Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has no chance of securing the GOP presidential nomination, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on Friday, just one day before she won the Ames Straw Poll.
"She doesn't stand a chance to win the Republican nomination," Reid said.
Hedge funds will face a more aggressive approach from the federal government in months and years to come, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairwoman Mary Schapiro said Friday, adding that she'd like the agency to expand to meet those needs.
"I think it's necessary to regulate hedge funds," Schapiro said during an interview on the Fox Business Network. "I think they are too big of a part of the marketplace for the SEC and the federal government to not have a handle on the impact they're having on the markets, the strategies they're employing -- it's time for that to happen."
Schapiro said she wanted the funds, which have traditionally been only lightly regulated relative to other parts of the financial services sector, to have to register with the SEC, face more stringent reporting requirements, and be more transparent with their records and business practices with the SEC.
"We need information, so that to the extent they could be engaged in manipulative activity or insider trading," Schapiro said.
The SEC chairwoman also pressed her case for more funding for the financial oversight agency, which she said would have to "expand very significantly" in coming years.
"The agency is not as big as it needs to be, and we don't have all of the tools we'd like to have," she explained. "We could be multiple times larger than we are. So over the next few years, I would like to see the agency expand very significantly."
President Obama should fire Attorney General Eric Holder for appointing a special prosecutor to investigate potential CIA abuses of terrorist detainees, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) wrote Friday.
"In the latest skirmish in the Democratic Party's war on the CIA, Attorney General Eric Holder has failed to uphold this fundamental public trust. And for that, there should be consequences," Gingrich wrote. "If Holder and his senior team won't do the right thing and resign their positions, Obama should do the right thing and fire them."
Holder had attracted Republican ire earlier this week for appointing a special prosecutor to investigate abuses that had taken place during the Bush administration.
The White House had emphasized that although the president believes that CIA officials shouldn't face prosecution for following the advice of the prior administration's lawyers, Holder would be able to decide on the special prosecutor independently.
"In the latest skirmish in the Democratic Party's war on the CIA, Attorney General Eric Holder has failed to uphold this fundamental public trust," Gingrich said. "And for that, there should be consequences."
The Senate FInance Committee should be able to craft a bipartisan healthcare bill, as long as they're not "overruled" or "undercut" by President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Thursday.
Grassley told Iowa reporters during a regular press call that he believes Senate Democrats could probably pass a bill using budget reconciliation rules requiring only a simple majority vote, but that bipartisanship could succeed if given time.
Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) will be able to eventually reach a bipartisan agreement on a healthcare bill "if he doesn't get overruled by the leader or the president," argued Grassley, the ranking member of that committee.
"Sen. Baucus has always been talking about 70 or 80 votes," Grassley later added. "We're still going down that direction, but we could be undercut by anybody."
Both Baucus and Grassley have worked throughout August with the so-called "group of six" centrist senators on healthcare reform, though Baucus -- backed up by Senate Democratic leaders -- has imposed a September 15th deadline by which a bipartisan bill must be reached.
After then, Democrats have left the door open to using the budget reconciliation process to pass a preliminary healthcare bill, which may be a version including a public (or "government-run") option as written by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee.
Grassley said he believed Democrats could be able to pass a bill in that circumstance, but not any one he or any other Republican would support.
"I think the Democrats could pass one under a process called reconciliation," he said. "If they do that, one would pass for sure without any Republican support whatsoever, and I couldn't vote for it."
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney leads an early field of potential Republican challengers to President Obama in 2012, a new poll found, though Obama maintains an early lead over all would-be GOP opponents.
The Massachusetts conservative leads a potential field including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R), former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), according to the poll.
22 percent of Republicans prefer Huckabee, 18 percent like Palin, 15 percent want Gingrich, and four percent support Jindal, according to the poll.
Still, President Obama maintains a comfortable lead over all the Republicans tested in the poll.
Of all Republican candidates, Romney fares the best with independent voters -- claiming a two point edge over the president -- while Palin fares the worst, with Obama enjoying a 15 point margin above Palin.
The poll, conducted by live telephone interviews between August 14-18, has a 3.1 percent margin of error.
Republicans are "desperate" in their opposition to healthcare reform proposals before Congress, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) asserted late Thursday evening.
Waters, pointing to remarks by Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-Kan.) that this GOP is looking for a "great white hope," said Republicans would "reveal who they are" over time.
"We are trying to keep the focus on comprehensive universal health care reform," Waters said during an appearance on MSNBC. "And they're going all over the place. They're desperate. They don't have leadership. They don't really know what to do."
"I think we're going to continue to see a lot of crazy things happening, like all of the outrage that is being demonstrated at these town hall meetings, like the kind of statements that Congresswoman Jenkins made," Waters added.
Jenkins had apologized for her remark, saying any racial connotations associated with the comments were unintentional.
Waters seemed to suggest that more Republicans would make racially tinged statements in the future, thereby "revealing" their true beliefs.
"They will define themselves. They can't help it," she said. "And I think what we should do is sit back and watch them, so that the American people can see what we're really up against."
"And I think the president would like it that way," Waters added. "He would not like to engage them in the discussion about their racist remarks. That's not the way he handles things."
A bicycle safety expert said President Obama should have been wearing a helmet while he was bike riding on Thursday.
During a bike ride with his family in Martha's Vineyard, Obama did not wear a helmet while his two daughters did.
David Mozer, director of the Internional Bicycle Fund, said, "We encourage him to wear a helmet."
Mozer noted that Obama has worn helmets while bike riding before, adding that helmets "aren't as dorky as they were years ago."
White House spokesman Bill Burton said on Thursday he was unsure why Obama did not have a helmet on, saying, "I know he generally wears bicycle helmets."
Mozer pointed out the healthcare cost-benefits of buying and wearing a helmet, stating that head injuries are slow to heal and expensive to treat.
But Michael Bluejay of Bicyclesafe.com doesn't believe helmets are necessary.
In an e-mail, Bluejay wrote, "It's no more irresponsible to bike without a helmet than it is to drive without one. The benefits of helmets are largely unproven, especially considering that when helmet use surged in the 1990's, so did head injuries among cyclists. And the countries with the lowest helmet use also have the lowest fatality rate for cyclists. I promise you, if the head of any European country went biking without a helmet, it would be a non-issue, as it should be here."
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