It’s too damn easy to run out of adjectives with these guys. Shameless, brazen, callous, offensive, disturbing, nauseating, insulting… Ezra Klein noticed a stunning paragraph in this Time article about the election. Administration sources tell TIME that employees at the Department of Homeland Security have been asked to keep their eyes open for opportunities to […]
Just to follow up on an idea I raised two weeks ago, I’ve noticed that Wesley Clark, unlike other former Kerry rivals, is still being utilized by the Kerry campaign as a key surrogate. For example, Clark is in Ohio today, a critically important state with 20 electoral votes. He’ll be speaking on Kerry’s behalf […]
It’s fun, in an academic sense, to watch the ebb and flows of a White House scandal. As controversies go, the flap over whether Bush actually showed up for National Guard duty during Vietnam followed an unusual trajectory. First of all, it took several years to become a full-blown scandal. Plenty of us knew there […]
The Bush administration must really think we’re fools. There’s no other possible explanation. Over the weekend, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld joined the ever-growing list of prominent government figures to deny the obvious fact that U.N. weapons inspectors were in Iraq immediately before our invasion began. Speaking with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Rumsfeld made a comment early […]
There haven’t been any major updates lately on the investigation into the Plame Game scandal, but I’ve noticed that a handful of conservative outlets are still trying to undercut the seriousness of the controversy. I may be biased, but I’m finding these criticisms terribly unpersuasive. First up is the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial page […]
I don’t know if you had to be a poli sci major to enjoy it, but Robert Kaiser had a fascinating item in the Washington Post over the weekend about Congress, as an institution, ceding its power to the White House. The notion of competition between the executive and the legislative branches has been a […]
I noticed, via Hesiod, that yet another Republican has offended yet another minority group. This time, it’s the Latino community. Latino leaders [in Oklahoma] say they’re outraged at an Oklahoma lawmaker’s comment that there are too many “Mexicans and Hispanics” coming to live in the state. Oklahoma City Republican Bill Graves made the comment Tuesday […]
The AP had a fun, what-ever-happened-there article over the weekend, updating us on the travails of Carolyn Risher and her anti-Satan campaign in Inglis, Fla. For those of you who don’t recall the fun, on Halloween night 2002, Inglis Mayor Carolyn Risher believed she had stumbled upon the primary cause of her community’s numerous social […]
From today’s Progress Report: Donald Rumsfeld, yesterday: “You and a few other critics are the only people I’ve heard use the phrase ‘immediate threat.’ I didn’t… It’s become kind of folklore that that’s what happened.” Donald Rumsfeld, Sept. 19, 2002: “No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our […]
Just when you thought the Bush administration is no longer capable of surprising you, we learn that the administration has been paying actors to pose as journalists to praise the new Medicare law for videos sent to TV stations nationwide. The videos are intended for use in local television news programs. Several include pictures of […]