Blog - Congress Links

• Senate Democrats voted unanimously last night to take away Specter’s committee seniority for the remainder of the 111th Congress.

• Since the vote against him, Specter’s been keeping a low profile.

• Interesting interview today with Majority Leader Reid on Arlen Specter. “Arlen will be a good vote…. On procedural votes he will be with us all the time.”

• The Judiciary Committee’s new ranking member, Sen. Jefferson Sessions [R, AL], says he would consider supporting a gay nominee for the Supreme Court.

• NYT weighs in on the Matthew Shephard Act. Here’s the bill: S. 909.

• Barney Frank looks to undo a Bachmann amendment to the predatory lending bill that he accepted during the committee mark-up; says he read it to hastily the first time around.

• via Boing Boing, video of a pro-single-payer protest at yesterday’s Senate healthcare reform hearing.

• CNET News’ Declan McCullagh takes a look at the proposed Informed P2P User Act.

• CQ: Pelosi won’t back Rep. Obey’s call for timeline in the war supplemental.

• Wired’s Threat Level blog on the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act: Prison Awaits Hostile Bloggers.

• As the House takes up the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act, CPI releases a new study, Who’s Behind the Financial Meltdown: The Subprime 25 and Their Wall Street Backers.

• Senate approves their foreclosure prevention bill 91-5. The Senate version will now have to be reconciled with the House version before being signed into law by President Obama.

• The five senators who voted against the foreclosure prevention bill.

• The House follows the Senate in approving the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act. Among other things, it will set up a modern-day Pecora commission to investigate Wall Street and what brought us to this economic crisis.

• via TaxProf Blog, a thorough list of law school commencement speakers.

• Rep. Barney Frank [D, MA-4] introduces, again, legislation to undo the ban on internet gambling. We’ll update when we have the legislation on OpenCongress.
  
  

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