Rep. Pete Olsen fainted while working out in the House gym yesterday and had to have a pacemaker installed after being diagnosed with a slow heartbeat. The Texas Republican tweeted his thanks to people after his surgery.
“Thank you for your prayers and kind words,” he wrote at @peteolsen. He then directed his Twitter followers to a statement about the incident.
Here is a sampling of other Hill tweets from today:
@ChuckGrassley advised biz lobbyists: “I visit w/many [GOP lawmakers]. Don’t take your friends for granted. You spend all time w/Dems.
To get Capitol Hill’s inside scoop from Twitter, subscribe to “Hill Tweet News.” It’s the best and quickest way to learn who sniped at whom, and why; what lawmakers did and said in committee, on the floor, on the news shows and elsewhere; and what articles, shows, Internet videos and more grabbed their attention.
Federal income-tax returns are due to the Internal Revenue Service, making this week a politically opportune time for Congress to debate tax issues.
The House today debated a “taxpayer assistance” bill that would end the private collection of federal taxes, strengthen taxpayer protections from identity theft and tax fraud, stop federal contractors from using foreign subsidiaries to evade Social Security and other employment taxes, simplify the reporting of cellular telephone taxes, and expand tax help for low-income taxpayers.
Democrats who spoke in favor of the bill included Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, Brad Ellsworth of Indiana and Rahm Emanuel of Illinois.
Rep. Barbara Lee doesn’t think elderly and disabled people in public housing should face the threat of eviction because of the crimes of others in their homes.
To that end, the California Democrat proposed an amendment to a housing reauthorization bill. The language is designed to prevent such evictions if the elderly or disabled tenants did not know of the criminal behavior or were themselves victims of crime.
Here are more Democratic video excerpts from the debate over the housing bill (the speakers are Maxine Waters of California and Keith Ellison of Minnesota):
As Mike Huckabee soared to the top of some Republican primary polls in Iowa late last year, controversies surrounding his tenure as a former Arkansas governor began to surface. One of the most explosive involved Huckabee’s role in the parole of convicted rapist Wayne Dumond, who later raped and killed Carol Sue Shields.
Lois Davidson, the mother of Shields, was featured in an online video that blamed Huckabee for her daughter’s murder. As reported by Wired, that video (watch it below) made its debut on television last night in a Fox News-sponsored debate among the GOP candidates.
TechCrunch today added John McCain to its list of blogger “gets” in the Republican presidential field, interviewing the Arizona senator about the activities of technology firms in China and visas for high-skilled foreigners, among other topics.
The interview with McCain followed one several days ago with Mitt Romney, one of McCain’s rivals for the GOP nomination.
Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine sees TechCrunch’s series of interviews with presidential candidates as a noteworthy milestone for new media.
“It’s just a blog. It’s just a tech blog,” Jarvis said. “But it’s powerful and has an important audience in a critical industry. So candidates are paying attention. That and 10Questions and the YouTube debates are evidence of a political process that’s just beginning to open up.
Next on TechCrunch’s list is Democrat John Edwards, but he apparently agreed to only a written question-and-answer session with the tech Web site. How very 20th century of him.
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