Everyone’s favorite well-armed evangelist, three-star General William “Jerry” Boykin, has endured about a week of high-profile controversy, but he’s not out of the woods yet. In fact, things got a lot worse for him yesterday. If you’re just joining us, Boykin, the newly-appointed deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, has been a religious right-style evangelist […]
While pushing his third tax cut in as many years, Bush swore the latest round of cuts would create a robust job market. In fact, the Bush administration got specific about its claims, saying that if Congress passed Bush’s tax plan (which it did), the results would be 344,000 jobs created, per-month, starting in mid-2003. […]
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), one of the few Republicans in Congress I can respect, expressed exactly the right sentiment yesterday about Congress ceding too much foreign policy responsibility to Bush, while lamenting Bush’s failure to capitalize on his new-found power. In a speech this week at the Gallup Organization World Conference in Omaha (which I […]
Sunday, White House aides had to scramble when Bush, speaking without a prepared text, falsely claimed that the U.S. government was prepared to “go forward with” a new package of military training programs with Indonesia. Yesterday, Bush had his staff checking their history books with yet another screw-up before an international audience. “America is proud […]
It’s been several weeks now, but the public still does not yet know which two White House officials were responsible for illegally leaking the name of an undercover CIA agent to the press. The Justice Department is still investigating the matter (apparently, under John Ashcroft’s very close supervision), but no word has surfaced about preliminary […]
Yesterday, The New Republic started one of those online debates I like so much. In these forums, one expert on a given topic writes an opening statement explaining why he or she believes their position on a controversy is right. Then the other side goes. It takes a few days and the exchanges are usually […]
Considering all that I wrote over the summer regarding this year’s record-high deficits, I thought it only fair to post the final numbers for the 2003 fiscal year. This week, the Treasury Department announced the final tally on the deficit: $374 billion. Administration critics noted that this is the biggest deficit in American history. The […]
Yesterday, in my “Polls, polls, and more polls” post, I quoted a Suffolk University survey of Dems in New Hampshire pegging John Kerry’s support at 19 percent, but I said that number was down from 20 percent in late-September. It turns out this was incorrect. As I learned in a very nice email from a […]
Presidential endorsements from members of Congress may not usually lead directly to voter support, but I nevertheless believe it’s worth paying attention to how many endorsements the Dem candidates pick up as the campaign moves on. The process I call the Endorsement Primary is obviously helpful in demonstrating what kind of support a presidential candidate […]
I can appreciate that no administration enjoys negative publicity. Particularly when things are going poorly overseas, the White House hates to see disheartening images every night on the evening news. That being said, the public deserves unfiltered news. An informed electorate relies on good and bad news to help reach judgments about their government and […]