In case you missed it, George Stephanopoulos, the host of ABC’s This Week, had a brief media roundtable discussion featuring some entertaining debate between conservative pundit George Will, Newsweek’s international editor Fareed Zakaria, and New York Times columnist and Princeton economist Paul Krugman. It was a treat to see Krugman on television, which is not […]
Marc Racicot, chairman of the Republican National Committee, is no fool. He sees his job, accurately, as one of generating funds for party campaigns and operations, and reaching out to build relationships with different constituencies to build support for his GOP. His counterpart at the DNC, Terry McAuliffe, does the same thing. With this in […]
Before and during the war in Iraq, much was made of the significant divisions within the Bush administration over foreign policy. As I’ve mentioned before, there’s a multilateral camp, led by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who urged the president to work with coalition allies, generate debate in the United Nations, work with U.N. weapons […]
You might think Attorney General John Ashcroft’s obvious hostility for civil liberties might make him ineligible for an award dealing with free speech. But you’d be mistaken. The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression has selected Ashcroft, among 10 others, as one of the top public officials for stifling free speech. According […]
I know this flap is just the result of a silly clerical error, but I found it amusing and thought I’d share. As Al Kamen wrote in today’s Washington Post, a high-school student near Pittsburgh was writing a paper for an American history class about the Electoral College. He wrote to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush […]
In the months leading up to war, and when the fighting in Iraq began, it seemed any critic who spoke out against the invasion or to question the Bush administration’s intentions was the target of intense scorn. Politicians, actors, musicians, and journalists had their patriotism called into question and their principles attacked as “un-American.” With […]
Just days before the war in Iraq began, one of Carpetbagger’s favorite writers, Robert Wright, made a list of concerns about the ensuing invasion, describing some as “valid” and others “dubious.” Wright, who I would call a war skeptic, dismissed a number of the left’s major fears — that the war would be long, that […]
As Republican members of Congress go, you can’t get more moderate than Maine Senator Olympia Snowe. And as the debate over the size of this year’s tax cut has led to some of the most intense Republican bickering in years, Snowe has found herself where she always seems to end up — right in the […]