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: * Though Jeanine Pirro insists she’s in the New York Senate race against Hillary Clinton for the long haul, she’ll sit down today with Gov. George Pataki (R) to discuss whether to give […]
The New York Times reported on some interesting developments today in the Jack Abramoff saga, not the least of which is the possibility of him joining his former business partner Michael Scanlon as a flipped witness. With a federal corruption case intensifying, prosecutors investigating Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist, are examining whether he brokered lucrative […]
James Dobson’s Focus on the Family has a lot of money. After millions of people have bought the group’s books, magazines, videos, and children’s stories, on top of the generous donations that go directly to Dobson, we’re talking about a not-so-small fortune. For years, Dobson has deposited his riches with Wells Fargo, but not anymore. […]
We learned last week that the chairman of the Religious Studies Department at the University of Kansas was taking a firm stand against intelligent-design creationism — by including it in a course on “religious mythologies.” As Prof. Paul Mirecki explained, “Creationism is mythology. Intelligent design is mythology. It’s not science. They try to make it […]
The internal conflict between career Justice Department attorneys and Bush’s political appointees is getting progressively more serious. It seems as if career staffers were willing to put up with an ideological agenda for a while, but they’re sick of it now and ready to create some headaches for the top brass. DoJ officials recently leaked […]
I realize that Fox News’ John Gibson is worked up about Christmas — he did, after all, recently publish a book about “the liberal plot to ban the sacred Christian holiday” — but he took his lunacy to disturbing levels recently, during an appearance on Janet Parshall’s nationally syndicated right-wing radio program. Gibson: If you […]
At today’s White House press briefing, there were a number of questions about recent reports on the U.S. military secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish “articles” written by Americans to bolster our image and convince Iraqis that the war and occupation are worthwhile. McClellan referred most of the questions to the Pentagon — though he […]
There’s no way Bush would actually serve given the circumstances, but the president has been called for jury duty. President Bush could get a new title: juror No. 286. Someday, but not Monday, when he was summoned for jury duty. The president was among 600 potential jurors summoned to report to court in McLennan County, […]
Like a lot of people, I was a little curious about Bill O’Reilly’s highly-touted “enemies list.” The Fox News “personality” pledged to publish a list of media operations he considers “guttersnipes” and “smear merchants,” and given O’Reilly’s perceived adversaries, I assumed it’d be quite a directory of allegedly-liberal news outlets. Alas, like so many mysteries, […]
About a month ago, Mark Kleiman noted how extraordinary it is that conservatives “reject moral relativism and insist on the black-and-white difference between good and evil” except “when it comes to torture.” It has to be equally extraordinary when the director of the CIA does it, too. Director Porter Goss sat down with Charlie Gibson […]