Despite all the excitement surrounding the Plame Game, we don’t want to overlook the race to determine who’s going to beat Bush next year. With this in mind, I’m doing what I always do on the first of the month — returning to my completely subjective rankings for the Democrats running for president. As always, […]
Some believe political blogs reached the “big time” in December when blog writers such as Josh Marshall and Glenn Reynolds sunk their teeth into the Trent Lott/Strom Thurmond affair. While traditional media outlets — print, radio, TV — missed the story initially, blogs went wild, kept the story alive until the rest of the press […]
The president was in Chicago yesterday for a campaign speech, but those pesky reporters wanted to ruin everything. For some reason, they wanted to hear Bush’s thoughts on the fact that his White House is under a criminal investigation. Go figure. Bush’s communication staff crafted an interesting rhetorical two-pronged approach for the president. Point one […]
Just to follow up on the last post, the universe of reporters with direct knowledge of the Novak Two is fairly big. And while they’re not revealing their sources to the public, they’re not shy about talking to other reporters. In the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz’s media column today, he noted that he spoke to […]
A funny thing happened yesterday when Bush walked up the steps at Andrews Air Force Base to board Air Force One. The president turned around to wave, as presidents are prone to do, and no one was looking at him. All the cameras were focused at the bottom of the steps, where Karl Rove stood. […]
Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst and counter-terrorism official at the State Department, offered a devastating assessment of the Plame Game (my working title for the Wilson/Plame/White House scandal) on PBS last night (via Atrios). Bush’s supporters who are desperately arguing that the illegal leaks aren’t a “big deal” should definitely consider what Johnson had […]
In the interests of proving that I’m not all-Plamegate, all-the-time, I’d like to change the subject for a moment. In fact, I have a horrible confession to make: For months, I’ve been unconvinced that Halliburton is the horrible scandal my liberal friends think it is. Don’t get me wrong; it looks bad. Dick Cheney was […]
Robert Novak, the conservative journalist who finds himself in the unenviable position of having helped start a White House scandal, began trying to distance himself from the controversy yesterday. I don’t think it worked. Novak announced yesterday, “Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this. In July I was interviewing a senior administration […]
The AP is reporting this morning that the Justice Department has officially launched a full-blown criminal investigation of the Wilson/Plame scandal. The White House has been notified of the investigation and White House counsel Al Gonzales has notified the White House staff to “preserve all materials that might in any way be related to the […]
Yesterday’s press briefing by White House press secretary Scott McClellan was one of the most frustrating Q&A sessions imaginable. McClellan, obviously on the defensive, was willing to acknowledge almost nothing about the Wilson/Plame scandal. McClellan came in with his talking points memorized, and in a remarkable demonstration of rhetorical discipline, refused to budge. Here’s what […]