Yesterday, the White House made major headlines and received blanket coverage on the news networks by repeating a four-month-old claim about a “serious al Qaeda terrorist plot” that his administration helped thwart. Today, it’s worth taking a moment to consider just how “serious” the threat was — and whether it qualifies as an “al Qaeda […]
It seemed like we’d heard the last of former NASA public affairs officer George Deutsch earlier this week, after he tendered his resignation. Apparently, however, the guy wants to expound on his 15 minutes of infamy. Given the circumstances, Deutsch seems like the type who’d want to quietly go away for a while, avoiding public […]
Before we get into the big news story of the day — Bush’s comments today about a thwarted terrorist attack in Los Angeles in 2002 — let’s consider a brief step back to last October. About four months ago, the president claimed, for the first time, that his administration had disrupted “at least ten serious […]
According to a very interesting new report by Murray Waas for National Journal, Scooter Libby was sharing all kinds of classified information with reporters — but only because Dick Cheney told him to. Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been […]
I’ve long believed the most head-shaking political appointees in the Bush administration aren’t the ones everyone’s heard of (Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Gonzales), but rather the ones who remain largely anonymous. For example, TNR’s Michael Crowley noted that nominated Nicole Nason to head the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, which has some pretty key responsibilities, not the […]
Mike “heck of a job” Brown apparently still has some insights into the Katrina fiasco that he has not yet shared. That may soon change. Former disaster agency chief Michael Brown is indicating he is ready to reveal his correspondence with President Bush and other officials during Hurricane Katrina unless the White House forbids it […]
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 Sen. Hillary Clinton’s re-election seems to be a foregone conclusion, the New York Post reports today that Karl Rove is getting “directly involved in the effort to defeat” Clinton, and dispatched […]
A couple of weeks ago, Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) pushed political reform to a new level, dismissing efforts to alter lobbying rules as insufficient and offering a proposal that would provide full public financing of all House elections. Yesterday, two Dem senators went even further. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin […]
Under Bush’s “leadership,” the Voice of America broadcasts haven’t had it easy. The White House tapped Ken Tomlinson, a hopelessly incompetent hack, to oversee the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an independent government commission that oversees the Voice of America (VOA), where he proceeded to “purge the bureaucracy of political enemies, zealously root out perceived ‘liberal […]
About 30 years ago, Georgia passed a law saying that said books are subject to the state’s sales tax, but exempted “Holy Bibles, testaments and similar books commonly recognized as being Holy Scripture.” The law was ultimately expanded to include the Torah and Quran. A few months ago, the owners of a bookstore that specializes […]