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: * State Sen. John Campbell (R-Calif.) was elected to the House yesterday in a special election held to replace now-SEC Chair Chris Cox. Campbell won with 45%, ahead of Democrat Steve Young who […]
For most of the fall, the White House has taken a very proactive approach to opposing any congressional measure that might hinder the ability to torture detainees. In September and October, Bush said, in no uncertain terms, that he’d veto a defense appropriations bill that prohibited prisoner abuse. In response to the threat, the Senate […]
Nearly all of the debate about pre-war intelligence on Iraq has focused on motivation — everyone knows it was wrong; the question is whether it was intentionally manipulated and exploited by the Bush administration or not. But the Wall Street Journal raised an interesting point today about the pre-war intelligence. A lot of it — […]
The Bush gang really hasn’t been paying much attention to the far-right whining about the alleged “war on Christmas,” or they’d be far more on-message. At this point, the White House has done nearly everything wrong — from Laura Bush’s “happy holidays” wishes, to “Children’s Holiday Reception” (where kids were encouraged to have a “very […]
Joe Lieberman may be many things, but a tone-deaf politician isn’t one of them. He’s won three U.S. Senate races, was a two-term state attorney general, and was even the Majority Leader of the Connecticut Senate back in the ’70s. Lieberman is savvy and shrewd when he needs to be. Which is why I’m confused […]
On Monday, a Texas judge upheld a felony indictment against Tom DeLay, allowing money laundering charges to move ahead. For DeLay, who hoped to have the charges thrown out so he could reassume his leadership post in the House, it was a serious setback. Just how close were DeLay’s lawyers to successfully arguing that the […]
It’s easy to make the case that Barack Obama shouldn’t run for president in 2008. He hasn’t quite finished his first year in the Senate, he has no foreign policy experience, and not incidentally, he’s said he doesn’t want to. But that’s no fun at all. TNR’s Ryan Lizza today makes a surprisingly compelling argument […]
Kevin noted an interesting report from TNR’s Michael Crowley who attended a Center for American Progress forum yesterday on “reforms to combat the increasingly — and shockingly — anti-democratic tendencies of the House of Representatives.” Barney Frank pointed to at least one encouraging thing he’s noticed, though I’d argue it’s not as heartening as Frank […]
The poorly-named American Family Association seems to announce a new boycott at least once a month. Usually the targeted company more or less ignores the silly little religious right group, nothing happens, and the AFA moves on to its next victim. Unfortunately, Ford seems confused about how this is supposed to go. The AFA launched […]
About a week ago, Josh Marshall laid out his vision of a “nice try brigade.” The problem is simple enough — mainstream reporters, anxious to avoid the appearance of bias, are writing articles about corruption in Washington, but are going out of their way to highlight at least one suspected Dem so the list of […]