If you haven’t read the transcript of Dick Cheney’s speech yesterday in Washington, you owe it to yourself to take a look. It’s rare to see a constitutional officer deliver such breathtakingly dishonest remarks in public. Cheap shots, demonstrable falsehoods, over-the-top rhetoric, straight-faced mendacity … it’s all here, in about 600 words. If it weren’t […]
A lot of ink has spilled over Bob Woodward’s revelation that he knew about Valerie Plame before Judy Miller, and that his source was neither Karl Rove nor Scooter Libby, but it seems the number of helpful, accessible facts are far and few between. The WaPo, among others, suggests the new information could be a […]
Of all the angles to the Bob Woodward story from the WaPo this morning, probably the most important is figuring out who, exactly, told Woodward about Plame. The article makes it pretty clear we’re looking at a third White House source — someone who is neither Libby nor Rove. Raw Story reported today that the […]
The Stranger’s Dan Savage wrote up a New York Times op-ed today on an idea that’s been slowly making the rounds recently: a constitutional amendment on the right to privacy. Well, if the right to privacy is so difficult for some people to locate in the Constitution, why don’t we just stick it in there? […]
Now that Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito’s rigidly conservative beliefs from 1985 have surfaced, Alito is doing is best to assure senators he’s not a right-wing ideologue. His defense, however, is not without flaw. Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. sought to distance himself yesterday from staunchly conservative views he expressed 20 years ago, […]
Atrios noted this morning that Sen. Chuck Hagel’s (R-Neb.) “occasional muttered note of concern has done little other than increase his stock in our media obsessed with certain kinds of maverickness.” I think that’s largely true — Hagel’s admirable criticisms haven’t endeared him to his GOP colleagues or the White House, so there are no […]
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: * Rep. Katherine Harris’ campaign manager, Jim Dornan, resigned yesterday, the latest in a series of setbacks for the Florida Republican’s Senate campaign. Dornan said, “My role was to sort of set things […]
Update: John Cole wants to make it absolutely clear that white phosphorous is not a chemical weapon. He seems to feel pretty strongly about it. Earlier this month, a report on Italian television accused U.S. forces of using chemical weapons in Iraq, specifically utilizing white phosphorus as a weapon during an assault on insurgents in […]
Ken Tomlinson’s partisan, ideological, and generally ridiculous work as chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting helped lead to his recent resignation from the CPB. But what we didn’t know before now is just how much Tomlinson violated the law. The former chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting broke federal law and repeatedly violated […]
Deadly terrorist bombings in Amman, Jordan, last week killed 60 and shook the Jordanian people and government badly. Yesterday, there were political consequences. Eleven officials in Jordan’s royal court were fired Tuesday by King Abdullah II, Deputy Prime Minister Marwan Muasher said. Among them was the country’s national security adviser, Muasher said. The reshuffling came […]