In September, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), shortly after talking publicly about using nuclear weapons on Mecca, found a new project: altering a 9/11 memorial honoring those who died on Flight 93. The architect who designed the memorial included a semi-circular line that represented the flight path of the plan that crashed near Shanksville, Pa. To […]
As a factual matter, Supreme Court nominee’s Samuel Alito’s views on abortion rights haven’t been too big a mystery. We learned a month ago that he wrote a 1985 memo to the Justice Department describing his personal belief that “the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion.” Ambiguous? Not so much. In case […]
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: * Earlier this week, New York Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R) said he wanted to see Jeanine Pirro drop out of the Senate race against Hillary Clinton. Yesterday, Rep. John Sweeney, a […]
When Bush unveiled his faith-based initiative and established the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, he created “outreach offices” for most of his cabinet agencies. In some instances, this followed a fairly logical strategy. By creating a faith-based office in Departments of Education, for example, the president was signaling that he wanted religious […]
Earlier in the fall, after Tom DeLay was indicted (twice), a series of his Republican colleagues announced they wouldn’t keep campaign contributions the former Majority Leader had given them. In all, four House Republicans — Reps. Jeb Bradley (N.H.), Heather Wilson (N.M.), Kenny Hulshof (Mo.), and Steven LaTourette (Ohio) — either gave back what they […]
Yesterday, the LA Times broke the story about 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. Since then, the story has only gotten more interesting. As the LAT explained, the articles were written by “information operations” […]
In almost every cycle, party leaders from both sides try to keep retirements in Congress to an absolute minimum. Leaders realize that there’s a 97% re-election rate for incumbents and fewer competitive districts nationwide, so keeping members running usually gives the parties one less seat to worry about. That is, of course, unless incumbents are […]
The WaPo’s David Broder is almost obsessive about his moderation — he hardly ever criticizes one party without disparaging the other — but today’s column is just puzzling. Broder’s point seems to be that Republicans have screwed up badly since they took control of every branch of government, but voters will be reluctant to change […]
After ex-Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.) resigned in disgrace this week, acknowledging that he conspired to accept $2.4 million in bribes, it seemed the only remaining question was how long Cunningham would stay behind bars. As it turns out, there may be more to Cunningham’s corruption than just his Rolls Royce and 19th-century Louis-Philippe commode. […]