Incoming GOP Freshmen to Hold $2,500 "Swearing-In" Party

LeAnn Rimes to headline GOP freshman fund raiser
The incoming GOP freshman are serious about getting down to business -- but they're also proving they how to have a good time. A dozen incoming Republican freshmen are ringing in the New Year with a swank Fundraiser at Washington's W hotel on January 4th, with incoming Speaker John Boehner, incoming Minority Leader Eric Cantor, Whip-elect Kevin Mccarthy, and NRCC Chair Pete Sessions listed as invited guests. Attendees will be treated to a guest performance by Grammy award winning country sin...

New GOP Lawmakers To Hold Lavish 'Swearing-In' Event Headlined By LeAnn Rimes
Politics Daily: If incoming GOP freshmen were hoping to bring Fiscal Responsibility and "Family Values" to Washington, they may have gotten off to an interesting start with a big party in the works. Read the whole story: Politics Daily Get HuffPost Politics On Twitter and Facebook! Subscribe to the HuffPost Hill newsletter! Know something we don't? E-mail us at [email protected] ...

Congressmen to Pay Even Less Attention to Each Other
Congressman Kevin Mccarthy. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Years after infiltrating every aspect of American life, technology is finally coming to the House of Representatives. Under the new House rules proposed by Speaker John Boehner, Smartphones, iPads, and other electronic devices will be allowed in the chamber for the first time, provided that they don't "impair decorum." "The definition of what is 'disruptive of decorum' will likely evolve over time," writes Brendan Buck in an emai...

GOP lawmakers threaten to repeal Net neutrality
Source: Politico Less than an hour after the Federal Communications Commission approved Net Neutrality rules, Republican lawmakers began staking their claim in the next potential leg of the debate: Repeal. The first calls to roll back the FCC's new Net Neutrality order came Tuesday from the House's most senior Republicans: House GOP Leader John Boehner of Ohio and Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia, as well as the incoming leaders of the chamber's top tech and telecom committees. The members each thre...

World's best
"American Exceptionalism" is the trend-topping topic of conversation in the US at the moment. "Americans believe with all their hearts, the vast majority of them, that the United States of America is simply the single greatest nation in all of human history." So said Florida's new Republican Senator Marco Rubio in his Acceptance Speech following last month's mid-term Elections. Many of his fellow Republicans alluded to the same view as they celebrated their "...

Report: House Staffers Could Make More on the Outside
Budgets in the House of Representatives will soon undergo some trimming, if Representative John A. Boehner, the incoming speaker, has his way. But according to a new report, congressional staffing levels have already fallen off over the last three decades and many House Staffers could be paid significantly more for similar work in the Private Sector. The study from the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan outfit that aims to make government more transparent, also found that many employees in pers...

New rules to allow Blackberries, iPads on House floor
Stumble This! The tech revolution is about to come to the US House of Representatives and it could mean more tweets from your favorite congressperson. Under recently proposed rules for the 112th Congress, mobile electronic devices like BlackBerries and iPads will be allowed on the House floor. But the wording has been slightly modified for the new Congress. "A person on the floor of the House may not smoke or use a mobile or electronic device that impairs decorum," the new rule reads. The phra...

Hill staff pay frozen in time
Speaker-elect John Boehner has vowed to tighten the budgets of congressional offices, but a new report from the Sunlight Foundation shows that the average Staffer’s Salary hasn’t changed in 20 years and the number of employees on the Hill has dropped dramatically in the past 30 years. Even after adjusting for Inflation, a staffer in 2009 made within a few thousand dollars of a 1990s counterpart, a review of congressional pay documents and data reports showed. Continue Reading Te...

We have a Census number
Here you go. After knocking on 50 million doors and handling tens of millions of surveys, the Census Bureau on Tuesday announced that the official population of the United States is now 308,745,538. The 2010 Census also shows America’s once-torrid Population Growth dropping to its Lowest Level in seven decades. The new number, based on the surveys taken on April 1, 2010, is a 9.7 percent increase over the last Census, 281.4 million residents in 2000. But that’s slower than the 13.2...

NRCC chairman intends to 'take full advantage' of census shift in 2012
Rep. Pete Sessions (Texas), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, says the new Census data out Tuesday gives Republicans an edge in 2012.  Sessions told The Ballot Box the shift in population from Democratic states in the Northeast and industrial Midwest to Republican-leaning states in the South and Southwest means the GOP will have the chance to expand its majority in the House next cycle.   "I think anytime you see a shift from North to South, it means a better advan...

Texas Reps. predict nasty redistricting battle
Next year's messiest redistricting fight is likely to take place in Texas--the same state that saw an all-out brawl the last time around.  With the addition of four new House seats, the Lone Star state saw the biggest apportionment gain Tuesday when the Census Bureau officially released its new population figures.  It already has Democrats worrying that the Republican-led legislature will opt for an all-out power grab, setting up a Legal Battle similar to the one that began seven years ago a...

Hilton Takes a Punch from Starwood, But It's Far From a Knockout
In a bruising blow to its reputation, Hilton Worldwide on Wednesday said it has settled a corporate-espionage Lawsuit from rival Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide. Starwood claims that two former employees stole more than 100,000 documents to help Hilton start a competing hotel chain called Denizen, which Starwood alleges is a ripoff of its own popular W Hotels. As part of the settlement, Hilton will be forced to step away from the so-called "emerging lifestyle" market for two years. Th...

Orrin Hatch & Dick Lugar Could Be Prime Tea Party Targets In 2012
Politics Daily: Does the Tea Party movement have senior Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch and Dick Lugar in its crosshairs? Read the whole story: Politics Daily Get HuffPost Politics On Twitter and Facebook! Subscribe to the HuffPost Hill newsletter! Know something we don't? E-mail us at [email protected] ...

Health Care Costs and the Uninsured: The Republicans Have a Plan
In an effort to encourage the same level of civil dialogue among Politics Daily’s readers that we expect of our writers - a “civilogue,” to use the term coined by PD’s Jeffrey Weiss - we are requiring commenters to use their AOL or AIM screen names to submit a comment, and we are reading all comments before publishing them. Personal attacks (on writers, other readers, Nancy Pelosi, George W. Bush, or anyone at all) and comments that are not productive addition...

Poll: More Than One In Three Americans Doubt Obama Believes In U.S. 'Exceptionalism'
Politics Daily: While 80 percent of Americans think that America "has a unique character that makes it the greatest country in the world," more than a third say President Obama does not share that belief, according to a USA Today/Gallup Poll conducted Dec. 10-12. Read the whole story: Politics Daily Get HuffPost Politics On Twitter and Facebook! Subscribe to the HuffPost Hill newsletter! Know something we don't? E-mail us at [email protected] ...

Lynn Sweet and David Corn on MSNBC: Lame Duck Congress Successes
Politics Daily correspondent and Daily FLOTUS writer Lynn Sweet and columnist David Corn appeared on "Hardball with Chris Matthews" on Thursday to discuss the Lame Duck session of Congress and President Obama's leadership on its legislative accomplishments. Click play below to watch the video: In an effort to encourage the same level of civil dialogue among Politics Daily’s readers that we expect of our writers - a “civilogue,” to use the term coined by PD’s Jeffrey...

START Treaty Fractures GOP Unity In Senate
Politics Daily: The vote, which was 67 to 28, was major break in party unity for the GOP, which has successfully blocked several bills before the November Elections and the DREAM Act and Omnibus Appropriations bill in the lame-duck session of Congress. Read the whole story: Politics Daily Get HuffPost Politics On Twitter and Facebook! Subscribe to the HuffPost Hill newsletter! Know something we don't? E-mail us at [email protected] ...

Senators Hatch & Lugar Targets In 2012?
I’d like to think this is a rhetorical question, but somehow I get the feeling that Politics Daily correspondent Tom Diemer honestly hasn’t seen the handwriting on the wall. “Does the Tea Party movement have senior Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch and Dick Lugar in its crosshairs?  Sen. Orrin Hatch would have plenty of piano time in Retirement A conservative-leaning Washington Tabloid says Hatch and Lugar — both Veterans of 3½ decades on Capitol Hill — should ...

John McCain & Lindsey Graham: The Mean Girls Of The U.S. Senate
Politics Daily: I have a theory about human social evolution: life doesn't progress much after High School. This week, I can thank John McCain and Lindsey Graham for providing empirical data that supports this hypothesis. Read the whole story: Politics Daily Get HuffPost Politics On Twitter and Facebook! Subscribe to the HuffPost Hill newsletter! Know something we don't? E-mail us at [email protected] ...

LeAnn Rimes & LA Gay Chorus - The Rose
Clip description: "LeAnn Rimes joined the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles to pay tribute to LGBT youth everywhere, honoring the memory of those who have taken their lives in desperation, those who struggle with anti-gay Bullying and Discrimination - and reminding everyone that It Gets Better!" (Via - Towleroad) Labels: bullying, Gay Men's Chorus, LGBT youth New! Share this on Facebook: Share ...

GOP lawmakers threaten to repeal net neutrality
Less than an hour after the Federal Communications Commission approved Net Neutrality rules, Republican lawmakers began staking their claim in the next potential leg of the debate: Repeal. The first calls to roll back the commission's new Net Neutrality order came Tuesday from top House Republicans: House GOP Leader John Boehner of Ohio and Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia, as well as Rep. Lee Terry of Nebraska, incoming vice chairman of the top technology subcommittee in the House. All three me...

Can the Tea Party Triumph Against Voter Fraud?
The 2008 election was the worst decision America ever made. And we have no one to blame but ourselves; they told us what they were going to do — fundamentally transform America. It shook one’s faith in the American electorate. All was not lost, however. In early 2009 folks began to wake up. And in the 2010 election, the American electorate redeemed itself. The stunning results of the Midterm Election were due to the most important American movement in decades: the Tea Party. Tea Partie...

Reintroducing Dave Camp
The first time I, like most of the nation, noticed Rep. Dave Camp was at the Health Care summit. Most think of that as Camp’s coming out party. I remember listening to Rush gush about Camp’s performance. As I recall, Camp was the star of the morning session. That isn’t a tiny thing. Going into the summit, the majority of pundits thought Team GOP was going to get creamed, not because they didn’t know their stuff but because most people thought President Obama would talk a...

Larry Magid: FCC Network Neutrality Rules Neither Socialism nor Sell-out
Despite what some politicians and pundits are saying, the FCC's vote on Net Neutrality is neither a government takeover of the Internet nor a complete sell-out to the telecommunications industry. Like President Obama who appointed him, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is a pragmatist who fashioned a Compromise that doesn't go nearly as far as some would like while providing some protections for consumers and businesses against Broadband providers discriminating for or against certain types of I...

Allen West gets brushback from veteran Bishop
Veteran Republican Rep. Rob Bishop wants to teach rookie Rep. Allen West a thing or two about how things work on Capitol Hill. A week after West (R-Fla.) publicly complained that the House calendar for next year didn’t keep the chamber in session for enough days, Bishop took the unusual move of publicly releasing a letter explaining to West why Republicans decided to change the schedule. “I am about to begin my fifth term in Congress. I can tell you based on my experience that th...