we represent.”

The reading, which took more than an hour to complete, was led by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the Virginia Republican who now chairs the House Judiciary Committee. “One of the resounding themes I have heard from my constituents is that Congress should adhere to the Constitution and the finite list of powers it grants to the federal government,” Goodlatte, who initiated the first reading at the start of the previous Congress in 2011, said in a statement.

Among those participating in the reading was House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat. She read from a portion of Article III that delegated powers to the federal judiciary.

As Congress prepares to debate President Barack Obama’s proposals to regulate assault-weapons, the reading included the Second Amendment. Read by Kansas Republican Kevin Yoder, it states:“ A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The 13th Amendment, which formally abolished slavery after the Civil War, was read by John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who is an honored veteran of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, when he was beaten by police and mobs during marches and demonstrations.

At some point later today, the House is expected to vote on delayed federal aid for the victims of Hurricane Sandy.

Original post is Constitution Read: 2nd Amendment — and more, from Republican House by Political Capital.