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Concerned about spending at the Republican Party of Florida, incoming House Speaker Dean Cannon transferred $665,000 from the party's coffers into a separate political committee called the Florida Liberty Fund.
The web site for the Florida Liberty Fund shows a transfer of $555,000 from the RPOF into the committee on Jan. 5 — the day RPOF [...]

AP - Could this turn into something more than political theater? President Barack Obama’s televised dialogue with Republican lawmakers on health care, promised for later this month, has the makings of an entertaining exchange. But the differences between the basic Democratic and GOP ideas are stark — and the two sides have increasingly hardened their [...]

Several bipartisan statements of condolences over the death today of Democratic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania at 77 from complications of gallbladder surgery. (See them below.)

The political fallout of his passing was immediate.
Within hours Stu Rothenberg, probably the most astute political handicapper in Washington, moved Murtha's 12 District from safely Democratic (the tough-minded, [...]

Steve Steckler: Republicans are absolutely right to demand that the discussion start from scratch, since they have been left out of the all-important foundational House discussion; that is, the one that established coverage expansion and the method for achieving it as the central goal of reform instead of starting with cost control and regulatory improvement. [...]

AP - Rep. John Murtha, the tall, gruff-mannered former Marine who became the de facto voice of veterans on Capitol Hill and later an outspoken and influential critic of the Iraq War, died Monday. He was 77. The Pennsylvania Democrat had been suffering complications from gallbladder surgery. He died at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, [...]

Steve Steckler: Republicans are absolutely right to demand that the discussion start from scratch, since they have been left out of the all-important foundational House discussion; that is, the one that established coverage expansion and the method for achieving it as the central goal of reform instead of starting with cost control and regulatory improvement. [...]

George LeMieux is calling for a Senate hearing into the Toyota recall. (House hearings are scheduled to begin this week)
"The American public needs to know the level of risk associated with operating affected vehicles, and Congress needs to know whether federal regulators have fulfilled their proper roles," LeMieux said. "This is a matter of public safety. There's a [...]

When it comes to media accessibility, it's not like President Obama has been a shrinking violet.
"We have probably done more interviews with more reporters at this point in our presidency than anybody else has," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said recently.
But the man who came to office as a darling of the [...]

AP - The lawmakers now investigating Toyota’s recall include a senator who was so eager to lure the Japanese automaker to his state that he tramped along through fields as its executives scouted plant sites, and a congresswoman who owes much of her wealth to a Toyota supplier.

AP - Republicans gave a chilly reception Monday to President Barack Obama’s invitation to discuss health care in a bipartisan, televised setting later this month, part of the White House effort to revive the stalled legislation.