Senate

Yesterday morning, when musing on the day's key event namely Yellen's congressional testimony, we dismissed the most recent bout of European bank euphoria which we said "will be brief if not validated by concrete actions, because while central banks have the luxury of jawboning, commercial banks are actually burning through funds - rapidly at that - and don't have the luxury of hoping for the best while doing nothing." This morning DB has wiped out all of yesterday's gain.

Santorum’s stint as a Rubio surrogate got off to a shaky start this morning. When pressed to name Rubio’s top accomplishment in the Senate, he couldn’t come up with one:

The former Pennsylvania senator, who dropped his presidential bid Wednesday, told co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski he was supporting Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign because the Florida senator is someone “who can work together with people.” But Santorum struggled to name one accomplishment Rubio has had in the Senate.

by Ron Paul

While the Washington snowstorm dominated news coverage this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was operating behind the scenes to rush through the Senate what may be the most massive transfer of power from the Legislative to the Executive branch in our history. The senior Senator from Kentucky is scheming, along with Sen. Lindsey Graham, to bypass normal Senate procedure to fast-track legislation to grant the president the authority to wage unlimited war for as long as he or his successors may wish.

Over the past week, Poland's relations with Europe have gone from cordial to abysmal, when first Poland's new Eurosceptic government compared the EU and Merkel to Nazis, with Polish weekly Wprost releasing the following cover saying "they want to supervise Poland again"...

... only for Brussels to retaliate and launch an "unprecedented" review of Polish media laws, a move which Poland angrily responded is far beyond the EU's domain.

Since July the Israel Lobby and other opponents of the understanding reached by the White House and other parties to limit the Iranian nuclear program have been warning that any celebration would be premature, as the agreement is far from a done deal. President Obama survived initial attempts to create legislative hurdles hindering implementation of the pact, but there are clear signals that the battle is far from over.