Probably the most important moment in the president’s speech yesterday dealt with his defense of torture. It was, perhaps, [tag]Bush[/tag] at his most twisted. “Within months of September the 11th, 2001, we captured a man known as Abu [tag]Zubaydah[/tag]. We believe that Zubaydah was a senior terrorist leader and a trusted associate of Osama bin […]
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: * New Jersey’s closely-watched Senate race continues to go back and forth, and in the latest poll, it’s the Republican on the upswing. The latest Rasmussen poll shows state Senator [tag]Tom Kean[/tag] Jr. […]
The latest Zogby poll included a [tag]civil-liberties[/tag] question I haven’t seen asked in a long while. It turns out, those who generally claim to be most concerned about big government are the same ones who are willing to welcome a voluntary police state. Poll respondents were asked about specific methods and asked if they’d favor […]
In 2004, the gender gap shrunk. Kerry beat Bush among women voters, but by a narrow three-point margin, which was significantly smaller than the advantage Clinton and Gore had in previous cycles. Among women in the South, the gap swung in the other direction entirely — Bush won 54% of Southern female voters. The AP, […]
I wish I found this surprising, but at this point, it sounds consistent with everything we’ve heard about the president for years. President [tag]Bush[/tag] was driven by a visceral hatred of [tag]Saddam Hussein[/tag], which he privately demonstrated in expletive-laden tirades against the Iraqi dictator. In May 2002 — months before he asked Congress for authority […]
With every passing day, the controversy over ABC’s factually-challenged [tag]docudrama[/tag], “The Path to 9/11,” gets a little bigger. Yesterday, some of the people smeared by the film started being more assertive in their defense. Three members of the Clinton administration have written the chief executive of the Walt [tag]Disney[/tag] Company, [tag]ABC[/tag]’s parent, to complain that […]
At first blush, this sounds rather encouraging. But as with most announcements from the Bush White House, particularly about national security, context makes all the difference. President Bush today announced the transfer to the Guantanamo Bay naval base of 14 al-Qaeda terrorist suspects previously held by the CIA in a secret detention program, and he […]
In light of some Senate GOP resistance to the Bush administration’s special military trials of suspected terrorists, Josh Marshall raises a point that I’ve been thinking about for a while. Congressional Republicans could have just gone along with an unreasonable White House policy on military trials and forced Dems to oppose it, creating an opening […]
Veteran Texas journalists Wayne Slater and James Moore raised a lot of eyebrows with their bestselling book about Karl Rove, Bush’s Brain, a couple of years ago. And from the sound of it, their next book should be just as interesting. It’s called The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power. Some […]
There have been a few twists and turns in the Plame scandal of late, but it seems every new revelation prompts the president’s supporters to once again try and dismiss the significance of the controversy. Last week, Bush allies insisted that news of former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage was one of Robert Novak’s […]