I can appreciate why Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is championing legislation that would shield firearms manufacturers, dealers, and importers from lawsuits — he is, after all, an aspiring presidential candidate and the NRA matters politically — but it’s incredible to see the lengths he’ll go to help push this bill along. First, Frist pulled […]
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers: * Just two days after Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum said he has “no intention” of running for president in 2008, the Pennsylvania senator is already hedging. Santorum said Wednesday there was a […]
There have been hints — some subtle, some not — that Republicans may soon turn their rhetorical guns on special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. As those hints get less restrained, I think we can safely predict where these guys are going. It started two weeks ago, when House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) started complaining […]
The New York Times’ Douglas Jehl had what can only be described as a complicated story about the Plame scandal today, but, after reading it twice, I think there are some key details in it. Specifically, the number of leakers who spread classified information about an undercover CIA agent seems to be growing. Whereas the […]
Sometimes, when political figures are in trouble — having to testify before a grand jury about a criminal matter, for example — they refer questions to their attorneys. In former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer’s case, that won’t work — he won’t tell anyone who his attorney is. I hear that the former White […]
I haven’t dealt much with the Central American Free Trade Agreement, leaving the heavy lifting to those who know more about trade policy than I do, but last night’s vote was interesting for reasons that go beyond what was obviously a bad piece of legislation. The House, as it always does, set a 15-minute time […]
After all that Tom DeLay has done to bring unwanted attention to himself, one might assume the House Majority Leader would go out of his way to steer clear of improprieties. But when there’s a scenario involving billions of dollars, the oil industry, Halliburton, and his home town, DeLay just can’t help himself. The Republicans’ […]
(Editor’s Note: The Carpetbagger Report, as regular readers know, has joined the Coalition for Darfur, a bi-partisan online initiative created to raise awareness and resources to address the crisis. This is the latest in a series of posts from the Coalition.) Two weeks ago, the Center for American Progress and the Genocide Intervention Fund launched […]
Slowly but surely, the silent treatment has been working. For two weeks, the White House has refused to say a word about any aspect of the Plame scandal. Initially, this only seemed to annoy the press corps during Scott McClellan’s briefings and they continued to upbraid the press secretary. But as time wore on, and […]
I’m probably a couple of days behind on this one, but the editorial in the latest issue of The New Republic, headlined “Revisiting Wilson,” raises an important point that’s worth emphasizing. When the Bush gang and their cohorts go after Joseph Wilson, they tend to underscore two points — that Wilson had claimed that Dick […]