Atlantic ranks the most influential figures in American history

Any top 100 list is intended to be a conversation piece. It’s an entirely subjective exercise to name the top 100 best movies, or football teams, or albums, so when some magazine pulls a list together, it’s supposed to spur debate. With this in mind, The Atlantic has a cover story ranking the top 100 […]

Monday’s political round-up

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: * While the House race in Florida’s 13th remains unresolved, Rep. [tag]Katherine Harris[/tag] (R), who gave up the seat to run for the Senate, has a plan. Roll Call reported today that if […]

Will Bush triangulate to save his presidency? It’s unlikely

Both the NYT and the WaPo have major articles today on how Bush might try to salvage what’s left of his presidency. As Jim Rutenberg sees it, some kind of triangulation strategy is under consideration. Senior Republican staff members in Congress have voiced the fear that Mr. Bush will now put his legacy over the […]

For a guy who doesn’t read, Bush wants quite a library

We’ve had some fun this year taking note of the president’s alleged reading habits, his alleged book-reading contest with Karl Rove, and his demonstrably ridiculous summer reading list, which included some French existentialism. George W. Bush is many things, but “bookworm” isn’t on the list. That won’t stop him and his supporters, however, from creating […]

‘You are likely to hear the words ‘executive privilege’ over and over again’

I mentioned on Friday that congressional Dems are getting ready to start flexing their oversight muscles in 2007, and a fair amount of their attention will be directed at a certain Vice President’s office. Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), the incoming chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, for example, noted over the weekend that […]

‘What we’re seeing is sanitized’

For the better part of 2006, the Bush gang and their allies have decided that the key to public support for the war in Iraq — or what’s left of it — is blaming the media. In March, for example, Dick Cheney said, “There is a constant sort of perception, if you will, that’s created […]

Sunday Discussion Group

I have not yet seen the new movie “Bobby,” about the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and the lives of 22 people who were at the Ambassador Hotel the night he was killed, but David Sirota has and he wrote a good post about it. I didn’t agree with every word of his meta-analysis, […]

What’s so civil about war anyway….

By any reasonable measure, Iraq is now out of control. It’s reached a point in which the LA Times has stopped the semantics game news outlets have been toying with for months and started using the appropriate phrase. Iraq’s civil war worsened Friday as Shiite and Sunni Arabs engaged in retaliatory attacks after coordinated car […]

‘Those on the liberal end of the spectrum…have no value system’

Focus on the Family’s James Dobson made yet another hour-long appearance on CNN’s Larry King live this week, and because the interview was aired the night before Thanksgiving, it didn’t generate much in the way of attention. Like Fred Clarkson, I think that’s a shame — Dobson was in rare form. Dobson said, for example, […]

Oil companies stop whistling past the graveyard

The oil industry’s aggressive opposition to measures to counteract global warming seemed to jump the shark earlier this year. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a front-group funded by oil companies (most notably Exxon Mobil), unveiled a TV ad that hoped to convince Americans not to worry about climate change — because carbon dioxide is inherently good. […]