Missouri legislature goes after critic in a whole new way

I’ve heard of countless instances when a newspaper will go after a legislature, but it’s fairly rare when the legislature decides to bite back against a newspaper. Consider last week in the Missouri Legislature. The Missouri House has voted to raise taxes on the state’s two largest newspapers after an editorial in the St. Louis […]

White House was more concerned with ‘karma’ than legal process

Woodward was on the Today Show this morning, talking with Matt Lauer about Iraq. The interview turned to the fact that the White House used $700 million that Congress authorized for use in the war in Afghanistan and instead spent it to prepare for war in Iraq. Woodward wouldn’t comment on the illegalities, but he […]

Bush embraces wrong intelligence, ignores right intelligence

I had an idea for a post that I was going to write this week but then I saw that Tom Tomorrow has already captured the point in a cartoon today. (It’s on Salon, so you may have to wait through an ad to see it.) In four small frames, Tomorrow has explained the inherent […]

If Bush loses the rural vote, he loses the election

The Bush campaign is starting to run out of friends. Looking over the 2000 results, the most obvious division in America wasn’t between men and women, blocks and whites, or churchgoers vs. the less religious. If you wanted to know where Gore and Bush enjoyed the most support, you simply had to look at cities […]

It worked in Vermont, and now it’s worked in North Carolina

For most of us, the fight for the Dem nomination was wrapped up a long time ago. John Kerry’s principle rivals left the race, endorsed the nominee, and the general election campaign began. (There are rumors that Kucinich is still technically a candidate, but only in a “tree falls in the forest” kind of way.) […]

Kerry on Meet the Press

I think John Kerry did a fine job on Meet the Press yesterday. It was a particularly strong appearance when contrasted with Bush’s unpersuasive press conference from earlier in the week. Unlike the president, Kerry came across as competent and knowledgeable on a wide variety of foreign and domestic issues. He dodged a few questions […]

Woodward on 60 Minutes

I make a conscious and concerted effort to keep the tone on this site relatively subdued. Readers won’t find much in the way of profanity here, nor all-caps calls for Bush’s impeachment. It’s just not my style, no matter how frustrated I get. That said, sometimes the Bush White House makes it awfully difficult to […]

Let’s not quibble about who killed whom…

At his press conference with Prime Minister Tony Blair this morning, Bush was asked about Bob Woodward’s revelations that the White House began secretly planning an invasion of Iraq shortly after 9/11. Here’s the convincing, well thought-out answer Bush provided to quell what may soon be a major controversy: “You know, I can’t remember exact […]

Poll Day

As you’ve hopefully come to expect on Friday afternoons, I have some statewide polling data to share. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, there haven’t been as many polls this week, so today’s list is a little shorter than usual. As always, these results were released within the last seven days. Massachusetts (12 electoral votes) University of […]

Carpetbagger’s Correspondents’ Corner

This week’s edition features two emails I received in response to the release of Bush’s PDB from August 6, 2001. First, Carpetbagger regular Joe Fitzpatrick noted: I saw this in response to the recent PDB release: “James R. Thompson, a former Illinois governor (R), said the memo “didn’t call for anything to be done” by […]