I have good news and bad news. The bad news is I’m taking an exceedingly rare day off and will be away from my desk. The good news is I’ve recruited The Reaction‘s Michael J.W. Stickings to, once again, help out in my absence. Stickings did a terrific job filling in for me in April […]
As much as it’s appropriate to use today to reflect on the last five years, it’s equally worthwhile to imagine what the last five years could have been like had our leadership had more noble, and less partisan, goals in mind. Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter devoted his Newsweek column to an “alternate” history for the today. […]
I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot of this Reuters picture. To be fair, based on the caption, the president was probably supposed to stand on the flag; it’s a carpet commemorating 9/11. Still, given this president and his record, it’s likely to be one of those images that sticks, don’t you think?
The Anbar province — one-third of Iraq — has been a nightmare for quite a while, but it’s reached the point in which one key Marine official quietly told his superiors the region is all but lost. The chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq recently filed an unusual secret report concluding that […]
At last Friday’s White House press briefing, a reporter asked Tony Snow about who will be with the president when he visited New York to honor the 5th anniversary of 9/11. Snow responded, “Staff, wife.” The reporter followed up by asking, “Was any thought ever given to a bipartisan delegation being with him?” Snow said […]
I have a confession to make: I didn’t watch “The Path to 9/11.” After all those concerns I reported on last week, I intended to tune in, if for no other reason than to help document the mistakes. But I didn’t get to it, and after reading some of the reviews, I honestly didn’t try […]
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 a very unusual move, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has announced that it will give up on Rhode Island’s Senate campaign if Cranston Mayor [tag]Stephen Laffey[/tag] defeats Sen. [tag]Lincoln Chafee[/tag] in […]
Jonathan Chait wrote a terrific column yesterday on a point that most of us recognize, but it goes unmentioned most of the time. It’s worth briefly refreshing our memories as to why Bin Laden and his closest friends are hiding out in Pakistan. In 2002, we had them surrounded near Tora Bora in Afghanistan, but […]
The WaPo ran a fascinating front-page item yesterday about the Republican Party’s midterm plans, which basically amounts to a massive GOP attack machine. Apparently, the National Republican Congressional Committee has already dispatched “a half-dozen operatives to comb through tax, court and other records looking for damaging information on Democratic candidates, plans to spend more than […]
Last week, after what was deemed a successful public relations roll-out, the president’s military tribunal plan ran into some surprisingly strong Republican opposition. In particular, Sens. John Warner (Va.), John McCain (Ariz.), and Lindsey Graham (S.C.) balked at, among other things, Bush’s notion that suspects could be convicted on secret evidence that is withheld from […]