Alec Oveis raised a good point yesterday about the shake-up in the House GOP leadership ranks and an unusual geographic trend. With DeLay’s fall, southern Republicans have no other representation in the leadership, except maybe Eric Cantor of Virginia. Cantor, though, may not have such a firm hold on the majority whip spot, despite claims […]
On the surface, it’s offensive enough that the Bush White House and congressional Republicans have passed exorbitant tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy while simultaneously cutting already-modest funding for programs that aid the poor. But to literally add insult to injury, the IRS is also unfairly targeting the poor and freezing the refunds they […]
In late-November, a British newspaper reported that President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair met in April 2004 at the White House, at which time Bush raised the specter of bombing the headquarters of the Arabic television network al-Jazeera. The paper, The Daily Mirror, received a leaked, classified transcript of the Bush-Blair discussion, though there […]
When Robert Bork was nominated for the Supreme Court, he made things pretty easy. Before becoming a nominee, Bork said all manner of bizarre and scary things. As a nominee, he tried to justify all of them, as anyone with confidence in his or her beliefs might. So, when Ted Kennedy noted, for example, that […]
Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) may have asked one of the more politically interesting questions of today’s Samuel Alito hearing: Was the Supreme Court correct to take the Bush v. Gore case in 2000? “I really don’t know,” Alito said. “I really have not studied that case the way I studied a case as a judge.” […]
Listening to the Alito hearings, there’s one word the nominee keeps using, to the point of distraction, in a variety of contexts. See if you catch it. “Now, Judge Chertoff looked at it differently. And there are cases where reasonable people disagree. And that’s all that was going on…. “Now, these cases involve difficult line-drawing […]
I was anxious to hear how Samuel Alito responded to his membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP) today because, I figured, it’d give a sense of how well Alito could spin embarrassments. It turned out to be less exciting than I had hoped — Alito used the bad-memory defense. CAP, of course, is […]
The more polls that are published about Congress, the worse things look for the GOP. Americans are paying close attention to the lobbying scandal in the Capitol and say corruption in government will play a big role in their vote for Congress in November — more important than Social Security, taxes, abortion or immigration. A […]
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: * Harris Miller, up until recently the president of the Information Technology Association of America, officially announced yesterday that he will take on Sen. George Allen (R) in Virginia’s Senate election. Miller hinted […]
Most Republicans in DC seem to have the strategic wherewithal to get as far away from Jack Abramoff as humanly possible. Most of those who’ve taken his money have gotten rid of it. Those who knew him personally are denouncing him forcefully. But Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) seems to be the only person in the […]