The White House is paying lip service to the intelligence reform legislation crafted by the 9/11 Commission, but if Bush and his gang really want to pass the bill, there’s an option they haven’t considered yet. President Bush, facing pressure to do more to enact a stalled bill that would restructure the nation’s intelligence community, […]
There’s an impression among many that the highest-profile political reporters in DC aren’t tough enough because they’ve developed cozy relationships with powerful players. The idea is, big-time journalists won’t ask the tough questions on Thursday if they’ll be golfing with their subject on Saturday. I’ve never fully bought into these concerns, but there may be […]
Despite four tax cuts in four years, and endless promises about prosperity being right around the corner, when it comes to job growth, Bush is still a miserable failure. U.S. hiring slowed significantly last month, the Labor Department reported today, dampening an economic outlook already clouded by lagging pre-holiday shopping by wary consumers. The November […]
In all sincerity, I really want to know what someone has to do in American politics to become a pariah. What does it take before a political figure is so disgraced, he or she is no longer welcome in polite society? By any reasonable standard, Jerry Falwell should have been spurned by the mainstream years […]
Following up on yesterday’s revelation that federally-funded abstinence programs offer wildly incorrect information to students, it’s also worth noting that these same curricula often take a neo-puritan approach to demeaning women. As Paul Waldman noted yesterday, some of these programs, which we pay for, offer a nineteenth-century view of sex roles to public school students. […]
I knew if I waited long enough, eventually Ken Starr would say something with which I can agree. Kenneth Starr says he never should have led the investigation that resulted in the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton. The former independent counsel, now dean of the Pepperdine University law school, says “the most fundamental thing […]
Get ready for a blizzard of meaningless propaganda. President Bush will hold a two-day economic conference [in Washington] Dec. 15-16 with his advisers and a few hundred business leaders, as he contemplates an ambitious second-term agenda of overhauling taxes and Social Security while cutting a ballooning deficit in half. Administration officials have already announced that […]
When Dems controlled Washington (House, Senate, White House) in ’93 and ’94, the GOP was very effective in exploiting divisions within the caucus to stymie parts of the Clinton agenda. With Social Security privatization on the horizon, and some skeptical Republicans out there, it’s time for Dems to do the same thing. As John Harwood […]
It’s a shame Dana Milbank’s piece on Bush’s foreign policy speech in Canada was buried on page A32 today, because it’s definitely worth reading. The president hadn’t delivered any substantive foreign policy remarks since the election. While no one really expected a change in direction, in a speech in Nova Scotia yesterday, Bush articulated a […]
The Wall Street Journal had an interesting piece today about Bush’s likely trouble in forcing a “tax reform” bill through Congress, since several key Republicans seem skeptical about the idea. A quote from one Republican in particular jumped out at me. If President Bush wants to overhaul the tax code before leaving office, he may […]