Source: Twitter Inc. via Bloomberg

The Twitter Inc. page belonging to Warren Buffett, the billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., is seen in this screen grab taken on May 2, 2013. Buffett topped 50,000 followers on Twitter as he sent his first message on the social media site.

Updated May 3, 2013, 8:20 am EST

Bill Clinton and Warren Buffett are keeping company. With friends like Stephen Colbert. And “where else can you hear from Bill Gates, John McCain, Ellen Degeneres and Usher in one day?”

The 43nd president only recently signed up for Twitter, and already has more than 560,000 followers. The oracle of Omaha signed up Thursday —  ”Warren is in the House” — with more than 105,000 followers on Day One and 270,000 on Day Two.

Warren is in the house.

— Warren Buffett (@WarrenBuffett) May 2, 2013

.@warrenbuffett Welcome to @twitter. What took you so long?

— Bill Clinton (@billclinton) May 2, 2013

Colbert is really “cool,” Clinton said in his first tweet last month (10 tweets ago.)

Just spent amazing time with Colbert!Is he sane? He is cool! #cgiu

— Bill Clinton (@billclinton) April 6, 2013

And Clinton is proud, he said in another tweet, of Jason Collins, the NBA center who announced that he is gay.

I’m proud to call Jason Collins a friend. wjcf.co/154piCi

— Bill Clinton (@billclinton) April 29, 2013

He noted that he was glad to join his daughter at the social networking site.

Excited to join @chelseaclinton and my good friend @stephenathome on Twitter! — Bill Clinton (@billclinton) April 25, 2013

So far, Clinton said recently, it’s going fairly well.

Enjoying @twitter so far. Where else can you hear from @billgates @paulpierce34 @senjohnmccain @theellenshow @usher in one day? #thisisgreat — Bill Clinton (@billclinton) April 25, 2013.

Warren’s only other tweet so far promoted a column he wrote for CNN Money titled “Warren Buffett is Bullish … on Women.”

Read my new essay on why women are key to America’s prosperity: cnnmon.ie/18eXfik.

— Warren Buffett (@WarrenBuffett) May 2, 2013

Waiting for the next word from Buffett, with about 270,000 others.

Original post is Warren Buffett ‘Is In The House’ — With More than 270,000 Guests by Political Capital.

Photograph by Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., speaks at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference at the Gaylord National Resort & Conference Center at National Harbor, Md., on March 15, 2013.

Hurry up or slow down with that immigration overhaul?

What would Mitt Romney do? Or perhaps more pointedly going forward, Paul Ryan?

Slow down, some of the Republican Party’s leaders were saying last week, in the midst of the hunt, capture and killing of the two men accused of bombing the Boston Marathon who had immigrated with their family from Kyrgyzstan.

“How can we beef up security checks on people who wish to enter the United States? How do we ensure that people who wish to do us harm are not eligible for benefits under the immigration laws, including this new bill before us?” Sen. Charles Grassley, ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, asked last week.

“You know, in all due respect to my colleagues, that’s ludicrous,” Sen. John McCain of Arizona, one of the Republican sponsors of the immigration overhaul, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV’s Trish Regan over the weekend. “This legislation tightens our borders, increases security.”

So how about Ryan — whose presidential ticket led by Romney in 2012 was politically saddled with the tough anti illegal immigration rhetoric on which Romney campaigned during the primaries? Ryan is considered among his party’s prospects for 2016.

Ryan said today that last week’s Boston bombings prove the legislation is necessary.

Speaking to reporters after a speech to the City Club of Chicago, the chairman of the House Budget Committee said last week’s incidents show changes are needed for the sake of national security.

“We do not know how to even track people who overstay their visas,” Ryan said. “We need a modern immigration system that helps us not only protect our border, but protects national security in all of its aspects. So, if anything, I would say this is an argument for modernizing our immigration laws.”

Ryan, 43, said he was “not at all” concerned that members of his own party might move away from changes being proposed because of the Boston bombings.

“We just don’t know all of the facts,” he said, adding that lawmakers shouldn’t make “knee-jerk” assessments about legislation because of Boston.

Ryan appeared with Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a Democrat from Illinois who is one of his party’s leaders in pushing for immigration changes. Gutierrez agreed with Ryan that Boston made clearer the need for changes to current laws.
“If anything, it tells us we need to work on it even more,” he said of the legislation.

In his speech, Ryan said the immigration changes working their way through Congress will boost the U.S. economy and provide numerous other benefits. He called them the “farthest down the path” on the issue he’s seen.

“If we get this right, we’ll help the rule of law, we’ll help the economy, we’ll help national security, and we’ll re-inject faith that our federal government can actually get something right for a change,” he said.

John McCormick contributed from Chicago. 

Original post is Ryan: No Slow-Down on Immigration by Political Capital.

Photograph by Matt Hinshaw/The Daily Courier via AP Photo

Sen. Jeff Flake meets with the public on March 28, 2013 in Prescott, Arizona.

Now it gets personal.

The failure of gun-control legislation in the Senate will come with as many political repercussions as the passage of a bill would have generated.

Mark Kelly, the retired astronaut married to former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona lawmaker seriously wounded in a 2011 Tucson shooting that claimed six lives, has some words on Twitter today for Sen. Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican who opposed a measure expanding background checks for gunbuyers. That bill died Wednesday on a 54-46 vote. It needed 60.

Sen. John McCain, Arizona’s other Republican senator, voted for the bill. He was one of only four Republicans who did.

@jeffflake heard u say on FOX “I think all of us want to keep guns out of the hand of criminals & those with mental illness. We can do it.”

— Mark Kelly (@ShuttleCDRKelly) April 18, 2013

@jeffflake I’m confused, friend. You had that chance yesterday. Want to rethink and join me and Gabby in making Arizona safer?

— Mark Kelly (@ShuttleCDRKelly) April 18, 2013

This was Flake’s explanation:

I will oppose the Manchin-Toomey Amendment. Here’s why: facebook.com/JeffFlake1?ref…

— Jeff Flake (@JeffFlake) April 16, 2013

Original post is Kelly to Flake: Had Your Chance by Political Capital.

Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York, left, and John McCain of Arizona, before their meeting on immigration with President Barack Obama, April 16, 2013. AP Photo.

Updated at 5:30 pm EDT

The White House isn’t completely satisfied with the immigration rewrite that a bipartisan group of senators has produced, two senators say, yet President Barack Obama has endorsed their work.

The White House confirmed as much after the meeting.

“While he certainly may not agree with every single part of it, he is certainly supportive of the bill we’ve put together,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in the driveway of the West Wing after a meeting with the president this afternoon. “No one is going to get everything they want in a bill, but if we meet in the middle, we can do a lot of good…. The president’s support of our proposal, even though he wouldn’t fully support it, is just where we need to be.”

“The president is very supportive,” said Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican. “The president realizes that everybody didn’t get what they wanted completely… It is a process of compromise… The president also agrees that this is the beginning of a process — not the end… But I am very confident that at the end of the day we will have a bill to the president’s desk.”

“ This bill is clearly a compromise, and no one will get everything they wanted, including me,” Obama said in a statement issued later by the White House.  “But it is largely consistent with the principles that I have repeatedly laid out for comprehensive reform.  This bill would continue to strengthen security at our borders and hold employers more accountable if they knowingly hire undocumented workers.  It would provide a pathway to earned citizenship for the 11 million individuals who are already in this country illegally.  And it would modernize our legal immigration system so that we’re able to reunite families and attract the highly-skilled entrepreneurs and engineers who will help create good paying jobs and grow our economy.  These are all commonsense steps that the majority of Americans support. ”

The one thing they agree on, both the president and Schumer said, is that the bill move as quickly as possible — the senators are filing their bill tonight (see the details here), and planning swift action in the Judiciary Committee and floor action by May.

One of the differences involves a trigger that the senators have in their bill: Before any of the 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the U.S. can apply for work permits, let alone the path to citizenship that requires another 10 years, the Department of Homeland Security must certify that there is 90 percent effectiveness in protection of the border in “high-risk” areas — sectors where more than 30,000 people are apprehended trying to cross each year.

‘“The president didn’t believe in a trigger — we did,” Schumer said.  “We know he doesn’t agree with the trigger. His proposal didn’t have one.”

That’s part of the plan’s selling point in the Senate, and in the House as well, where opponents have in the past and once again are deriding the path to citizenship as a form of “amnesty” for the undocumented.

“You’re not going to pass a bill” unless Congress and the public is assured “there is not going to be another wave of illegal immigration,” Schumer said.

With the requirement in the Senate bill that the undocumented pay back taxes, pay fines and get in line behind legal applicants for green cards before they can seek citizenship, he said, “that’s not amnesty in anyone’s book.”

Original post is Senators: Obama Nods on Immigration ‘Compromise’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

The Washington Monument stands behind cherry trees blossoming in Washington, D.C.

Updated 2:35 pm

The Office of Management and Budget hands out President Barack Obama’s 2014 budget in a Starbucks as the sun comes up.

It’s 6:35 am, and a dozen reporters are gathered in downtown Washington, waiting for an OMB staffer carrying CDs. He is five minutes behind schedule due to roadblocks around the White House. The budget files he’s releasing are two months late.

Obama’s $3.8 trillion budget proposal arrives at the Capitol after the House and Senate already have adopted non-binding budget resolutions so different in their goals that there’s almost no prospect for compromise, Bloomberg reports. Reporters held their headlines until the White House’s embargoed release after the president spoke from the Rose Garden at 11 am today. “Our economy is poised for progress as long as Washington doesn’t get in the way,” he said.

The president’s budget, officially due on Feb. 1, is usually the kick-off for  budget season in Washington. This year’s budget – delayed until cherry-blossom season after a series of manufactured fiscal crises on Capitol Hill – is a potential tie-breaker.

Because of congressional gridlock, “the president is pretty much stepping onto the same playing field that he would have if he had started on time,” Joseph Minarik, senior vice president of the Committee for Economic Development, said in an interview.

Republicans started early today bashing the proposal on the Senate floor and on Twitter:

“It sounds like the White House just tossed last year’s budget into the microwave,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said.

Loving our new Vine video! Obama’s budget in 6 seconds. vine.co/v/btnbn9JDDur

— Reince Priebus (@Reince) April 10, 2013

I liked @tonyfratto‘s phrase this am calling Obama budget proposal a possible “middle path to nowhere.” — Ben White (@morningmoneyben) April 10, 2013

Oh good. The White House plans to use fictional “war savings” in their budget again. — Brendan Buck (@Brendan_Buck) April 10, 2013

O’s thought bubble: “Um…someone remind me. What exactly were we thinking when we decided 2send the budget up 2 months late?”

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) April 10, 2013

Even Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, who is running for the South Carolina 1st District  House seat against former Gov. Mark Sanford, rejected the plan:

Businesswoman Colbert Busch Rejects President Obama’s Budget | Press Release bit.ly/16MCmJV #SC1 SC01 #SCtweets #CHS

— ColbertBuschSC (@ColbertBuschSC) April 10, 2013

The outlook appears grim, and budget experts aren’t sure whether Obama’s proposals are any more or less likely to be taken up by Congress now that it’s April. At 65 days late, Obama’s 2014 plan is the most over-due budget in modern history, a fact House Republicans have criticized frequently over the past few weeks.

“Many people believe that because he gets to go last, it provides the president the chance to give more, not less, leadership on this issue. I think that’s an open question,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum and former economic adviser to Sen. John McCain’s 2008  presidential campaign, said in an interview. He added, “It has more to do with their willingness to take a leadership role on the deal.”

Congress will likely continue to wait for “the moment when the debt limit hits the fan,” said Minarik, who is a former policy director and economist for the House and OMB.

“Will the president proposing entitlement reductions shock the system?” he said. “There aren’t too many indications at this point that would lead you to think so.”

The reporters at Starbucks had at least one reason to be glad for the budget’s two-month delay: If they had received the budget in February, it wouldn’t have been 63 degrees in Washington for their walks back to their newsrooms, the cherries in full bloom.

Original post is Obama’s Budget Handoff: $3.8 Trillion Grande by Political Capital.

Photograph by Kevin Wolf/AP Photo

Sen. John McCain during a news conference supporting a pardon for boxer Jack Johnson, shown in stand up photo at right, in this file photo. Behind McCain are referee Richard Steele, left, a member of the World Boxing Hall of Fame, and Iran Barkley, a former WBB boxing champion.

Harry Reid was a boxer in his time (amateur lightweight).

Mike Tyson was a boxer in his days (heavyweight champion).

The late Jack Johnson remains a boxing legend.

Now the Senate majority leader from Searchlight, Nevada, and the tattooed darling of Las Vegas have something in common: Calling on President Barack Obama to posthumously pardon Johnson.

Tyson has started a petition at Change.org, “the world’s petition platform,” urging the president to pardon the late, great first black heavyweight boxing champion, who was imprisoned for crossing state lines with a white girlfriend.

(Small problem here: Obama doesn’t do posthumous pardons, or many contemporaneous ones, for that matter  – more on that later.)

Without any comment on Tyson’s own relationship with girlfriends, it’s said that Tyson launched his petition for the falsely convicted (in 1913) champ after a meeting with Democrat Reid,  leading a bipartisan effort with Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona to clear Johnson’s name. (The late Miles Davis might approve of all this.)

“Please help get a pardon for Jack Johnson, the first BLACK heavyweight champion of the world [who] was convicted by an all-white jury in June 1913, under the Mann Act,” the petition states. “He was sentenced to one year and a day for a consensual relationship he had with a Caucasian woman.”

I don’t ask for much but please help me do the right thing by signing this petition chn.ge/12fK8wZ

— Mike Tyson (@MikeTyson) April 3, 2013

One great boxer standing up for another: chn.ge/12fK8wZ CC @miketyson

— Senator Harry Reid (@SenatorReid) April 3, 2013

President Barack Obama: Pardon boxing legend Jack Johson change.org/petitions/pres… via @change

— Mike Tyson (@MikeTyson) April 3, 2013.

Soul-mates, these two: Vegas-born Reid was chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission at one point, and Tyson has his own Vegas show about “undisputed truth-telling” now: “Mike Tyson is no angel. He’s done time in prison, openly admits to using drugs and paying prostitutes. And “Iron” Mike Tyson tells all in this sometimes shocking, sometimes hilarious, sometimes emotional show.”

So there might be some hope here for Johnson, if Obama weren’t so basically stingy about clemency in general — granting fewer pardons and commutations of sentence than any full-term-serving president since George Washington. (James Garfield issued fewer, but he was assassinated four months into office.)

The Office of the Pardon Attorney recently addressed this issue in response to a request for posthumous clemency for the author O. Henry, imprisoned for bank fraud during his illustrious writing career (He published from behind bars following that 1897 indictment.)

Ronald Rodgers, the pardon attorney at Justice, wrote to the petitioners for Henry that  “the well-settled policy of the Justice Department not to accept for processing applications for posthumous pardon is grounded in the belief that the time and efforts of clemency officials are better dedicated to the clemency requests of living persons, who can actually benefit from the President’s mercy.”

But hey, how often do we get to mention Harry Reid, John McCain, Mike Tyson, Miles Davis, Jack Johnson, O. Henry and Barack Obama in one breath?

Original post is Harry Reid, Mike Tyson: In the Same Ring for Jack Johnson (Bell) by Political Capital.

Photograph by Sam Hodgson/Bloomberg

People walk on the beach in Tijuana, Mexico, beyond the U.S.-Mexico border fence in San Diego, California, on March 21, 2012.

Immigration policy is the main subject of discussion at events hosted by the Migration Policy Institute, the Economic Policy Institute and the Small Business Majority in Washington today. Meanwhile, Arizona Republican Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake will host Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Michael Bennet of Colorado on a visit to the Arizona border as they work to craft an immigation bill, ABC reported.

The Supreme Court continues its foray into the same-sex marriage debate, hearing arguments today on the constitutionality of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which denies federal benefits to same-sex married couples. The nation’s high court considered same-sex marriage for the first time yesterday, hearing arguments on Proposition 8, a 2008 California ballot measure approved by voters that bars such unions.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and Google Fiber executive Milo Medin take part in the “Gigabit City Challenge,” calling for all 50 states to have at least one community with ultra-fast Internet by 2015.

The approval rating of Sen. Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, has recovered to 40-37 percent from negative 36-41 percent last month amid allegations of impropriety, according to a Quinnipiac University poll. That’s as the planned retirement of Sen. Tim Johnson, a South Dakota Democrat, next year bolsters Republican chances of claiming half of the six seats they need to take control of the Senate, Bloomberg News reports.

The Aspen Institute holds a discussion on measuring socio-economic implications of business, with representatives from Accenture, Coca-Cola, Oxfam America and the Grameen Foundation. SAIS holds a discussion on women in corporate leadership with former Commerce Sec. Barbara Franklin, chair of the National Association of Corporate Directors. Amtrak submits its fiscal 2014 budget to Congress, seeking $373 million in support, down 16% from $443 million this year, Bloomberg News reports.

And the Library of Congress hosts a poetry reading this evening to celebrate writing from American South, with U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey.

 Chelsea Mes, Nick Taborek and Laura Curtis contributed to this report.

Original post is Washington Daybook: Border Patrol by Political Capital.

Photograph by Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Members of the Montgomery County Council, as well as local activists and members the the Montgomery County Board of Education, took part in a shopping venture to see if they could live on $5.00 a day worth of food on Feb. 4, 2013. They had a $25.00 limit (5-day supply) as part of the SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the new name for food stamps). It was an effort to raise poverty awareness in an otherwise affluent county.

Sen. John McCain is reverting to maverick status in an attempt to reach a grand bargain to avoid the ongoing sequestration.

While most of his fellow Republicans have opposed closing special-interest tax loopholes, preferring to cut food stamps instead, McCain, an Arizona Republican, said there are plenty of loopholes that should be sacrificed on the altar of fiscal responsibility.

“Republicans have betrayed our base by allowing this kind of pork-barrel and earmark spending to go on,” he said on“Political Capital With Al Hunt,” airing this weekend on Bloomberg Television.

He praised President Barack Obama, who defeated him in the 2008 presidential election, for finally reaching out to Republicans in Congress, and acknowledged that his party “may have to make some concessions on our side” to reach a deal to replace $1.2 trillion in across-the-board spending cuts that began to take effect March 1.

Read the full story here.

Original post is McCain Reverts to Maverick Status in Budget Debate by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, speaks at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Tampa.

It’s not every day that people are asked to support “Wacko Birds.”

That’s what the Senate Conservatives Fund is doing — on behalf of Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz.

The PAC committed to the election of “true conservatives” drew its inspiration from Sen. John McCain’s words for his fellow Republicans after Paul, of Kentucky, filibustered the confirmation of John Brennan as CIA director warning that the White House could be holding fatal drone power over Americans at home.

McCain called them “wacko birds” and said they were not “reflective of the views of the majority of Republicans,” the PAC notes.”  When asked who he was talking about, McCain said, “Rand Paul, Cruz, Amash, whoever.”

If you believe in Constitutional rights, the PAC asks in its Web-ads, “become a proud Wackobird today.”

But, isn’t it spelled Whacko?

Original post is `Wacko Birds’ Backed by Conservative Senators PAC by Political Capital.

Photograph by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Senator John McCain flashes the thumb-up when asked by a reporter about how the meeting went outside the Jefferson Hotel following a dinner with President Barack Obama and a group of fellow Republican senators on March 6, 2013 in Washington.

Updated at 9 am EST, March 7

The food, at least, must have been good.

The Republicans who dined with President Barack Obama tonight were holding thumbs up on their way out of the Jefferson Hotel this evening.

Sen. John McCain, the senior Arizona Republican who lost the 2008 presidential election to Obama, then the junior senator from Illinois, was among those invited to the dinner with a dozen lawmakers several blocks from the White House.

Asked how it went, on his way out, McCain flashed thumbs up.

Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma? Thumbs up.

Sens. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and  Bob Corker of Tennessee also filed out, well fed on a cold, rainy night in a town that was supposed to be snowbound.

This was an unusual event, a show of bipartisan socializing staged in a capital riven with political conflict.

But it was not an all-male event.

Among the Republican diners: Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire — the only woman among the dozen senators: McCain, Coburn, Toomey, Corker, Lindsey Graham, Dan Coats, Richard Burr, Mike Johanns, Ron Johnson, John Hoeven and Saxby Chambliss.

Johanns, a Nebraska Republican, was upbeat about the ultimate goal of the dinner:  “I think really what he is trying to do is start a discussion and kind of break the ice and that was appreciated,” Johanns told The Hill.  “Most of the meeting was spent on budget and [finding] a way forward. His goal is ours. We want to stop careening from crisis to crisis.”

Another possible reason for those thumbs up, in this season of budget sequestration.

The White House says the president paid for the dinner.

It’s $85 a plate at the Jefferson, as Bloomberg’s Lisa Lerer and Kate Hunter report of Obama’s “charm offensive.”

Original post is Obama’s Republican Table: Thumbs Up — President Picks Up the Tab by Political Capital.