About a week ago, the New York Times moved the ball forward on the controversy surrounding Bush’s warrantless-search program, noting that the administration worked with telecommunications companies to trace and analyze large volumes of telephone and Internet communications, without warrants, after 9/11. As the NYT explained, the NSA eavesdropped on specific conversations, but also utilized […]
The LA Times had an interesting, albeit thoroughly depressing, article on the front page today on the electronic voting machines cities and states bought after the 2000 race — which they’re now looking to replace. Five years after the vote-counting debacle in Florida suspended the election of a new U.S. president, California and other states […]
Over night, the Houston Chronicle and Bloomberg News reported that Jack Abramoff’s plea bargain deal is this close to being complete. This morning, CNN and the NYT are reporting it’s a done deal. Details are still a little sketchy, but Abramoff will reportedly plead guilty to charges of fraud, public corruption, and tax evasion, accept […]
When a bill passed by Congress faces litigation, judges can look back at the congressional record to better understand the purpose and intent of the legislation. When a president signs a bill into law, historically there’s nothing he could do to express his own intentions about what the law means and is supposed to do. […]
With his political support still suffering, the president can at least count on broad support among men and women in uniform, right? According to the 2005 Military Times Poll, perhaps not. (via Political Wire) Support for President Bush and for the war in Iraq has slipped significantly in the last year among members of the […]
I’m glad to see the fine folks at National Journal’s Hotline are back after a holiday break with a pretty good round-up of political/campaign news from the last two weeks. But like Ezra, I thought one of the items stood out. Best Good Question To Which I Don’t Yet Have An Answer: IA Gov. Tom […]
It’s not unusual for state legislatures, like the U.S. Congress, to start the day with an “official” non-denominational prayer. On the Hill, the House and Senate have chaplains to cover this, while many states invite local religious leaders to handle the invocation. The Supreme Court cleared the way for these prayers in 1983, ruling that […]
Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) is hardly among the chamber’s more liberal Republicans, but he’s certainly been willing to break with the administration more and more lately. In just the last month, Lugar has criticized the Bush administration’s practice of paying Iraqi news outlets to publish American propaganda, and has told Newsweek that Bush should be […]
In February 2004, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao was on CNN defending the Bush administration’s economic policies. When Judy Woodruff noted the president’s poor record on job creation, Chao suggested there’s only one number that matters. Woodruff: I want to cite the one economic analyst with Credit Suisse First Boston. He said, these are his words, […]
Having been born and raised in Miami, I look back at Florida with some fascination. In fact, I’ve long harbored a silly notion that all bad things that happen in this country have an almost direct connection to the Sunshine State. After the Elian Gonzalez controversy, the 2000 election debacle, the original anthrax letters, the […]