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 […]
Tom DeLay must have received some very discouraging poll results lately, because he’s going all out to convince his constituents that he barely knew Jack Abramoff. In fact, according to subscription-only Roll Call, DeLay wrote a nine-page letter to thousands of GOP voters in his district, distancing himself from the disgraced Republican lobbyist activist in […]
As details of Jack Abramoff’s White House connections emerged, the president and his top aides went to great lengths to argue that Bush and Abramoff were barely ever in the same room together. A couple of weeks ago, at a press conference, Bush said, “[E]vidently, he was just like you were the other day, at […]
On the way to the Coretta Scott King funeral in Atlanta yesterday, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan had a quick press briefing aboard Air Force One. A reporter asked about the visit the President and First Lady had with Bill and Hillary Clinton in the morning. McClellan responded: “The President was visiting with President […]
This is probably too-clever-by-half, and I hesitate to put it in print, but there’s one thing that’s been nagging me about the criticism of Jimmy Carter’s remarks at Coretta Scott King’s funeral yesterday: the critics might be better off not being so defensive. There were two specific things Carter said that raised the ire of […]