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President Obama pitched his American Jobs Act before a joint session of Congress Thursday evening, pleading his case with proposals clearly designed to win bipartisan approval and demanding action with tough campaign-style rhetoric. The nature of the talk, a desperate soft and hard sell, underlined the fact that Americans are stuck hoping the most frustratingly partisan government in modern history can summon the wherewithal to finally address the job-killing recession that has plagued the country for years and that shows no sign of letting up anytime soon.

Today, the Labor Department reported that the unemployment rate tracked up in 26 states and the District of Columbia between July and August. Maryland and

A week after Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) sent a letter to the GPS company OnStar asking that the company not track or sell customer location data, OnStar has decided to reverse course. “While I’m pleased that OnStar reversed its policy, I still have questions about how that company and others are treating consumers’ location information,” Franken said in a statement Tuesday.

Congressional Republicans who are forcing the National Labor Relations Board’s acting general counsel to testify at a field hearing in South Carolina in connection with ongoing legal proceedings are more concerned with scoring political points than they are with allowing an established process to continue, U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin and U.S

As he prepares to bang the gavel on his first regular session as Florida Senate President, Mike Haridopolos faces questions about how he’ll juggle his role in the legislature with his candidacy for the U.S. Senate. He said Monday that his success as a candidate will hinge on his performance as a leader now, implementing what could be one of the most challenging legislative agendas in recent memory.

A federal appeals court yesterday struck down an attempt by state utility interests to do away with the EPA’s proposed “numeric nutrient criteria,” which will set limits on pollution in Florida waterways. # The decision to implement the nutrient criteria came about as a result of litigation brought on by environmental groups including the Sierra Club and the St. Johns Riverkeeper, who alleged that Florida was in violation of the Clean Water Act since it did not have appropriate water pollution limits.

In a press release sent out shortly after a District Court Judge rejected a lawsuit challenging Florida’s “Fair Districts” Amendment 6, would-be representative Mike Yost said that the suit was simply another attempt at gerrymandering. Yost, who lost to Democratic incumbent Corrine Brown in 2010 (and has already launched another campaign to unseat her) said that the suit “was clearly another attempt to allow her to continue to force the Legislature to draw districts that would let the representatives choose their voters, not the voters choosing their representatives.” Sixty-three percent of Florida voters voted for Amendment 6, which were created to help end the practice of gerrymandering, or drawing congressional lines to benefit incumbents

The Washington Post reports that there’s been an unannounced deployment of 13,000 support troops to Afghanistan over the last several months in addition to the

Democratic U.S. Reps. Heath Shuler and Mike McIntyre of North Carolina have joined 171 other members of Congress as co-sponsors of H.R. 3, the No Taxpayer

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), a former judge, is the latest congressman—and sixth Texas congressman—to co-sponsor Rep. Bill Posey’s (R-Fla.) bill requiring

John Murtagh, whose Manhattan home was fire-bombed by the Weather Underground when he was a child, spoke to reporters in a McCain campaign conference call this

Now that Congress is back in session, so too are calls to revive the DISCLOSE Act, a bill intended to mandate disclosure of the primary donors behind political

Questions are already surrounding the law’s unprecedented provision, which makes it a crime to rent housing to unauthorized immigrants, because it includes no information as to how a landlord might determine whether a tenant is undocumented.

Nice catch by Todd Heywood of The Michigan Messenger: U.S. Rep. Thaddeus McCotter , has introduced legislation to create a tax deduction for pet owners’

The biggest reason cited by the Pueblo County commissioners recently when they rejected a rezoning request to accommodate a proposed nuclear power plant was their collective concern about a lack of water to cool the plant. Colorado’s only foray into nuclear power ended in 1989 when Fort St. Vrain, a gas-cooled reactor implemented because of the state’s lack of water, was decommissioned because it ran inefficiently

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was asked at a press conference Saturday in Springerville, Ariz., about the Wallow Fire burning in Arizona and Western New Mexico

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo (Pic by Nieve44/La Luz, via Flickr) In statement for the Catholic Church’s “Respect Life Month,” Cardinal Daniel DiNardo released a statement saying that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is exhibiting antagonism toward religion and has displayed a “distorted view of sexuality.” DiNardo, who is the chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, has taken issue with a decision by Health and Human Services to include birth control in a list of preventive care services.

From an RNC press release, here’s a hint at just who’s moping about Harold Ford’s aborted Senate bid.

Pueblo County Clerk Gilbert Ortiz gave Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler until this morning to specifically and formally address another of the charged ramifications of his new interpretation of state election law. Gessler got in under the wire. Thursday evening, he sent Ortiz a letter ordering him not to send ballots to any of the county’s “inactive voters”– legally registered voters who failed to cast ballots in the previous even-year general election– including roughly 70 soldiers on the Pueblo County inactive voter rolls serving out of state

Colorado Republican Party Chair Dick Wadhams apparently isn’t the only one attacking the financial acumen of state Sen.

Turns out that even conservatives can’t stomach the indefinite detention of a lawful U.S. resident, without charge, in an American prison. In an amicus