I don’t have anything particularly insightful to add to this, other than to express my utter dismay. Unitarian Universalists have for decades presided over births, marriages and memorials. The church operates in every state, with more than 5,000 members in Texas alone. But according to the office of Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, a Denison […]
I’ve been wondering who’d crow and who’d cry after Bush and Senate Dems struck a deal on judicial nominees this week. It seemed to me that the compromise was pretty good for both sides — Bush got to fill 25 slots with non-controversial judges while Dems got assurances on recess appointments. If anything, it seemed […]
Jeez, is there anything about the Bush Medicare scheme that isn’t illegal? We already know that the administration appears to have broken the law by threatening HHS officials into silence about the real costs of the Medicare plan. Now we’ve learned that the propagandistic “video news releases,” prepared for TV stations to look like objective […]
It’s exchanges like this one that only feed the hype urging Kerry to tap McCain as a running mate. McCain recently questioned the wisdom of cutting taxes and fighting a war at the same time, an unprecedented stunt in American history. “Throughout our history, wartime has been a time of sacrifice…. What have we sacrificed?” […]
Internal Republican bickering over strategy and oversight is amusing because it’s largely inconsequential. Watching GOP leaders attack one another publicly over how to address military abuse policies, however, is more troubling than entertaining. On Monday, the Senate Armed Forces Committee announced relative bi-partisan support for doing the right thing: the Committee would thoroughly investigate the […]
Donald Rumsfeld, testifying under oath, to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee two weeks ago: So it seems to me that the ICRC report was helpful, and that the military command, as I understand it, undertook a series of corrections. Now, with respect to when were we knowledgeable of this, the situation was this: Specialist […]
I know the Wall Street Journal’s site is registration only, but there’s a really good item today concerning new questions about Bush’s leadership style and management abilities. As the piece explains, they create a White House environment that somehow manages to be efficient and dysfunctional at the same time. Bush’s style — delegate, express confidence, […]
Last week, I mentioned that the Union of Concerned Scientists had prepared a report for the Pentagon concluding that the administration’s missile defense system suffers from a serious flaw: it doesn’t work. According to a UCS technical analysis, there is “no basis for believing the [missile defense] system will have any capability to defend against […]
I’ve always hated talk about “tort reform.” There’s nothing worse than a conservative, anti-consumer policy pretending to be a populist movement. Corporate interests want this “reform” to shield them from responsibility, Republicans want it because corporate interests tell them to, and the public generally agrees with it because they perceive a systemic problem that rewards […]
What do you know, Tom DeLay does react to negative press attention. Six months ago, the New York Times uncovered a DeLay fundraising scheme in which he would offer wealthy GOP donors extravagant benefits at the Republican National Convention under the auspices of helping abused and neglected children. In subsequent months, DeLay faced considerable heat […]