I was catching up on some TV the other day and caught Jan LaRue, chief counsel of Concerned Women for America, on PBS’ “NOW” with David Brancaccio. (C&L has a clip from the show.) There was one part of the interview that was stunning, even by today’s religious right standards. Brancaccio: So in my efforts […]
Last month, in one of those a-little-too-candid moments, Harry Reid told reporters that “it would take a miracle” for Dems to pick up five senate seats in 2006 and get back to a 50-50 split. In an interesting interview with the Christian Science Monitor, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, […]
It was one of those silly examples that captured the absurdity of Republican politics perfectly. Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) was frustrated that France was opposed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, so he thought it’d be a poignant gesture to change the name of “french fries” to “freedom fries” in the House dining hall. After […]
In the unlikely event you haven’t seen this elsewhere, I wanted to highlight one of the more amusing Freudian slips in a long while, by way of our friends at the Fox News Channel. Media Matters reported that Fox News anchor David Asman was interviewing Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) yesterday, inquiring as to why the […]
(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.) A few weeks ago, PBS aired a made-for-HBO film about the 1994 genocide in […]
Finally, a quote from the president, by way of Jacob Weisberg, that I truly understand. “See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.” — Bush in Greece, New York, yesterday What’s the definition […]
It’s not unusual for administrative agencies to squabble with Congress over appropriations, but the recent fights between Republican lawmakers and Bush’s Department of Homeland Security might speak to a bigger issue. Two recent appropriations bills passed by the Republican-controlled House include language scolding the Bush administration for its lack of responsiveness to repeated Congressional requests […]
Long-time readers may recall that I have a particular obsession interest in mid-decade redistricting efforts, generally known as re-redistricting, which have become a staple of right-wing lawmaking the past couple of years. To review for a moment, it wasn’t unusual for states to have partisan mayhem in the 19th century, when parties would try to […]
Salon’s Jeff Horwitz has a tremendous item in Salon today on the right-wing Leadership Institute, a training program founded by Republican activist Morton Blackwell (you might remember Blackwell as the Bush delegate who mocked injured troops at the GOP convention). It’s a fascinating look at how young conservatives are being trained to win elections, generate […]
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: * Sen. Lincoln Chafee’s (R-R.I.) role in the “Gang of 14” negotiations complicate his standing in advance of next year’s re-election campaign. One the one hand, Chafee and the NRSC insist that it […]