The US House of Representatives has approved a $15 billion jobs bill that intends to spur job creation by granting payroll tax breaks to businesses that hire new workers. The House vote was 217 to 201 with 35 Democrats voting against the measure. Six Republicans voted for the jobs bill. Among the Republicans who crossed over and voted for the bill were Don Young of Alaska, Anh Cao of Louisiana Vernon Ehlers of Michigan and Dave Camp of Michigan.

A number of progressive Democrats did not vote for the bill. This group included Maxine Waters (CA-35), Jared Polis (CO-02), Raúl Grijalva (AZ-07), Sheila Jackson-Lee (TX-18) and Barbara Lee (CA-09). Congressman Grijalva, one of the leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, had dismissed the tax-credit focused bill as not “dealing with job creation.”

Other opposition to the bill came from the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). Congressmen Bobby Rush (IL-01), Marcia Fudge (OH-11) Jesse Jackson Jr. (IL-02), Hank Johnson (GA-04) were among those who voted against the bill. On the other hand, Congressman Gregory Meeks (NY-06), one of the leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus, did vote for the bill. The CBC’s position during the month long debate on the $15 billion jobs tax credit package was fairly straightforward — CBC members don’t want to back a bill that was composed of tax breaks for business which they don’t believe will necessarily create jobs when other job-creating programs the CBC supports, such a summer youth jobs program, face an uncertain future in the Senate.

The Democratic leadership in the House, meanwhile, emphasized that this bill is just "one part" of the overall approach to job creation and that there would be additional legislation aimed at tackling the nation's highest levels of unemployment since the Great Depression in the months ahead. More on the jobs bill at the New York Times.

Meet Kesha Rogers, the winner in Tuesday's Democratic primary in the Texas Twenty-Second Congressional District that covers much of the south-central portion of the Houston MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area) and includes the upscale suburbs of Sugar Land and Pearland as well as areas of the more downtrodden of both Fort Bend and Galveston counties.

Her platform includes high speed rail, nuclear power, desalination plants, food security, pulling troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan so as to put them into space while leading a war against the British Empire. And oh yes, she wants to impeach the President. She's a Lyndon LaRouche "Democrat" and the upsetting upset winner of the Democratic primary over Doug Blatt, an Army veteran and independent businessman.

From her website:

The victory in the 22nd Congressional District yesterday by LaRouche Democrat Kesha Rogers sent an unmistakable message to the White House, and its British imperial controllers: Your days are numbered. Kesha's campaign hit relentlessly at a single theme, that President Obama must go, that his attacks on this nation – with his dismantling of the manned space program, his efforts to ram through a fascist, killer “health care” policy, his endless bailouts for Wall Street swindlers, while demanding budget cuts which will increase the death rates among the poor, the sick, the elderly and the unemployed – are not acceptable, and will not be tolerated.

Skeptics said that LaRouche's approach is impractical, it won't work, that Democrats will never support someone who is calling for the President's impeachment. Obviously, the voters of the 22nd district disagreed with those skeptics, as Kesha received 53% of the vote against two opponents. As Kesha told the Galveston Daily News last night, when a reporter asked if she expected support from the Democratic Party in the fall election, “I am leading a war against the British Empire. I'm not worried about what Democratic Party hacks say or do.”

The results are a complete and utter embarrassment.

The Texas Twenty-Second Congressional District is Tom Delay's old seat and though Democrat Nick Lampson won the seat in 2006 in the wake of the scandal that forced the number two Republican in House to resign, the GOP won back the seat in 2008 with Pete Olson comfortably ousting Nick Lampson by a seven point margin.

Here's a video made for the primary:

In the nation's two most populous states, three new reports point to a continuing weakness in the labor market. In the Lone Star State, The Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) is expected to release its monthly jobs report for January that will revise upwards the jobs losses. Indeed, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas recently released its own benchmark report which found that Texas had lost a total of 329,000 payroll jobs in 2009 or 53,000 more than 276,000 reported by the Commerce Department.

Much of the weakness in the Texas job picture is in the Dallas MSA, the state's second largest. The Dallas area lost nearly 83,000 jobs between December 2008 and December 2009, according to the Dallas Fed. That's nearly double the 42,000 or so local job losses the TWC estimated in January for the same period.

Overall, the Texas job market is performing better than the national one. Still, the state's unemployment rate rose to 8.3 percent in December, up from 8 percent in November.

In nation's most populous state, the situation is even bleaker. The San Jose Mercury News reports that the California lost far more jobs last year than the state initially reported. According to an estimate from the state Employment Development Department, California employers shed 871,000 jobs in 2009. If that estimate holds up when final revisions are released this month, California's job losses would be far more grim than first believed. The agency reported as recently as Jan. 22 that California employers chopped 579,000 jobs from payrolls in 2009. In short, California lost 292,000 more jobs than first reported.

California's unemployment rate stood at 10.1 percent in January 2009 but climbed to over 12.1 percent over the course of the year. The latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the unemployment rate in the Golden State at 12.4 percent.

A month ago I asked how it was possible for the Cook Political Report to rate the Connecticut Senate race only "leans Democratic" when the likely Democratic nominee, Richard Blumenthal, lead all of his potential Republican opponents by margins of 19 percentage points or more. A month later, more polling from the clearly not Democratic-leaning Rasmussen Reports shows Blumenthal's already large lead growing.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in the state shows Blumenthal leading former Congressman Rob Simmons 58% to 32%. Blumenthal held a 19-point lead in this match-up last month and a 23-point lead in early January just after Dodd announced his decision not to run again.

These numbers aren't particularly surprising considering that 72 percent favorable rating now enjoyed in Connecticut by Blumenthal -- including a remarkable 41 percent strong favorable rating.

Looking back towards the topline numbers, according to the Pollster.com trend estimate, Blumenthal's lead over former GOP Congressman Rob Simmons exceeds 23 percentage points. Yet this race is still deemed by the Cook Political Report to only "lean" towards the Democrats -- a categorization that indicates a belief that the race is currently competitive. I don't see it. Perhaps I'm missing something?

Republicans got to work early in 2009 to recruit Springfield, Oregon mayor Sid Leiken to challenge incumbent Democratic Congressman Peter DeFazio, who represents a swing district that split its 2004 presidential vote equally between George W. Bush and John Kerry (though backed Barack Obama in 2008 fairly handily in 2008). At the time, Leiken was promoted as one of the top recruits of the National Republican Congressional Committee. But now comes news, via Blue Oregon, that Leiken is dropping his congressional bid.

Initially lauded by Republicans nationally as their best hope to win a House seat long held by Democrats, Leiken faced an uphill battle against DeFazio, a 24-year incumbent. Leiken did poorly in campaign fundraising; as of the most recent filings, DeFazio had at his disposal more than 100 times Leiken’s campaign cash.

Plus, observers said Leiken’s violation of Oregon campaign laws last year could have hurt him. Leiken paid a $2,250 fine for unlawfully converting $2,000 of his mayoral campaign money to personal use.

If this were a Democrat dropping his bid against a Republican in a swing district, you know that this news would be all over the Beltway press as further proof that the Democrats' are sinking in the race to control the House in November. Of course this is a Republican dropping his bid against a Democrat in a swing district, so this news is absent from the home pages of Politico.com, TheHill.com, and CQPolitics.com.

The Chairman of the powerful House Ways & Means Committee resigned his post today.

Oh, what's that? You say I must mean yesterday? Well, yes, the chairman did resign his post yesterday. But it happened again today. Two chairs in two days - and given who those two chairs were, that's not necessarily a bad thing. From The Hill:

Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) will be the acting chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced to her caucus on Thursday.

The startling announcement comes a day after Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) appeared ready to take the reins of the committee from Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.).

Stark was the next in line for the post in terms of seniority, but some panel members recoiled at the idea of his leading the committee. Stark is known for making controversial and eccentric remarks, and in 2007 he apologized on the House floor for comments about President George W. Bush and the Iraq War...

The shuffling of chairmen is sure to raise questions about how Pelosi handled the issue.

Yesterday I wrote that Stark was a lousy choice but that nonetheless, "anyone’s got to be better than Rangel, even if not by much." Still, better than Rangel or not, Stark does have major issues: he's attacked his "Jew" colleagues, claimed that a black Bush 1 administration was a "disgrace to his race" (Stark himself is white), and more. Levin will be a much better chair. His past does not include such scandals, and the National Journal ranks him as the 94th most progressive House member, compared to Stark's 140th.

It would have been better for us if Levin took over right away rather than going through Stark first, but either way, this does show that our caucus is dealing with its scandals and corruptions in a better way than the 2005-6 Republicans ever did, and that we're doing it well before the election or even Labor Day.

The bigger question is what this means for Nancy Pelosi's leadership. Her entire handling of the Rangel, and now general Ways & Means, scandal is her biggest political misstep since her extremely aggressive backing of Jack Murtha for House Majority Leader over Steny Hoyer. Political missteps won't hurt her much outside the Beltway, but they will strike a blow at her credibility within. Whether or not ramming the Senate health care bill through the House helps her image as someone who gets things done or takes her down a peg with bitter progressives remains to be seen. My own take is that she's Nancy Pelosi - she'll bounce back from anything, it's what she does - but this will make for an unpleasant few weeks.

I'll also be interested to see what effect having a Michigan Congressman in charge of the House's finance panel will have on future auto industry discussions. (And yes, he is related to Carl; they're brothers.)

I wrote this on Tuesday but am bumping it for the last day of the call-in. Also check out this diary from Heather Taylor-Miesle on a related topic. -Nathan

From a networking standpoint, it’s pretty impressive. From a policy standpoint, it’s pretty important.

Starting today and running through Thursday, virtually every major environmental group is promoting a 72-hour push to have people call their Senators in support of clean energy legislation. Clean Energy Works, Repower America, the Sierra Club, Earthjustice, the NRDC, the League of Conservation Voters, the World Wildlife Federation, faith groups like Earth Ministry and Interfaith Power & Light, and many more are all working together to coordinate this important push.

No issue connects the dots like the need for clean energy. Coal-fired power plants kill over 24,000 Americans each year while the mining destroys drinking water and impoverished towns in Appalachia. Oil causes wars and imperils our national security. The construction of wind turbines and solar panels would bring hundreds of thousands of jobs to America. Jobs, health, national security, economic justice, environmentalism – it’s all here.

So please, help us put some pressure on the U.S. Senate. This is an issue where, thanks to folks like Lindsey Graham, there’s still room for bipartisanship and thus a more appealing path to 60 votes. Let’s bring this home this year. Make a simple call.

From Clean Energy Works:

There's more...

Just a few weeks ago, Charlie Cook said that it's "very hard to come up with a scenario where Democrats don't lose the House." The quote may seem familiar; I have referenced it a couple times in recent days.

If Cook is still looking for such a scenario, the respected pollster Ipsos, surveying the country for McClatchy newspapers, has provided it:

Looking ahead to November's elections, 50 percent said they'd vote for Democratic candidates if the election were today, while 40 percent said they'd vote for Republicans.

The Democrats' 10-point generic ballot lead in the Ipsos-McClatchy poll represents a net improvement of 3 percentage points since early November, a move within the survey's margin of error.

It is worth noting that these numbers do not look like the latest trend estimate from Pollster.com, which actually gives the GOP a narrow 43.0 percent to 42.4 percent lead in a nationwide race for Congress. However, that narrow Republican advantage is the result of the plethora of data from a single pollster: Rasmussen Reports. When these surveys are excluded, the numbers shift more than 6 points towards the Democrats, with a Democratic edge of 47.1 percent to 41.5 percent.

So there definitely is a universe in which it is "very hard to come up with a scenario where Democrats don't lose the House": that of Rasmussen polling. And that may be the reality on the ground come November. But in the reality represented by the composite of all other polling, including this latest Ipsos survey, the Democrats' goose is not nearly cooked.

Over at Think Progress, Matt Yglesias points to this article on the website World Net Daily, home to the über-insane, hyper-paranoid, unabashedly vitriolic, openly hateful right-wing fringe, in which former the anti-immigrant Colorado Congressman Tommy Tancredo notes that he is open to mounting an independent run for the White House in 2012.

Former Colorado congressman and Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo told WND today that if no one to his liking emerges in the 2012 run for the White House, he will consider another bid for the GOP nomination and would not rule out becoming a third-party candidate, as a "last option."

Tancredo, known for his strong stance against illegal immigration, spoke to WND after a Dutch newspaper published an interview article in which he said he didn't view the GOP's 2008 vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, as "presidential."

Tancredo told WND that if Republicans "end up repeating the mistakes of the past" he would run again.

"I am convinced that we've got one more shot at this before the Republican Party comes apart at the seams, if they really don't get it right," he said.

'I'm willing to be sort of a team player, although I certainly have no strong philosophical commitment to the Republican Party," he added. "It's just a mechanism … not a thing with which you can have some great affinity."

"Last Option" sounds about right. I'm guessing that is Tancredo's goal is to revive the Know-Nothing party of the 1850s. Matt Yglesias finds the possibility of a Tancredo run on a third party ticket plausible and while I don't disagree that such lunacy is indeed plausible, a Tancredo run isn't likely to win 2 percent of the vote nationally. Nativist movements in the United States are nothing new but when they have arisen in the 1850s, 1880s and 1920s, they have always met with electoral failure.

Such a run is even more quixotic than any of Ralph Nader's runs and while I never discount the insanity of Tommy Tancredo it is also fair to point out that he is an offensive joke of a man. Ultimately Tancredo is a single-issue candidate on an issue that is frankly a third tier issue at the moment.

Whatever the faults of the United States and the American people, I've lived in this country long enough to realize that the overwhelmingly number of Americans are not a hateful people by nature and while Tancredo is consumed by irrational fears and hatred, his fellow citizens are not. Tancredo is doomed to failure of unprecedented proportions because we are better country than he thinks we are.

One of the lingering questions I have had since the NAMUDNO decision was handed down over the summer is just how the self-professed "originalists" on the Court could square their skeptical views on the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act with the very plain intention of the framers of the 15th Amendment that Congress, rather than the Court, should have the power to enforce Americans' right to vote. When the amendment was drafted in the years following the Civil War, the context was clear: the Supreme Court, whose disastrous Dred Scott decision not only was one of the impetuses for the war but also served to enshrine the institution of slavery, was not to be trusted; instead, faith would be placed in the Congress, which was then firmly under the control of the progressive (particularly on racial issues, but also on many economic ones as well) Radical Republicans. With that original intent fairly clear, how could an "originalist" sitting in a Court more than a century later, rule to limit Congress' power in this area?

It looks like I'm not the only one wondering whether the fealty shown by these so-called "originalists" to the original intent behind the Constitution is genuine or rather a rhetorical device to be thrown out when inconvenient. Here's the not-so-liberal Wall Street Journal's Law Blog:

In Wednesday’s WSJ, however, Georgetown Law Professor Randy Barnett takes serious issue with the court’s hesitation [to use the "Privileges or Immunities" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as the basis for finding that the Second Amendment applies to the states] — specifically at those justices, like Justice Scalia, who claim to be “originalists,” or guided by the Constitution’s “original” meaning. Barnett writes that a glance at the original meanings behind the PorI Clause and the Due Process clause lead to one conclusion: that PorI is the proper vehicle for Second Amendment incorporation.

But what about the clause protecting the “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States”? . . . Actually, the right to keep and bear arms was among the most frequently mentioned privilege of citizens when the amendment was being considered in Congress.

The evidence is clear that the privileges or immunities of citizens included those rights in the Bill of Rights. As Michigan’s Sen. Jacob Howard explained to the Senate, these privileges or immunities included, among others, “the personal rights guarantied and secured by the first eight amendments of the Constitution; such as . . . the right to keep and to bear arms.”

In contrast, no one thought the language of the Due Process Clause included a right to arms. On this point there is consensus among constitutional scholars whether left, right or libertarian.

According to SCOTUSblog, Justice Antonin Scalia, who fancies himself to be an "originalist," had the following to say about the invocation of the "Privileges or Immunities" clause:

“Why,” Scalia asked Gura, “are you asking us to overrule 140 years of prior law….unless you are bucking for a place on some law school faculty.” The Justice said the “privileges or immunities” argument was “the darling of the professorate”...

I'd recommend you read the whole WSJ post, because it's interesting and gets to the heart of this very key question: Just how much do the "originalists" actually care about original intent?