The nation has been waiting for far too long for someone in a position of power to offer a coherent plan for the future in Iraq. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, the outgoing GOP congressional majority … none of them even pretend to have a strategy anymore. Never fear, we’re told, the [tag]Iraq Study Group[/tag] will save […]
Today’s edition of quick hits. * It’s hard to believe how ridiculous the Pentagon’s new war-spending plan is. * Right-wing blogs were apoplectic yesterday, but the AP is standing behind its story about Shiite militiamen who dragged six worshippers from a Sunni mosque, doused them with kerosene, and set them on fire. * To his […]
There are a few Republican lawmakers whom I feel like I can respect, despite policy disagreements. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) is one of them. In a sense, he’s the McCain that John McCain pretends to be but isn’t — Hagel is a decorated veteran who isn’t afraid to criticize his party or his party’s president. […]
And here I thought Iraq couldn’t get any less stable. It can. A bloc of Iraqi lawmakers and cabinet ministers allied with militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr launched a boycott of their government duties Wednesday to protest Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s decision to attend a summit in Jordan with President Bush. “We announce the suspension of […]
There should have been a nasty, knock-down-drag-out fight within the Republican Party after the election results came in. By any reasonable measure, 2006 was a total disaster for the GOP — the party lost the House, the Senate, the majority of governors, and 11 state legislative chambers. Given the fiasco, I was kind of looking […]
The American Humanist Legal Center has a new court case that’s definitely worth watching. “An Illinois member [of the American Humanist Association] voted in a church that displayed a four-foot wooden crucifix right above the election judges. Another member in California was confronted by a large marble plaque dedicated to the ‘unborn children’ who are […]
Time magazine’s Scott MacLeod, reporting from the Middle East, recently spoke to a veteran Western diplomat who couldn’t muster any optimism about the future of the region. “The region is in as serious a mess as I have ever seen it,” he said. “There is an unprecedented number of interconnected conflicts and threats.” It led […]
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: * Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who was always a long shot as far as 2008 was concerned, has reportedly decided not to run for president. According to National Journal, he […]
Despite stanch support from the [tag]Bush[/tag] White House, Pervez Musharraf’s government in Pakistan has not exactly been reliable of late. Musharraf recently suggested, for example, that Osama bin Laden could find safe haven in Pakistan, so long as he promised to behave himself. For that matter, [tag]Musharraf[/tag] also publicly disagreed with Bush’s notion that the […]
The president held a private reception at the White House shortly after the election for newly-elected members of Congress. Sen.-elect Jim [tag]Webb[/tag] (D-Va.), whose son is a Marine lance corporal serving in Iraq, attended, but had no interest in being phony — Webb skipped the presidential receiving line and declined to have his picture taken […]