Harry Reid

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid shocked and infuriated many of his fellow Democrats on Thursday when he backed away from his pledge to put an end to the curse of the filibuster. Minority Republicans have been flagrantly using the old filibuster ploy to block even the most mundane bills unless they can win votes from at least 60 of 100 senators. This has effectively stunted the Democrats' 53-seat majority and stifled initiatives from the Obama White House.  In times past, the filibuster was a rarely invoked parliamentary rule that allowed a single senator to halt legislative business if he was willing to stay on the Senate floor and talk for hour after hour, risking a raw throat, sleep deprivation and a distended bladder.

The most important person in the U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations right now may be Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader from Searchlight, Nev. Two weeks ago, President Obama's nuclear diplomacy was in trouble, but not because of anything Iran was doing. The problems were domestic. A Senate bill proposing new economic sanctions against Tehran had swiftly gathered 59 supporters, a solid majority and only one vote short of the number needed to prevent a filibuster. The bill's backers, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful pro-Israel lobbying organization, were pressing for a quick vote in the Senate.

He did it. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , once a defender of Senate tradition, triggered the so-called nuclear option Thursday by pushing through a rule change to allow the confirmation of most presidential nominees by a simple majority. The final straw was the Republicans' filibustering of three of President Obama's nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, on the transparent pretext that the court was underworked and should have fewer members.

WASHINGTON --Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was taken to the hospital early Friday morning after not feeling well, and remained for observation, his spokesman said. Reid, the Nevada Democrat who turned 74 this month, led the chamber Thursday night through its second midnight session in recent days amid steep partisanship. He is not expected to be at work Friday, as the Senate wraps up its final workday of the year. Reid decided to go to the hospital "as a precaution," said the senator's spokesman Adam Jentleson.

The wife of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been diagnosed with Stage II breast cancer and is undergoing  treatment, including chemotherapy, in Washington, D.C., the senator's office confirmed Friday.    Landra Reid, 71, and the senator are high school sweethearts, and have been married for 52 years. The senator is expected to continue his work as majority leader. "Senator and Mrs. Reid appreciate the thoughts and concerns expressed during this time,” said a statement from Reid's office.

WASHINGTON -- A former amateur boxer, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had a few thoughts on the disputed outcome of the Manny Pacquiao-Timothy Bradley fight in Las Vegas. Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was a boxing judge himself in his earlier days -- "an inexact science," he called it Tuesday -- welcomed an investigation into Saturday's bout at the MGM Grand. Fans have protested the judges' split decision that made Bradley the winner, and there have been calls for the Nevada attorney general to investigate.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has a response to Mitt Romney's claim that he will “reach across the aisle” to work with Democrats in Congress, if he becomes president: Don't bet on it. “Mitt Romney's fantasy that Senate Democrats will work with him to pass his 'severely conservative' agenda is laughable,” the Nevada Democrat said in a statement Friday morning. He went on to list a series of Republican-backed measures he said Democrats would never support.

Add Sen. Harry Reid to the list of prominent Democrats who aren’t rushing to Rep. Anthony Weiner’s side. Asked at his weekly news conference about the Twitter-tarred congressman, Reid replied, “I know Congressman Weiner. I wish there was some way I can defend him, but I can't. The Senate majority leader, a Democrat from Nevada, demurred when asked if the New Yorker should resign, saying, “I'm not here to defend Weiner.” Reid was asked what advice he would give Weiner.

NORTH LAS VEGAS - The issue of how much Mitt Romney has paid in taxes in recent years continued to hound the presumptive Republican presidential nominee on Friday, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid continuing to push anonymous claims that Romney paid no taxes for years. “The other day, I said that I'd been told by a very credible source that Mitt Romney hadn't paid taxes for 10 years. Gov. Romney got upset. But, you know what? I'm not backing down,” Reid wrote in an email to supporters.

By some measures, it might appear Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) really stepped in it when he claimed he had a source who invested in Bain Capital who told him that Mitt Romney hadn't paid taxes in 10 years. Not only would Reid not name his source, but experts told a couple of news outlets it was  almost impossible that the Republican presidential candidate had paid no taxes. Salon.com talked to tax attorneys and found the claim that Romney paid zero over a decade “nothing short of ludicrous.” Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a fellow member of the U.S. Senate, took the Reid's credibility more deeply into question.

Events Thursday brought more evidence of why much of the 2014 campaign will feature candidates fleeing, figuratively or literally, from Washington. In the Senate, supposedly the more collegial of the two houses of Congress, bitterness seethed beneath the veneer of civility as majority Democrats and minority Republicans fought over a filibuster rule that has, depending on the viewpoint, given voice to the outnumbered or contributed mightily to paralysis on things like presidential appointments.

He did it. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , once a defender of Senate tradition, triggered the so-called nuclear option Thursday by pushing through a rule change to allow the confirmation of most presidential nominees by a simple majority. The final straw was the Republicans' filibustering of three of President Obama's nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, on the transparent pretext that the court was underworked and should have fewer members.

WASHINGTON - Efforts to reopen the government and avert a default on the nation's debt rested in the hands of the Senate's top leaders after talks between House Republicans and the White House broke down Saturday. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) sat down to negotiate for the first time since the 12-day-old government shutdown began, but there were no indications they had made significant progress. Still, Senate leaders made plans for a rare Sunday session in case they reach a deal, while the House adjourned for the weekend after a brief and at times chaotic session.

Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) find themselves in the curious position this week of encouraging their GOP colleagues to filibuster the stopgap government funding (and Obamacare defunding) resolution that they urged the House to pass. Cruz and Lee are the leaders of a tea party-powered movement to bar funding in the coming fiscal year for the 2010 healthcare law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. They prevailed in the House, where Republicans hold a solid majority, but face extremely long odds in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Last month, the Senate moved back from the brink of the “nuclear option,” a parliamentary maneuver that would have allowed Democrats to confirm President Obama's executive branch nominees without amassing the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid relented after Republicans agreed to allow votes on several Obama appointees. But now, Republicans are threatening to obstruct Obama's nominees to an important appeals court. If they persist in their obstructionism, Reid should open the briefcase with the launch codes.

WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid asserted his determination to end the use of the filibuster to block presidential appointments Monday, saying the change was needed to “save the Senate from becoming obsolete.” “This is really a moment in history when circumstances dictate the need for change,” the Nevada Democrat said in a morning speech at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. “All we want to do is what the Constitution says we should do. Filibusters are not part of the Constitution.” Reid's remarks represented a further escalation in his rhetoric in the dispute with the Senate's Republican minority over procedural maneuvers that have left a number of President Obama's choices to executive branch postings unconfirmed nearly a half year into his second term.

Who says congressional Democrats aren't trying to cut spending? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) seems determined to chop discretionary budgets by more than $100 billion this year, regardless of what economists (and the unemployment rate) may suggest about the fragility of the recovery. Granted, it's not that Reid is calling for the cuts to go into effect on March 1, as currently scheduled. In fact, he says the opposite. But the alternatives that Reid and House Democrats are floating are such political nonstarters, it's hard to imagine anything else happening.

The most important person in the U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations right now may be Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader from Searchlight, Nev. Two weeks ago, President Obama's nuclear diplomacy was in trouble, but not because of anything Iran was doing. The problems were domestic. A Senate bill proposing new economic sanctions against Tehran had swiftly gathered 59 supporters, a solid majority and only one vote short of the number needed to prevent a filibuster. The bill's backers, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful pro-Israel lobbying organization, were pressing for a quick vote in the Senate.

WASHINGTON - Fed up with Republican efforts to block confirmation of President Obama's appointees, Democrats threatened Thursday to limit use of the filibuster, a drastic maneuver that would end an age-old Senate tradition and could inflame tensions between the two parties. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid set the stage for a showdown next week, scheduling votes on seven stalled nominations that require 60 votes to advance under a filibuster. If those votes fail, Reid vowed that Democrats would alter Senate rules on executive branch nominations to allow them to pass on majority votes.

WASHINGTON - To advance a cause that has defined her political career, Sen. Dianne Feinstein brought the father of a child killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School to Capitol Hill, where he talked about the last time he saw his first-grader alive. She brought in police officers to press her case against her law-and-order opponents. She made it personal, evoking the time she had sought a pulse on the wrist of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, shot seconds before, and found her fingers "in a bullet hole.