It’s taken several years, but the very lucrative [tag]no-bid[/tag] [tag]contracts[/tag] for [tag]Halliburton[/tag] appear to have come to an end. The WaPo’s front-page story that broke the news, however, included one key tidbit that shouldn’t be overlooked. The [tag]Army[/tag] is discontinuing a controversial [tag]multibillion-dollar[/tag] deal with oil services giant Halliburton Co. to provide logistical support to […]
House Intelligence Committee Chairman [tag]Peter Hoekstra[/tag] (R-Mich.) sure has been busy lately. The conservative lawmaker generated headlines two weeks ago with some bizarre ideas about WMD in Iraq, and raised more than a few eyebrows over the weekend by hinting at still undisclosed NSA surveillance programs that, he believes, the Bush administration may have illegally […]
The [tag]Department of Homeland Security[/tag] looked rather silly last month when it announced new anti-terrorism grants for states and localities, which slashed money for Washington, D.C., and New York City. Making matters worse, a risk scorecard for NYC concluded that the home of the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, and Brooklyn Bridge has “zero” […]
Word spread fast last night that [tag]Robert Novak[/tag] was finally going to start dishing the [tag]Plame[/tag]-related dirt, now that the [tag]Fitzgerald[/tag] criminal investigation has wrapped up and no one else, it appears, will be indicted. But those of us hoping for substantive revelations were left wanting. Syndicated columnist Robert D. [tag]Novak[/tag] acknowledged for the first […]
Just to let readers know, we felt compelled today to change how the “read more” option works in the longer posts. I know the old way was well-liked and user-friendly, and I really didn’t want to change it, but odd as it may seem, I had a financial motivation to bring the feature more in […]
MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson wrote an interesting item (.pdf) last week for the Cato Institute, a libertarian/conservative think tank, highlighting a fairly-familiar refrain: Bush hasn’t failed because he’s conservative; he failed because he’s not conservative. Bush’s claims of small government conservatism were a crock. This administration has not stood up for the principles of liberty. With […]
Slowly but surely, the burgeoning “[tag]religious left[/tag]” seems not only to be generating some media attention, but also some compelling soundbites. Dr. [tag]Bob Edgar[/tag], General Secretary of the National Council of Churches: “Jesus never said one word about homosexuality, never said one word about civil marriage or abortion.” The Rev. [tag]Tony Campolo[/tag]: “We are furious […]
TNR’s Clay Risen had a good piece today exploring the notion of the CEO political leader. In Bush’s case, the president was supposed to use his MBA, a first in presidential history, to run the nation like a business and be the CEO President. Except, as we now know, that never worked out for Bush, […]
At first glance, this Court-imposed reversal of policy seems like a long-overdue turn in the morally-defensible direction. The [tag]Bush[/tag] [tag]administration[/tag], in an apparent policy reversal sparked by a recent [tag]Supreme Court[/tag] ruling, said today it will extend the guarantees of humane treatment specified by the [tag]Geneva Conventions[/tag] to detainees in the war-on-terror. In a memo […]
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: * In an extremely encouraging poll out of Montana, a new Rasmussen poll shows state Senate President [tag]Jon Tester[/tag] (D) with a sizable lead over incumbent Sen. [tag]Conrad Burns[/tag] (R), 50% to 43%. […]