Good morning, fellow political junkies. It's Day 9 of the partial federal government shutdown. Global financial markets at this point still appear to expect sanity to eventually prevail in the Washington fiscal standoff. We'll have to see if they're right.
The day's big news is expected to be President Obama's choice to head the Federal Reserve of the candidate thought to be his second choice since his first proved politically problematic.
Here are some of the more interesting politically related items that caught my eye this morning.
- Economist Janet Yellen is President Obama's choice to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve, succeeding Ben Bernanke, The Wall Street Journal's Jon Hilsenrath and Peter Nicholas report. If confirmed by the Senate, she would become the first woman to be the world's most powerful central banker. Most of us hope she won't get to be the first U.S. Fed chief to have to pick up the pieces should the federal-government default on its obligations. Lawrence Summers, who was thought to be Obama's preferred candidate, won't have such worries, at least.
- Some Senate Democrats are warning that the chamber's majority might be forced to change the rules to make it easier for the majority to advance a debt-ceiling raising bill to a floor vote if Republicans decide to filibuster it., Politico's Manu Raju and Burgess Everett report. That move would make the Senate's atmosphere even more toxic.
- The vast majority of the federal government would remain closed if President Obama and Senate Democrats accepted the House Republicans' approach of reopening government in a piecemeal way, Derek Thompson vividly explains at The Atlantic.
- Remember the immigration issue? It's kind of gotten lost amid the current fiscal fight. Supporters of an immigration overhaul want to make sure it's not forgotten, however. Hundreds demonstrated at the U.S. Capitol Tuesday with some being arrested, including several congressmen, reports NPR's Hansi Lo Wang.
- It's easy to lose track of how many times, David Frum has stood athwart history to yell "stop" at his own Republican Party. His latest piece in The Daily Beast is a particularly cogent example of it.
- Recruiting Democratic candidates to run for House seats in Republican districts has become relatively easier because of the government shutdown for which the GOP gets the greater share of the blame, Greg Sargent writes in the Washington Post's Plum Line.
- Obama has a Kansas cousin with Tea Party leanings who plans to primary Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) reports Katrina Trinko in the The Corner blog at the National Review Online.
- House members who workout in the private gym in the Capitol are being forced to reuse their towels because linen service is a casualty of the government shutdown, reports The Hill.
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