Photograph by Chris Maddaloni/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images

Sen. Rand Paul is seen on the television in the Senate Press Gallery as he filibusters to the nomination of John Brennan to lead the CIA.

Updated at 2:55 pm EDT

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has taken the Senate floor to slow down the confirmation of John Brennan as CIA director.

“I rise today to begin to fillibuster John Brennan’s nomination for the C.I.A.,” the Republican announced on this day when the Capitol is shutting down for snow and he is shutting down the Senate for a lecture about constitutional authority and war.

Paul accuses the White House and its counter-terrorism chief of waging war against terrorists without oversight, leaving open the possibility of killing Americans on American soil. The government, with its drone strikes, is making its own determination about terrorist targets, Paul argues.

“I will speak until I can no longer speak,” he said.

“I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important.”

His filibuster is viewable here, thanks to C-SPAN.

He tweeted it, too:

Sen. Paul filibuster of John Brennan happening right now on the Senate floor. Watch live here: c-span.org/Live-Video/C-S…

— Rand Paul (@DrRandPaul) March 6, 2013

 

Entering his fourth hour of filibustering, in which cows, farms and hunting have entered the monologue, the tireless Paul has drawn some Twitter support from another Tea Party-backed Republican senator:

why is it so hard for POTUS to just say NO,it is not constitutional to kill a citizen who is not an imminent threat with a drone on US soil.

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) March 6, 2013

Original post is Rand Paul’s CIA-Brennan Filibuster by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jewel Samad/AFP via Getty Images

Sen. Charles Schumer, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin hold a news conference at the Capitol on the eve of the budget sequester on Feb. 28, 2013 in Washington.

If the first rule in “Fight Club” is not to talk about fight club, the first rule in the U.S. Senate is to never acknowledge its shortcomings.

Senators pretend to be cordial, part of the most deliberative body in the world, but they seldom truly debate. Members go to the floor, spill their talking points, and if confronted by an opposing viewpoint rarely confront the issue at hand. For those in the visitors’ gallery, or watching along on CSPAN-2, the Senate appears to be a smooth-sailing legislative body — members sometimes taking to the floor to address no one but the TV camera.

This afternoon on the floor of the chamber,  Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois was caught in a back-and-forth with Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey.

Toomey was trying to make the point that President Barack Obama has been overstating the impacts that budget sequestration would have on the aviation industry, citing lower levels in funding requests for the FAA in his FY 2013 budget.

Durbin was in no mood to politely pivot from Toomey and instead demanded control of the chamber. His voice rising, he warned of the threats the transportation industry faces under sequestration and looked toward the gallery saying: “This is getting perilously close to a debate. Which I might tell those in attendance never happens on the floor of the Senate.”

Original post is Danger: Debate Breaks out in Senate by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jeff Daly/Invision/AP Photo

Actress Eva Longoria participates in an Early Vote Canvass Kickoff in West Palm Beach, Florida.

That was President Barack Obama’s job approval rating among Hispanics in January, according to Gallup.

The figure is close to the 71 percent support Obama received from Hispanic voters in the 2012 election, according to a national exit poll.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney received 27 percent of the Hispanic vote, one reason he lost to Obama by 5 million votes nationwide and in key states such as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where Hispanics are more than 20 percent of the population.

“If you’re going to lose Hispanic votes by 44 points — and that is the largest-growing demographic in America — you’re going to consign yourself on a national level of being a minority party in perpetuity,” Peter Wehner, who advised Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, said yesterday on C-Span’s “Washington Journal” program.

Some Republicans say they can begin to improve their party’s poor image among Hispanics by pushing for an overhaul of immigration laws that offers a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Obama wants to enact an immigration plan this year and has sought support from business executives.

A rewrite of immigration laws “is something that we should be able to get done certainly this year, and I’d like to see if we can get it done sooner, in the first half of the year is possible,” Obama said Jan. 30 in an interview with the Spanish-language television station Telemundo.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 70 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Larry Downing/Pool via Bloomberg

President Barack Obama takes the oath of office from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, as first lady Michelle Obama holds the family bible next to daughter Malia Obama in the Blue Room of the White House on Jan. 20, 2013.

That’s how many years it’s been since a third consecutive U.S. president was inaugurated for a second time.

President Barack Obama, who was sworn in to a second term Jan. 20 and delivered an inaugural address yesterday at the 57th presidential inauguration, follows a pair of presidents, Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and George W. Bush (2001-2009), who were also inaugurated twice.

The nation has had three consecutive two-term presidents just one other time in history — the presidencies of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe in the early 19^th century, historian Richard Norton Smith noted Jan. 20 on C-Span’s “Washington Journal” program.

Jefferson was president from 1801 to 1809, followed by Madison from 1809 to 1817 and Monroe from 1817 to 1825. Monroe began his second term in 1821, or 192 years before Obama’s second term began.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 192 by Political Capital.