The White House counsel’s office told presidential aides on Friday afternoon (when else?) that they’ll be getting a little “refresher” course on government ethics. President Bush has ordered White House staff to attend mandatory briefings beginning next week on ethical behavior and the handling of classified material after the indictment last week of a senior […]
These Republican doctors-turned-lawmakers sure do know some interesting tricks. Bill Frist, for example, can use an hour of family videotapes to challenge the diagnosis of doctors who have examined a severely brain-damaged patient in person. Tom Coburn, meanwhile, can use his medical training to tell if someone is lying, just by looking at them. Coburn […]
At times, complaints about the Patriot Act can sound vaguely hysterical. Critics go so far as to suggest that the law empowers the FBI to obtain secret information about you — including phone calls, internet visits, even credit ratings — whether you’re suspected of wrongdoing or not. The probing of your personal information can be […]
Just last week, some conservatives resurrected the notion that the administration and Congress had access to the same Iraq-related intelligence before the invasion began. As if we needed yet another example to disapprove this embarrassing talking point, the New York Times ran a stunning item over the weekend about the administration using intelligence they knew […]
Several years ago, David Plotz wrote a funny item for Slate about members of Congress from Oklahoma, which he labeled the nation’s worst delegation. Plotz’s piece is a little dated now, but he raised an entertaining question. This week’s discussion group topic is easy enough: what’s the worst delegation in Congress? There are, to be […]
It’s safe to say Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) has reason to worry. Rep. Robert W. Ney notified Congress yesterday that he had been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury examining the lobbying activities of Jack Abramoff, making the Ohio Republican the first lawmaker to receive such a demand in the expanding influence-peddling investigation. The subpoena, […]
Guest Post by Morbo I’m sure it made perfect sense at the time: Religious and secular right-wing nuts would infiltrate and take over one state apiece and turn each into a type of laboratory for all of their kooky ideas. The Religious Right settled on South Carolina. There they would establish a type of theocratic […]
Guest Post by Morbo If you’re like me, you probably lose a lot of sleep at night over fears that crazed residents of Quebec are going to swoop down into the country and steal your job, abduct your children and run off with your significant other. They may be bearing strange forms of cheese. Thankfully, […]
Guest Post by Morbo If Samuel Alito is confirmed for a seat on the Supreme Court, he will be the fifth Roman Catholic on that body. This seems to unnerve some progressives. It shouldn’t. Alito’s religion is not relevant. What is relevant is his right-wing judicial philosophy. If Alito is to be opposed — and […]
Guest Post by Morbo Earlier this week, the Carpetbagger noted Tony Mauro’s story in Legal Times about Jay Sekulow, the right-wing Christian attorney and greedy creep whose true god, it turns out, is Mammon. (Surprise!) There are many shocking revelations in this story, but one item jumped out at me: Sekulow apparently keeps his entire […]