partisan politics

Could be.
Late Wednesday, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) filed a motion to proceed to legislation extending unemployment benefits. But the majority leader was quick to clarify that the move is no indication that he’s struck a deal with GOP leaders over how to pass the bill.

If anyone thought that a liberal President Obama, backed by large Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, was just going to write his way through Washington this year — think again.
It’s a moderate’s world on Capitol Hill right now, and the latest evidence arrived yesterday when the Democratic sponsors of a controversial labor-friendly proposal [...]

Senate Republicans realize that, barring some yet-unrevealed scandal, there’s little standing in the way of Sonia Sotomayor’s eventual placement on the Supreme Court. But that doesn’t mean they’re not going to do everything in their powers to delay the process. Indeed, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said yesterday [...]

When Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania defected to the Democratic Party last week, there were questions about just what kind of deals had been cut with Democratic leaders to secure the leap. Specter himself fueled the speculation when, during the press conference announcing his switch, he told reporters that he’d worked out an arrangement where [...]

In the wake of Sen. Arlen Specter’s (D-Pa.) defection from the Republican Party, another prominent GOP moderate is expressing doubts that the party has a future on its current tack to the right. Writing in The New York Times today, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) argues that “the political environment that has made it inhospitable for [...]

As the GOP loses the Senate seat held by Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), who announced today that he’s switching allegiances to the Democrats, former Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island says the party has no one to blame but itself.
“The ramifications are huge,” Chafee said of Specter’s exodus Tuesday, “and the main message is [...]

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) told reporters Tuesday afternoon that he’s worked out an agreement with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) that will allow the Senate’s newest Democrat to be seated on committees as if he’d entered the upper chamber in 1980 as a Democrat rather than a Republican.

Sen. Robert Byrd, a nine-term West Virginia Democrat and the upper chamber’s in-house constitutional scholar, said the following in a statement:
[Specter] is tough, thorough, and he can’t be intimidated. I am delighted to welcome him as a Democratic colleague. Arlen Specter gives our side of the aisle not only a numerical boost, but also an [...]