In the morning Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) threatened to go nuclear on everything when Republicans retake the Senate if Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) eliminates the filibuster for nominations.

In the afternoon, McConnell's spokesman said the senator doesn't expect to go nuclear first.

"He doesn't think anyone should do it," the Republican leader's spokesman Don Stewart told TPM. "If Reid keeps his word, I don't see anybody doing it."

"I do not -- if Senator Reid keeps his word, as I expect him to do," he said.

"Republicans believe that the Senate is a place where minority rights should be protected," the Tennessee senator said. "Democrats changed the rules -- they blocked President Bush's judges by filibuster and so now we've done that to President Obama's judges. If they do that on a wholesale basis that'll be the end of the Senate and we'll figure out what we can do by 51 votes just as they figured out what they can do."

In other words, Republicans aren't offering an ironclad commitment that they won't go nuclear on filibuster reform first. But by seeking to scare Reid out of doing so, they're dramatically narrowing the space for them to argue for changing the rules down the road.

"Make no mistake about it," McConnell told reporters Tuesday at his weekly news conference in the Capitol, in response to a question from TPM. "Using the nuclear option is the end of the Senate. I repeat, the end of the Senate. It turns the Senate into the House."

Reid promised early in January, after a bipartisan rules change agreement that preserved the filibuster, not to change the rules outside regular order. Regular order requires a two-thirds majority to change Senate rules. Reid has threatened to eliminate the filibuster for nominations, but not bills, with a bare majority of senators if Republicans don't stop blocking President Obama's cabinet and judicial picks.

"It would be naive to assume that you could break the rules of the Senate in order to change the rules of the Senate only for nominations," McConnell said. "There would be a widespread climate in our conference, were we to be the majority, to take that precedent and apply it to everything else."

"There not a doubt in my mind that if the majority breaks the rules of the Senate to change the rules of the Senate with regard to nominations, the next majority will do it for everything," McConnell said on the floor.

Backed up by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who echoed his warnings in a floor colloquy Tuesday, McConnell said his hypothetical majority would take it a step further.

"I wouldn't be able to argue, a year and a half from now if I were the majority leader, to my colleagues that we shouldn't enact our legislative agenda with a simple 51 votes, having seen what the previous majority just did," he said. "I mean there would be no rational basis for that."

The minority leader sketched out what a Republican-led Senate would do with 51 votes. Job No. 1, he said, would be to repeal Obamacare. He also mentioned lifting the ban on oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, approving the Keystone XL pipeline and repealing the estate tax (which he called the "death tax").

"These are the kinds of priorities that our members feel strongly about, and I think I would be hard pressed," McConnell said, "to argue that we should restrain ourselves from taking full advantage of this new Senate."

"From the country's point of view, it's a huge step in the wrong direction," he said.

The legislation is likely to pass the GOP-led House and die in the Democratic-led Senate. It's largely a messaging device to energize social conservatives whom Republicans rely on in elections. But Democrats are equally eager to cite the vote as another example of a Republican "war on women" and chip away at the party's standing with female voters.

But late last week, Republican leaders quietly added language to the bill exempting the 20-week abortion ban if "the pregnancy is the result of rape, or the result of incest against a minor." The exemption would only apply if the rape or incest were reported to law enforcement or a legally authorized government agency prior to the abortion.

"Jobs continues to be our No. 1 concern," House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) told reporters last Thursday. "And while we continue to be focused on this, there are other important issues that we have to deal with. And after the Kermit Gosnell case and the publicity that it received, I think the [abortion] legislation is appropriate and I hope that those who have voted against such proposals in the past will change their mind."

Republicans sidelined Franks, an outspoken abortion foe, and instead tapped veteran Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) to manage the legislation on the floor. The moves show sensitivity to criticism that the party's ongoing anti-abortion efforts reflect hostility toward women.

Last year, a similar House bill written by Franks applied only in the District of Columbia. This year's version applies to the entire country.

The legislation poses a direct challenge to Supreme Court jurisprudence, which holds that states may not outlaw abortions if they occur before 24 weeks of pregnancy. Many cite the murders of babies born alive by convicted late-term abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell as justification for the legislation.

Meanwhile, reproductive rights advocates are gearing up for battle.

"Republican men think they can hand this bill off to a woman legislator to soften the blow -- and frankly, that's insulting," said Marcy Stech, a spokeswoman for the pro-choice group EMILY's List. "But as we've seen recently, rebranding won't work when the GOP holds onto the same backwards policies and loose-lipped leaders. No matter the messenger, women voters will continue to see this ban for exactly what it is -- an extreme bill designed to threaten the rights and safety of women across the nation."

The committee's decision comes amid fallout from leaks of classified National Security Agency documents by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden. In light of the Snowden revelations about the country's secret surveillance programs, TPM was reporting a story based on interviews with members of Congress and current and former aides about the successes and pitfalls of intelligence oversight on Capitol Hill. The goal was to answer some basic questions for readers: How does a classified process differ from public oversight? What challenges do the combination of government secrecy, classified briefings, and strict committee protocols present to legislators trying to control the nation's sprawling intelligence apparatus?

The ground rules for the interview were that it would be conducted off the record, but only temporarily, to give Divoll an opportunity to review the accuracy of the quotes she provided, and that those would be placed back on the record.

While Divoll remains legally barred from disclosing classified information, she is also still subject to a non-disclosure agreement with the Senate Intelligence Committee that bars her from discussing committee-sensitive business. Out of an abundance of caution, Divoll also conferred with the committee on Friday about her interview with TPM. She anticipated that the committee would approve the interview, noting that in her post-government career, both the committee and the CIA had never done more than request minor tweaks when she brought them pieces of her writing for pre-publication review.

This, she believed, would be a similar process.

But for the first time in her career, the committee took the extraordinary step, on a bipartisan basis, of declaring the interview's entire contents a violation of her non-disclosure agreement and effectively forbade her from putting any of it on the record.

"The committee has reviewed your submission ... and objected to any publication of the information contained therein," she was told.

Specifically the committee claimed the information she provided TPM was both "out of date" and "committee sensitive."

Angered by the committee's decision, Divoll sought Friday to have it reversed. The committee declined. TPM agreed to honor her request that we leave her comments off the record.

The fact that the Committee is so sensitive about disclosing not only sensitive national security information, but also the nature by which elected officials are allowed to oversee the intelligence community, is a testament to the extreme levels of secrecy tied to the entire process.

In an interview Monday afternoon, an SSCI spokesman explained and defended the committee's decision.

"I would say that it is pretty uncommon that we would decline a pre-publication review," the spokesman said. "And the most direct reason is that most submissions that we get for review don't contain this kind of information."

That's a reference to "committee sensitive" information, as defined in the panel's official rules. Those rules spell out the kinds of disclosures that qualify as "committee sensitive" -- documents in the committee's possession and events that transpire in committee meetings -- but they also empower the chair and vice chair or their designees to declare documents and information "committee sensitive" as they see fit on a case-by-case basis.

Most of Divoll's statements to TPM, however, tracked closely with information gleaned from other sources, and the public record.

Among the insights Divoll shared with us was the important role that staff can and should play in oversight of the executive branch's intelligence activities.

Feinstein herself addressed this issue on June 9 in an appearance on ABC News.
"We had an intelligence committee meeting on Thursday [June 6], which I opened up to everybody and 27 senators came. You know, we informed them that every senator, the material is available. They can come and see it. One of the strictures with how they classified stuff is no staff. I think that should be changed so that intelligence committee staff can come in with the member and go over and review the material."

Likewise, one of the committee's current members, and its former chairman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), provided TPM a statement on Thursday suggesting in broad strokes that the oversight process could be improved.

"We've learned from the past that there's a right way and a wrong way to give Congress the information we need to make decisions about our laws and policies, but I think we're still a work in progress when it comes to the level of transparency needed for meaningful exchange about ongoing activities," Rockefeller said. "The Bush Administration launched programs without any legal authority at all and then would show just the Intelligence Committee chairs and vice chairs a few perfunctory flip-charts - which we weren't allowed to discuss even with each other -- just so they could later claim 'Congress was briefed.' That created a deep distrust, and for me some skepticism lingers. It took years of wrangling with the intelligence community to open briefings up to more Senators, and there is still a lot of resistance to sharing information more broadly and with the public. But the process works far better today than in the past. The FISA law we passed requires multiple regular reports from the agencies, so if we see irregularities or areas of concern, we can pursue those."

Rockefeller's recollections and perspective are highly compatible with Divoll's as well.

The committee spokesman said Divoll could have modified her statements to TPM and resubmitted them to the committee.

"We have done that in other cases in the past," he said.

Reached Monday, though, Divoll insisted she was provided no opportunity for revision. "In the past if changes were necessary, those were requested," she said.

Our reporting yielded other, more specific details about the nature of intelligence oversight and intelligence committee legislating that we hope to share with you in a future article.

He billed his amendment as a response to the 7-2 decision in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council, which struck down an Arizona law that required people to prove their citizenship in order to register to vote. The Court held that the state law was in violation of federal law.

"This hole in federal statutory law allows non-citizens to register and thereby encourages voter fraud," Cruz wrote on his Facebook page. "I will file a commonsense amendment to the immigration bill that permits states to require I.D. before registering voters."

"The intent is to be sure states can pass laws ensuring only citizens can vote in order to limit voter fraud," Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said in an email. "To make sure people are who they say they are."

The amendment to immigration legislation has the potential to divide pro-reform senators, as the issue of voter ID laws tends to break down largely along party lines. Cruz has supported elements of reform to overhaul and expand legal immigration but strongly opposes a path to citizenship for people in the country illegally.

The 1993 National Voter Registration Act requires states to accept a federal form that lets people register to vote by attesting under oath that they are citizens. The Court's decision Monday said it preempts state laws like the Arizona statute in question.

Cruz promoted his upcoming amendment on Twitter:

I'll file amendment to immigration bill that permits states to require ID before registering voters & close this hole in fed statutory law.

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) June 17, 2013

The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 required states to accept a voter registration form that lets people register to vote when renewing their driver's license or applying for social services. The registration form requires prospective voters to attest that they are U.S. citizens but doesn't require them to provide proof of citizenship. The Court concluded that Arizona may not require such additional information.

The 7-2 decision in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council was written by Justice Antonin Scalia. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the majority.

Progressive legal advocates had warned that the Arizona law would place undue burdens on minority groups. They hailed the decision as a victory for voting rights.

"Voters scored a huge victory today," said Wendy Weiser, the director of New York University's Brennan Center for Justice. "We applaud the Supreme Court for confirming Congress's power to protect the right to vote in federal elections."

Arizona's Proposition 200 was adopted by the voters in 2004. Copycat laws in three other states -- Alabama, Georgia and Kansas -- may also be in trouble. The three states supported Arizona's argument that the NVRA form is insufficient to guard against voter fraud.

"Today's decision means that these laws are preempted by the National Voter Registration Act," said David Gans, the civil rights director of the Constitutional Accountability Center, a liberal law group. He noted that Alabama's brief argued that its voter law and laws in other states were "verbatim replicas" of the Arizona statute.

"Under Justice Scalia's analysis, these copycat provisions are inconsistent with Congress' efforts, using its Elections Clause authority, to streamline the registration process and prevent states from denying citizens the right to register to vote in federal elections," Gans argued. "I think we can expect to see voters in these other states using today's opinion to strike down these replicas of the Arizona law struck down today."

During oral arguments back in March, Scalia wondered aloud why Arizona didn't challenge the NVRA directly. A silver lining for proponents of proof-of-citizenship laws is that his majority opinion noted that the state is free to challenge the broader requirement that states accept the federal voter registration form.

"Arizona may, however, request anew that the [Election Assistance Commission] include such a requirement among the Federal Form's state-specific instructions, and may seek judicial review of the EAC's decision under the Administrative Procedure Act," he wrote.

Alito argued in his dissent that Congress was less than clear about what the NVRA requires, concluding that the relevant portions of the law hold that "the States need not treat the federal form as a complete voter registration application."

Supreme Court Arizona Inter Tribal Council

"This was our challenge that Mitt Romney and I had in this last election," Ryan said in a speech at the annual Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Washington, DC. "We had to argue against the promise and the rhetoric of President Obama. The great soaring rhetoric, all of the empty promises."

The Republican congressman from Wisconsin and House Budget Committee chairman went on to argue that the Affordable Care Act was an example of "big government assaulting our First Amendment rights" when it comes to religious liberty.

He cited the mandate under the law that employer health insurance plans include contraception without co-payments for female employees -- a rule that was announced early in 2012 and became an issue in the presidential campaign.

"Obamacare says that if you believe in the social teaching of your Church, if you disagree, you know, with abortifacients, abortion-inducing drugs, it doesn't matter," Ryan said. "This is what the federal government is demanding." (The rule he was referring to involves contraceptives, which prevent -- not terminate -- pregnancies.)

"Stay tuned," Baucus told a room full of reporters Friday. "It's coming."

But the chairmen of the two powerful tax-writing committees -- Baucus chairs the Senate Finance Committee and Camp chairs the House Ways & Means Committee -- will not provide answers to the most basic questions about tax reform, including which tax breaks they would get rid of and whether reform would raise any net revenue.

At a Washington breakfast Friday organized by the Christian Science Monitor, Baucus and Camp were asked by a reporter to name one tax expenditure they'd be willing to limit or eliminate as part of their reform package. Neither would name a single one.

"I do have those but I'm not going to reveal it today," Camp laughed.

Baucus didn't attempt to address the question.

But the Republican was willing to rule out one policy: "I don't support a carbon tax," he said.

Then there's the question of whether the overall tax reform package will raise net revenues -- a fundamental fiscal policy difference between Democrats and Republicans that has precipitated the series of near-government shutdowns and defaults since early 2011. Republicans, particularly in the House, are adamantly opposed to new revenues and Democrats promise they'll reject major fiscal reforms unless revenues are in the mix.

Approached by TPM after the breakfast, Camp didn't have a clear solution to that problem.

"I don't think it's going to be resolved until you have a bill," Camp said of the revenue divide. "Clearly we're in different places on that, but I'm not going to spend my time focused on that, because you're not going to be able to address that issue until you know what policies are behind that. Simply just a revenue increase is not going to happen."

Earlier in the week, TPM asked Baucus the same question, and he demurred.

"We haven't gotten that far yet," said Baucus, who isn't seeking reelection in 2014.

The lack of answers to these questions bodes ill for reform, even if Baucus and Camp -- who are among the less ideologically rigid members of their parties -- are capable of agreeing on a bill between the two of them. Beyond the divisions between Democrats and Republicans, tax reform will invariably have its share of opponents -- including from powerful, entrenched special interests who are determined to protect unpopular and unproductive tax breaks. Without a clear framework to coalesce around and fight for, the effort faces daunting odds.

And yet Baucus and Camp are upbeat about the prospects of success on the first major overhaul of the tax code in a generation. They've launched a website, taxreform.gov, and a Twitter handle, @simplertaxes. They say they're planning a road trip in multiple, as yet-undecided cities to seek advice from ordinary Americans.

"When we say the rubber is going to hit the road -- we're going on road trips," Camp said. "We're going to travel the country and we are going to talk to business owners, families and individuals and really try to get a read from the country."

In a way, Pope Francis is a progressive's dream-come-true -- a devout figure with enormous credibility among conservatives and Christians, who has used his megaphone to speak out against greed, consumerism and economic policies that alienate the poor and vulnerable.

"I think about those who are unemployed often because of an economic conception of society that seeks egoistic profit regardless of social justice," Pope Francis told a crowd in St. Peter's Square last month, in one of his many remarks that have caught the attention of liberals.

"As a progressive I think the Pope kinda rocks," Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, the influential think tank with close ties to the White House, said on HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher" in late May. "He's been great on so many issues."

Lifting up the society's least fortunate has been a central theme for man who replaced Pope Benedict XVI in March.

"The Pope has the duty, in Christ's name, to remind the rich to help the poor, to respect them, to promote them," Pope Francis said in a May 16 speech to a group of ambassadors. "The Pope appeals for disinterested solidarity and for a return to person-centred ethics in the world of finance and economics."

It's a delightful change for liberals accustomed to a Catholic Church that has for the last generation focused its preachings on social conservatism, which inspired many American conservatives as they fought against abortion and gay rights.

"Pope Francis' speech is very similar to our message at the AFL-CIO," said Damon Silvers, policy director and special counsel for the country's largest labor union. "The values expressed by the Pope are the values the labor movement embraces."

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, the combative liberal activist group, praised Pope Francis' focus on social justice and characterized his economic values as the diametric opposite of those held by the American conservative movement.

"Pope Francis is right -- policy makers need to be focusing on creating jobs," said spokesman Matt Wall. "[I]nstead, Tea Party Republicans are more focused on taking benefits away from our grandparents ... than creating good paying jobs that will rebuild America's middle class and eliminate poverty."

In an interview with TPM, Tanden said Pope Francis hasn't dramatically changed the conversation in Washington, but argued that he's having a real impact in Europe, which is reeling from years of painful, counterproductive austerity measures.

She said that amidst a national backdrop where the deficit is declining and income inequality is growing, "the Pope's comments are a huge, important development" that could have a real impact on conservatives and religious Americans. "The fact that he's been so aggressive on social justice is something all progressives should welcome."

Liberals hope the Pope continues to speak out along the same lines and that his teachings will give pause to American conservatives whose politics include cuts in government aid for the poor and needy.

Beyond that, Silvers sees a deeper philosophical meaning to the Pope's remarks.

"When Pope Francis says economic policy right now in the world is undermining the dignity of human beings, I think that's his comment on austerity, even though I don't think he actually uses the word austerity," he said. "But he does use another word which is very dear to us and that's 'solidarity' -- the idea that people are bound to another. That this connection between people is what makes life worth living, and that public policy should be about trying to reinforce ties between people and not trying to rip them apart."