Tea Party Republicans are trying to make a comeback and have found one candidate to get behind for the Senate in 2016 — Florida's Ron DeSantis, a former JAG Corps lawyer and Yale baseball captain.
The freshman senator from Arkansas, who wrote the letter to Iran and rallied 46 other Republicans to object to a nuclear deal, revealed his guilty pleasure: eating birthday cake nearly every day.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised to restore "regular order" to the Senate, making it more bipartisan and productive. Five weeks into the new session, the dream remains elusive.
Lawmakers in the Senate approved an extension of tax breaks and confirmed 12 more judicial nominees, but a terrorism insurance bill didn't survive the night.
Earlier, GOP Sens. Mitch McConnell and Saxby Chambliss said the release of the Senate's report on the CIA's interrogation practices "will present serious consequences for U.S. national security."
The Senate's report says CIA interrogators used methods such as rectal infusion and waterboarding on detainees. The report says the techniques were ineffective, a point the agency disputes.
The report is the most comprehensive account of interrogation techniques used by the CIA after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The report found the techniques provided no useful intelligence.
He told supporters in Springfield, Va., that the gap in the number of votes between him and the Democratic incumbent, Sen. Mark Warner, had grown and "I know that a change in outcome is not possible."