No, the scandal surrounding the White House’s Medicare scam hasn’t gone away. Congressional Republicans are intent on ignoring the administration’s criminal behavior and congressional Dems are focused on generating an investigation. Democrats yesterday renewed their call for an investigation of whether the Bush administration misled Congress on its cost estimates of the Medicare legislation. In […]
The Progress Report had a fun catch today. Bill O’Reilly, last night: “I did not refer to [Al Franken] as Joseph Goebbels; that was Michael Moore.” Bill O’Reilly, 12 days ago: “Joseph Goebbels was the Minister of Propaganda for the Nazi regime and whose very famous quote was, ‘If you tell a lie long enough, […]
There are two great angles to the Washington Post’s front-page article today about a bizarre and disturbing “coronation” ceremony for the Rev. Sun Myung Moon in March. One is the actual substance of the article; the other is the way in which the major media has had to play catch-up. Chronicling Moon’s unusual influence in […]
Poor John Ashcroft; he’s had a rough couple of years as attorney general. Just in the last couple of months, he’s lost all credibility on potential terrorist threats, he’s been chided by his boss for inappropriate leaks, he’s been threatened with subpoenas by the Senate, he’s lost some big federal cases, and the White House […]
Just to update yesterday’s post about the Supreme Court rejecting state lawsuits against HMOs, I wanted to mention that congressional GOP leaders are determined to make sure patients aren’t empowered, at least this year. Because existing law prohibits patients from seeking damages against HMOs when they refuse to treat something that ends up causing injuries, […]
It’s about time. The Associated Press sued the Pentagon and the Air Force on Tuesday, seeking access to all records of George W. Bush’s military service during the Vietnam War. Filed in federal court in New York, where The AP is headquartered, the lawsuit seeks access to a copy of Bush’s microfilmed personnel file from […]
I had always believed rumors that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) would use his high-profile leadership position to launch a bid for president in 2008. But in an interview late last week with the Christian Science Monitor, Frist sounded like a man planning to wrap up his career in politics, instead of planning to […]
I think the Washington Post buried its lede this morning in its story about the Plame Game. The Post noted that Glenn Kessler, the paper’s State Department reporter, offered tape-recorded testimony to the grand jury yesterday. That, in and of itself, is pretty interesting, because other journalists who’ve been called upon have resisted cooperating for […]
The White House, in one of its infamous “document dumps,” released hundreds of pages of documents relating to the administration torture policies yesterday afternoon. Like Kevin Drum, I quickly found reading all the various reports a terribly vertiginous experience. There is, however, one small point that jumped out at me. Two weeks ago, while the […]
If there’s one thing the U.S. government should do well, it’s manage Iraq’s oil revenues. For goodness sakes, our country is led by a president and vice president, both of whom are former oil executives. This should be the one area they excel in. Alas, the Financial Times has learned that an audit, sponsored by […]