james inhofe

I took most of today off as part of a long weekend, so I have paid less attention than I might otherwise have to the conservative outrage over the Nobel Committee’s decision to award President Obama the 2009 peace prize. None of it is surprising. For a very long time on the right, “international” has [...]

This morning, at the “Freedom Summit” that kicked off three days of small government Tea Party protests, I broke from a conversation I’d been having with some attendees when one of them approached Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and asked about the feasibility of suing the government over unconstitutional legislation. Inhofe, seemingly out of nowhere, brought [...]

Tulsa World, the daily newspaper of Oklahoma’s second-largest city is criticizing the state’s senior senator for creating some confusion about whether he thinks Americans should go on doubting the legitimacy of the president of the United States.
[O]ther Republicans have declared the conspiracy theory nonsense and have moved on. But the “birthers,” like the alien abduction [...]

Greg Sargent follows up with Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who left the impression in a Politico story on “birthers” that he was sympathetic to their concerns.
The point that they make is the Constitutional mandate that the U.S. President be a natural born citizen, and the White House has not done a very good job of [...]

People have been tweeting at me to provide a roll call for yesterday’s OMG-worth vote to kill the F-22, so here’s one. As it appeared yesterday, the vote was relatively nonpartisan: while the 58-40 tally to end funding for the fighter jet was carried by the Democrats, 15 Republicans joined the successful effort. The votes [...]

The Senate’s first hearing on climate legislation since the House passed the landmark American Clean Energy and Security Act is underway. And unlike in much of the House debate, there’s little pretense of bipartisanship thus far in the Senate discussion.
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) opened the hearing with a shot [...]

In the enviro-sphere, all eyes are on the House of Representatives, which is currently engaged in a heated debate on the Waxman-Markey energy and climate bill, expected to receive a vote this afternoon. But that’s not stopping one Republican senator from digging through the history books to find new ways to attack the legislation.
Apparently, he [...]

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kans.) has announced that he will vote against Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court, making him the third senator to come out against Sotomayor, reports Congressional Quarterly.
Brownback joins Sens. Pat Roberts (R-Kans.) and James Inhofe (R-Okla.) in an anti-Sotomayor Dust Bowl trio.
“Judge Sotomayor has indicated through past rulings and in her [...]

Carl Levin (D-Mich.) is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Bob Gates is the secretary of defense and has just released a Pentagon budget proposal that cuts, guts or obstructs many of the most expensive, entrenched and criticized weapons programs and systems the department operates. You’d think Levin would have an opinion on that. [...]

Credit to Michael Goldfarb at The Weekly Standard for breaking this: Five GOP senators joined with Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to oppose Chris Hill’s nomination as ambassador to Iraq. Sens. Sam Brownback — we knew about him already — John Ensign (N.V.), James Inhofe (Okla.), Kit Bond (Mo.) and John Kyl [...]