All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

Nothing gives a presidential speech an air of prestige and majesty more than an address to a joint session of Congress.

That's why President Obama asked to be invited to that venue for his health care speech this evening.

A CBS News tally shows that since taking office, Mr. Obama has given 28 speeches specifically about his health care proposals. And the issue was part of over 90 other addresses and remarks he delivered.

He mentioned it in his first and only other address to Congress on February 24th. He said excessive health care costs cause a bankruptcy every 30 seconds in America. He said 1.5 million could lose their homes this year because of health care costs. And he said 1 million Americans a year are losing their health care coverage.

"Given these facts," said Obama, "we can no longer afford to put health care reform on hold. We can't afford to do it. It's time."

Read full post…

Updated 4:22 p.m. ET

President Obama plans to address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, Sept. 9th, a senior official tells CBS News.

The time for Mr. Obama's speech, which is to focus on health care reform, is not known. The White House has not yet made a formal announcement about the address, though a confirmation is expected shortly.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter formally inviting the president to give the address Wednesday afternoon.

This will be the president's second address to Congress. His first came on the evening of Feb 24th, 2009, when he gave a speech on the economy.

That speech ran nearly 52 minutes, reports CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller.

The president has been criticized for being insufficiently specific about what he wants health care reform to look like. Though has offered details about the provisions he is seeking in a series of speeches in recent months, Mr. Obama has left it to Congress to work out the legislative language. A CBS News poll this week showed disenchantment with the president's handling of the issue.

Yesterday, senior advisor David Axelrod said the president may become "more prescriptive" about what he wants from a health care bill, which the White House has asked Congress to produce by September 15th.

The White House has been "taken aback by the ferocity of opposition to its health care plan as expressed to members of Congress of both parties during their town meetings last month with constituents," Knoller reports.

Read full post…

Updated at 4:25 p.m. ET with information about Sen. Chuck Grassley.

The top Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Chuck Grassley of Iowa, announced today that they will not support Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court.

Sessions, the ranking member of the committee, explained his decision in a column published today in USA Today.

"I don't believe that Judge Sotomayor has the deep-rooted convictions necessary to resist the siren call of judicial activism," he wrote. "She has evoked its mantra too often."

Grassley, no. two Republican on the committee, also said he remained unconvinced Sotomayor could set aside personal biases and prejudices to decide cases impartially, the Associated Press reports.

With some Republicans already supporting Sotomayor's nomination, Sessions acknowledged in his column that the Senate will likely confirm her as the first Latina to the high court. The judiciary committee will vote on her nomination tomorrow, while the full Senate should vote on President Obama's first Supreme Court by the end of next week.

Sessions states in his column that during her confirmation hearings, Sotomayor "brushed aside her repeated 'wise Latina' comment as 'a rhetorical flourish,' and championed judicial restraint." However, he said, her repudiation of judicial activism came across as disingenuous.

He pointed to three rulings from her record as a judge to make his point: the 2008 Ricci case involving the New Haven firefighteres denied a promotion because of race, a 2006 private property decision and a 2009 Second Amendment decision.

"Each was contrary to the Constitution," Sessions wrote. "Each was decided in a brief opinion, short on analysis. And each was consistent with liberal political thought."

If appointed to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor's "liberal activist" judicial philosophy will flourish, according to the Senate's ranking Republican on the Judicial Committee.

Just hours before confirmation hearings commence, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions reiterated his wariness of the judge on CBS' "The Early Show," referring to speeches Sotomayor has made in the past.

Read full post…

Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama said today that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's judicial philosophy, as articulated in her speeches, marks "a blow, I think, at the very ideal of American justice."

"In a number of her speeches, for example, she has advocated a view that suggests that your personal experiences, even prejudices — she uses that word — it's expected that they would influence a decision you make," he told "Face The Nation" host Bob Schieffer.

Sessions is the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sotomayor's confirmation hearings begin Monday.

"Every judge must be committed every day to not let their personal politics, their ethnic background, their biases, sympathies, influence the nature of their decision-making process," Sessions said. "When you show empathy for one party, Bob, you necessarily show a bias against another group."

Read full post…

Vermont Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy told CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent Bob Schieffer Sunday that nobody in America, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, is "above the law."

Leahy was responding to a report in the New York Times that Cheney ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to withhold information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress.

"If, as the New York Times says, we have the vice president of the United States telling people to break the law, now that's a pretty serious matter," Leahy said on CBS' "Face The Nation." "Either he did, or he didn't. If he did, that's something we ought to know."

He said finding out what happened is important because "usually if something is done wrong by one [administration] and it's exposed, the next one tends to behave themselves."

Read full post…

Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions said Sunday that he believes it is not necessary to appoint a special criminal prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's interrogation policies.

Though President Obama has spoken against such an investigation, Attorney General Eric Holder is reportedly seriously considering making the appointment.

"We've had probably in my committees, Judiciary and Armed Services, thirty or more hearings on this," Sessions told CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent Bob Schieffer on "Face the Nation". "The Intelligence Committee has had great numbers of hearings and written reports on it. The military has done a series of independent reports. And I believe that that's sufficient. I don't believe a special commission is necessary.

"We were facing some real challenges, and our people tried to do the best they could," explained Sessions. "And I don't think I see the evidence yet to justify any prosecutions."

Vermont's Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy told Schieffer that while he prefers a commission of inquiry, he is "not going to interfere with a special prosecutor."

Read full post…

Six Republican senators say Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor submitted insufficient information to the Senate last week.

Ranking Senate Judiciary Committee member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and five others sent a letter, obtained by CBS News, to Sotomayor on Wednesday asking for more evidence of her history as a judge.

"It is important that your information be complete to permit the Committee to properly evaluate your record in the short time has been provided," the letter said. (You can read the full letter here.)

Republicans have expressed their anger over the timeline Democrats have set for Sotomayor's confirmation hearings, which they slated to start on July 13.

Sotomayor last week submitted to the Senate a 172-page questionnaire and multiple boxes of supplemental material. Some requested information has yet to be handed over, however.

Read full post…

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor will meet with senators on Capitol Hill Tuesday, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said at his briefing today.

Gibbs said Sotomayor had meetings planned with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy, and Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

He also said there were efforts to set up a meeting with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and that "other visits can be scheduled for that Tuesday and throughout the remainder of the week."

CBS News Capitol Hill producer Jill Jackson reports that the meeting with Reid is presently scheduled for around 10:15 a.m. ET.

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama), the newly-appointed ranking member of the Senate Judiciary committee, will be the Republican point man in the debate around President Obama's pick to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. On CBSNews.com's “Washington Unplugged,” Sessions told Bob Schieffer that the task carries "awesome responsibility."

"This post has happened to me quickly and I do think it is a very awesome responsibility [President Obama] has and we in the Senate have to do this thing right," Sessions said. He added that he does not have a personal favorite among the prospective candidates.

Sessions stressed that an appointment to the Supreme Court can last a lifetime. “Once this confirmation occurs, then they are no longer accountable to the American people really," he said.

Schieffer asked the Republican if he was bothered by President Obama's use of the word "empathy" in describing his ideal candidate. Critics have argued that by saying he wants someone with empathy the president is implying that his nominee will push an agenda.

Sessions said Obama's word choice was "troubling,” adding: “What does empathy mean? You like one party or another party that is appearing before you and you are going to doctor your opinion to favor the one that you like?"

He added that he is not sure if the president's word choice is being misconstrued.

Watch the interview here:

Read full post…