We Hate To Break It To You Senator Reid, It's Not Legislating To Say No To Everything The Other Side Presents Or To Buy Off A Senator Like McConnell! He Is Such An Ignoramus.

Reid: I can out-legislate Cruz

By Mario Trujillo - 10/18/13 02:12 PM ET

  

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he might not be good at calculus, but he knows how to legislate.

Reid told The Huffington Post that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is smart, but he can’t outmaneuver the 26-year veteran in the halls of Congress. 

“He might be able to work a calculus problem better than I can,” Reid said Thursday. “But he can't legislate better than I can."

Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) are credited with brokering the deal that ended the government shutdown.

Reid said the House’s decision to go along with a deal to end the shutdown after 16 days and raise the nation’s borrowing limit was a message to the freshman senators, asking: “What the hell are you doing?”

Cruz, along with a number of other GOP lawmakers, had pushed a tactic to use government funding as leverage to extract Democratic concessions on ObamaCare. Many within Cruz’s own party had criticized the plan as doomed to failure. 

Reid said Cruz is a “laughing stock to everybody but him” and said he pitied the GOP if the party saw him as a viable nominee for president in 2016. 

Reid echoed comments he has made before, asserting the Harvard-educated Senate freshman has a tendency to talk down to people, which does not work in the Senate. 

"Ted Cruz is smart," Reid said. "He has always been able to talk down to people. He is now in the Senate. People are as smart as he is. He can't talk down to anyone anymore. But he has still not accepted that in his own head. He still thinks he's smarter than everybody else."

Reid made almost an identical statement to Esquire magazine during the government shutdown earlier this month.

Assault Weapons Bill Would Not Have Stopped Navy Yard Shooting

FBI: Navy Yard shooter entered with shotgun

By Mario Trujillo - 09/17/13 02:53 PM ET

  

Aaron Alexis entered the Navy Yard with a single shotgun before killing 12 people Monday morning, the FBI said.

Valerie Parlave, assistant director of the FBI field office in Washington, said that Alexis purchased the shotgun lawfully in Virginia.

Alexis also may have acquired a handgun while inside the facility before he was killed, the FBI said.

Parlave said the FBI said it has no information to conclude that he also had an AR-15, a type of assault rifle.

“At this time we believe that Mr. Alexis entered building 197 at the Navy Yard with a shotgun,” Parlave said. “We do not have any information at this time that he had an AR-15 in his possession. We also believe that Mr. Alexis may have gained access to a handgun once inside the facility and after he began shooting.”

E

arly reports incorrectly indicated that Alexis might have carried a semi-automatic assault rifle. Some lawmakers, including Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), cited the weapon in calls to renew the gun control debate.

The FBI is still investigating Alexis’s past medical history, and said it would not comment on reports that he suffered from serious mental health issues, including paranoia and a sleeping disorder.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) had pushed for the reinstatement of an assault weapons ban earlier this year after the Newtown school shootings, in which an assault rifle was used.

But that proposal failed to make it into a larger gun control package that included a compromise on universal background checks.

Both the background check legislation and the ban on assault weapons were rejected in votes by the Senate earlier this year.