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Judd was thinking about challenging Sen. Mitch McConnell for his Kentucky seat in 2014. She had received national support from Democrats and a conservative super-PAC had already released an attack ad.
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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is married to former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, who was born in Taiwan. The PAC has been pushing messages that try to draw connections between McConnell's politics and his wife's heritage. His spokesman calls those messages "disgusting."
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The House speaker wants senators to act. The top Senate Republican says it's time to work on a compromise. And the Republican National Committee says the cuts would be "negligible compared to Obama's disastrous fiscal record."
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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is out with his first ad of the 2014 election cycle. It's a three-minute, Web-only spoof that pokes fun at President Obama and an array of Democrats who might challenge the five-term Kentucky senator.
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Some observers are wondering why American Crossroads, the Karl Rove-inspired superPAC, would bother to run a political attack ad against Hollywood star Ashley Judd, an outspoken supporter of President Obama who has said she's mulling a 2014 run against Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
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After threatening to gut the rule that lets a single senator bring the Senate to a virtual halt, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has agreed to tweak rather than transform the practice. Under the accord, Democrats would gain the ability to skip a procedural step to begin debate on a bill.
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President Obama offered a more full-throated defense of government in his inaugural address than has been heard from a major politician in a generation. Obama may be seeking to shift debate from defending programs to praising the value of government as a whole.
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President Obama's slate of nominees will have to be confirmed by the Senate, but those nominations could be held up by a filibuster threat. Democrats are trying to crack down on what they see as misuse of the filibuster, and it looks like Republicans may be willing to come to a deal.
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The lessons of the final deal come down to this: Washington is very nearly broken. Next up? Finishing the work this agreement postponed.
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Talks continue on a deal to avoid automatic spending cuts and tax increases. But with just hours to go before they kick in, an agreement remained elusive.