Top members of the Appropriations Committee might, for instance, grant a lawmaker’s request for a few million dollars for an important project back home. That lawmaker would then be obligated to support the entire multibillion-dollar bill despite possible reservations. Woe to the person who gets an earmark and then opposes the bill; chances for a future earmark would be somewhere between zero and none.

Note that there doesn’t seem to be any formal law here, just a cultural norm. With earmarks on the way out, one wonders how — if at all — the amendment process will change.

Take John Ashcroft. When he was nominated for Attorney General back in 2001, the big concern was that he was a hard-right anti-choice guy. But no one remembers Ashcroft’s tenure at the DOJ for his take on abortion. Instead, questions of detainee rights and the limits executive power dominated his term. And to complicate matters further, while Ascroft seemed to be a hard-core Bushie on those issues as well, we learned after he resigned that he actually took a respectable stand against Bush’s efforts to shred the constitution on at least one occasion (the infamous hospital room incident).

Paul O’Neill, Bush’s first Treasury Secretary, was a similar case. His moderate views on tax policy ended up with him getting shown the door because of his disagreements with White House staff.

Point being, a lot of things can happen in a given realm of public policy that’s far outside the domain of the relevant Cabinet Secretary. World events and White House priorities being among them. Why, for example, did Tom Daschle accept the role of HHS Secretary only under the condition that he would also serve as white house advisor on health care? Because he knew that the Oval Office is where the action is.

That’s not to say that cabinet secretaries are irrelevant. They run massive federal agencies, hire dozens of like-minded deputies to serve under them and carry out policy, etc., etc. But you can’t extrapolate from a single nominee’s record in congress to the kind of policies they’ll carry out as head of an agency. It’s not a straight line at all.

I’m still a bit disappointed that the Labor Secretary wasn’t rolled out with the rest of the “economic policy team” a few weeks ago, but maybe she hadn’t accepted yet. Anyway, the symbol of nominating a latina Congresswoman from East L.A. (as opposed to, say, a white dude from Michigan or Ohio) gives a sense of how much the face of organized labor has changed over the years.

At which point, Mrs. Clinton returned to her Senate office to find that her staff had set up a Ping-Pong table while she was gone.

Via Ezra Klein, here’s what Obama himself is saying about his first 100 days:

After sitting down with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to figure out a strategy in Iraq, “[G]et our health care plan moving. We need a bill…by March or April to get going before the political season sets in.”

So that’s one and two. The carbon emissions legislation can probably wait, since the environment has grown considerably more popular, pressing, and mainstream as an issue in the last few years. In fact, energy reform could even be an issue to run on in the 2010 midterms rather than run away from.

Can I just say this would be a bad idea? And not only because you’d have Hillary’s negatives dragging down the ticket. Obama would be a fool to allow Hillaryland and the Clintonistas to set up shop in the Naval Observatory. Think Cheney but without the loyalty to Bush. Having Howard Wolfson and Harold Ickes (not to mention Bubba himself) running around the hill scheming and undermining your agenda and not having any desire to be managed or told what to do sounds like a total mess.

Update: What Josh Marshall said, too.

To recap, the bill was:

named for an Alabama woman who lost a case against the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company when the court found she not did file her complaint in time. Ms. Ledbetter had been paid as much as 40 percent less than her male counterparts doing the same job, according to her allies.

It was intended to remedy a 5-4 Supreme Court decision that threw out her case because the statute of limitations had run out (she didn’t realize how much less she was getting paid until it was too late).

So the bill passes the House, and goes to the Senate, where 60 votes are needed to cut off debate, as we all know. The cloture vote is 56-42, with weak-kneed “principled, mavericky” Republicans Hagel and McCain conveniently skipping the vote.

But just for a moment, let’s take a look at the 56 Senators who voted “yea.” They collectively represent 181 million Americans, or just over 60% of the country (assume that in D/R divided states each Senator represents half the population).

So, to recap: it passes the democratic (small-d) House, it gets the support of 60% of America from Senators representing 34 of the 50 states, and yet the bill fails. Staggering. And don’t forget the fact that the public, bless their hearts, put Democrats back in charge of the country in 2006 because they wanted more of the things that Democrats wanted.

To be sure, it would have been vetoed by the President. And also to be sure, had the filibuster not been in place the last five years, we’d be drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge right now. Still, on balance the filibuster is a small-c conservative instrument. It’s designed to keep America from doing stuff. And that means that in the long run, it will tend to be a large-C Conservative instrument. Time to abolish it.

And, of course, who could possibly be more objective then a guy who was a random three-star general just 4 years ago? It’s not like Petraeus owes his whole career to Bush or anything…

Finally, one last bit of snark here: this nomination is classic Bush: look around the room and point to the first person you see. Need a Supreme Court Justice? Just walk into the hallway outside the Oval Office and point to the first lawyer you spot… Harriet Meyers, of course! No? Okay, how about Al Gonzales?

The client list included Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana; Randall L. Tobias, who stepped down as deputy secretary of state after his links to the ring were exposed; and Harlan K. Ullman, the military affairs scholar who created the Pentagon’s concept known as “shock and awe.”

Emphasis added.

By now, many Americans have heard the presidential candidates talk about issues close to the heart of rural America. They fell all over themselves to praise ethanol in Iowa and condemn nuclear storage in Nevada. But as important as rural problems are, they’re not nearly as big as the task of helping the nation’s struggling cities — where most Americans live or work. The cities have been the hardest hit as federal policies have failed or gone missing in education, housing, health care, jobs, transportation and environment, to name a few. Yet urban issues have gotten scant attention in this campaign.

Via Dana Goldstein, who provides me the opportunity to bring up my favorite Chris Matthews quote of all time:

I’m so sick of Southern guys with ranches running this country. I want a guy to run for President who doesn’t have a f**king — I’m sorry, a ranch.

Indeed.

But if Obama is going to be the transformational, Reagan-style pol he presents himself as, he’s going to have to grow comfortable speaking positively of the role of government, and selling some of his initiatives as good ideas worth paying for. It’s worth it to have effective responses to natural disasters, worth it to have a modern national infrastructure, worth it to have national health care, worth it to have more than one safety inspector examining Chinese goods, worth it to invest in medical and scientific research, worth it to enact universal pre-kindergarten. Indeed, many of these priorities are not only worth the cost, but they’re actually good investments. They’re a damn good deal. And Democrats need to grow comfortable making that case. The Republicans have succeeded in moving the tax debate onto grounds of “who pays,” and “how much.” Democrats need to remember to ask, “what for,” and “what if we don’t?”

Succession is less clear at the copyright subcommittee as the next in line there is Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va. Boucher is a long-term advocate of expanding the ability of people to use copyrighted material for free. Although Boucher is an industry opponent, he also chairs the House Commerce Committee’s energy subcommittee — an important panel in his coal-rich district. [emph. added]

Apparently it’s okay to be an industry stooge if the industry is Hollywood, but not Big Coal. Later in the piece, the Reporter notes that Boucher kills puppies for sport.

(via)

With all the economic turmoil today, it’s pretty clear what he’s going to talk about, but the real question is just how little coverage it will get with the Democratic primary in South Carolina just 48 hours earlier.

Sopranos fans will immediately recognize the scenario from Season 1, where Tony puts Junior at the top of the org chart, but continues to call the shots from behind the scenes. He’s following the advice of Dr. Melfi, who tells him, with respect to the old people in his life, “you know that sometimes it’s important to let them have the illusion of being in control.”

Murray vehemently denies the allegations, natch.