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Teapot Dome. I love a good reference to the Harding administration.

Great letter today. It felt a little more positive with the bipartisanship.

Side note: that Trump pic is giving George Hamilton vibes.

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Whenever I see the name of George Hamilton, I can only think that my first exposure to him was when Zonker in Doonesbury talked about turning pro for sun tanning and competing in the 'George Hamilton Cocoa Butter Open'

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Opportunity for a partnership with Doral. (Snark)

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Re: today’s Muse of History: Harry Sinclair would ultimately be held in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena - losing his appeal six years later at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Huh. So 100 years ago, the system still worked. In 2024, Sinclair would likely be co-chairing a House committee -- or running for president.

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When people tell me something 'has never happened before' in Congress, I figure it probably has - we just forgot about it

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I appreciated all of your great insights on the border/Ukraine funding deal/no deal today. And instead of introducing legislation to ban them, it sounds like you all could use a few glue traps there in the press gallery. Yikes.

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I work in an area that's up in the attic of the Senate side of the Capitol. We have traps everywhere. Glue traps, regular mouse traps, etc. I think only one time have I ever seen a mouse get caught. Otherwise, they drop from the ceilings, run across my desk, under my feet, down the walls, etc. We need a couple of cats up there.

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What's the longest you've seen stop-gap measures go on?

Theoretically, could they just keep doing them into the new fiscal year/after the election?

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Theoretically, they could just keep doing them. But sooner or later, they wrap things up. The longest I've seen it go was in 2017. They didn't get the bills done until early May - almost 9 months into the fiscal year. Right now, they are heading for March.

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It's been interesting to note that more and more Republican members are pushing back against the tactics (antics?) of the conservative hardliners in the House - presumably because they have been preventing even incremental progress on so many issues important to the rest of the Republican caucus.

I read this morning that John Rutherford (R-FL) actually said that some of them ought to be punished. Tellingly, he also said that those same members “want 100% of everything, which is ridiculous. Because what you wind up with is a lot of nothing.” And that: “To use a football analogy, they want to throw a hail mary pass on every play. You don’t win ball games that way”.

I thought that was a pretty good way of expressing it.

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