Jeff Sessions

The Democratic leadership has said repeatedly that they reject the House GOP's one-week stopgap continuing resolution because of so-called "policy riders" that they say have nothing to do with funding the government and are only about furthering a conservative agenda. Republican senators Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking member on Budget, and John Thune of South Dakota told reporters and bloggers on a conference call this afternoon that it's the Democratic Senate and White House holding up budget negotiations for political and ideological reasons.

“No continuing resolution to fund the government that fails to reduce spending will pass,” Alabama senator Jeff Sessions said yesterday at an education spending hearing. “It won’t pass the House or the Senate. We are going to fight for spending cuts this week, next week, next month, and next year.”

The hearing’s sole witness, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, was just as determined in his defense of the education budget requests made by the administration.

Financial regulatory “reform” has been wending its desultory way through Congress for quite a while, and one can lose track of where things stand and what’s important.

In a USA Today op-ed this week, assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser John Brennan wrote that "politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda." He's referring to the bipartisan criticism of the administration's decision to Mirandize the Christmas Day bomber rather than detain Abdulmutallab as an enemy combatant. Accusing your opponents of helping al Qaeda is not the best way to resolve an argument! Yesterday, Alabama senator Jeff Sessions took to the Senate floor to rebut Brennan's arguments. Roll tape: