fightingwords

Sen. Rand Paul is no longer on the presidential campaign trail, but that doesn't mean he's going to stop railing against the nation's capital — or, more specifically, its brand new streetcar.  

In his capacity as one of the Senate's government waste-watchers , the Kentucky Republican called the new streetcar, which opened Saturday, "A Streetcar Called Waste." Paul's office pointed out that federal funds were not involved in building the streetcar but the D.C. government did receive $1.6 million in federal funds to study the line's expansion. "While streetcars are the current transportation fad, one must wonder why D.C. needs one in the first place," wrote the report's authors, who pointed out that the District utilizes the tri-state Metro rail and bus system.  

As a fictional TV president, actor Martin Sheen navigated the death of a Supreme Court justice and a difficult confirmation battle. Now he's weighing in on the debate over replacing Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.  

Wisconsinites are getting a phone call from the "The West Wing" star regarding Sen. Ron Johnson’s, R-Wis., stance on judicial nominations. After Scalia's death Feb. 13, Johnson agreed with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., that the next president, not Obama, should name a replacement. He said in a released statement, “I strongly agree that the American people should decide the future direction of the Supreme Court by their votes for president and the majority party in the U.S. Senate.”  

In the latest of his series of Twitter attacks on politicians, former pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli has a new trolling victim, presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton. The hedge fund honcho has stepped up his commentary on the 2016 presidential election this week.  

On Tuesday, Shkreli tweeted at Clinton that he had a date with a lady who wrote about it in the Washington Post, followed by some campaign advice.

Lawmakers spent the week asserting their geographical knowledge, fretting over restaurant menu fonts and finding new ways to break committee rules.  

Benjamin Brafman, the criminal defense attorney for former pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli, is claiming the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's reason for compelling his client to testify last week was to humiliate him.  

Brafman gave the committee advance knowledge that if Shkreli appeared before them, he would invoke the Fifth Amendment, he wrote in the New York Law Journal on Wednesday.  

Martin Shkreli giggled and smiled his way through his testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Thursday and at times seemed distracted. And members of the committee called him out on it.  

Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, asked Shkreli, “Do you think you’ve done anything wrong?” Shkreli giggled.  

A longtime Hillary Clinton adviser seemed to think Sen. Charles E. Schumer was happy to see the current Democratic presidential candidate leave the world's greatest deliberative body.  

In an internal State Department email released Friday as part of the latest dump of Clinton emails from her time as secretary of State, Philippe Reines called Schumer "a good man who is just so happy she left the Senate."  

The Senate spent a week shortened by snow slapping podiums, retracting poor jokes and inhaling blackberries.  

Former pharmaceuticals executive Martin Shkreli is poking back at House Oversight and Government Reform Committee ranking member Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md., regarding a committee subpoena to testify on Jan. 26. “Mr. Shkreli was subpoenaed to appear before Congress, and it is his responsibility to take reasonable steps to comply. If he plans on trying to use his own intentional inaction as some kind of bogus excuse for not showing up at Tuesday’s hearing, people will see right through such a juvenile tactic.  I hope he reconsiders his current course and avoids any additional legal action against him,” Cummings said in a statement.  

Shrekli asked Cummings on Wednesday for his opinion on appearing before the committee after tweeting about receiving the subpoena. Following Cummings’ response, Shrekli tweeted that what he said was “disgusting” and “insulting.”

According to former Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., the Democratic and Republican parties are not the same parties they originally joined.  

After watching former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., debate for the primary, Lieberman says he fears for his party’s future. “Obviously I worry and I got interested in public service and politics when President John F. Kennedy was in office; that’s a long time ago,” he told HOH. “And the Democratic Party that I joined was a party that really believed in America’s global leadership, principled leadership. In other words, we’re all about the spread of freedom.”