New York magazine has a great feature story in its new issue on Stephen [tag]Colbert[/tag] and his bombastic, over-the-top, O’Reilly-like on-air character. New York’s Adam Sternbergh raised an interesting point I hadn’t seen explored much elsewhere: Colbert’s on-air personality…leads to a peculiar comedic alchemy on the show. During one taping I attended, Colbert did a […]
The one minor flaw in the Mark [tag]Foley[/tag] scandal has been a nagging detail: the [tag]Bush[/tag] [tag]White House[/tag] hasn’t been connected to the mess at all. What fun is that? How can the [tag]Republican[/tag] establishment screw up this badly without any fingerprints from the Bush gang? We’re in luck. TNR’s Ryan Lizza reports today that […]
[tag]Fred Kaplan[/tag]’s 2004 piece for the Washington Monthly on U.S. policy towards [tag]North Korea[/tag], “Rolling Blunder,” is the definitive take-down of the Bush administration’s approach to the burgeoning crisis. Digby referred to the article the other day as the “gold standard,” which is the perfect description. Of course, the crisis has worsened since 2004, and […]
Long-time readers may recall that we’ve been covering David Kuo, the former second-in-command at the White House Faith-Based Office, since he first went public with his concerns in early 2005. Kuo, an evangelical Christian and conservative Republican, joined the Bush gang after stints with Bill Bennett and John Ashcroft, thinking he would help implement an […]
Today’s edition of quick hits. * Mark Foley seemed to have a unique fondness for the pages’ dormitory, didn’t he? * I promise to stop linking to Keith Olbermann’s must-see commentaries just as soon as they stop being so extraordinary. (thanks to reader C.K. for the reminder) * In an entirely entertaining turn of events, […]
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has dipped more than a toe into the blogosphere in recent months, yesterday going to so far as to write a post on North Korea (which, in part, blamed Clinton’s “failed” policy) at Captain’s Quarters, one of the right’s leading blogs. I’m not surprised that McCain would conduct some extensive online […]
Chances are, most Americans have never heard of Dr. [tag]K.A. Paul[/tag], leader of a group called the Global Peace Initiative, but he’s an entertaining character. It was Paul, for example, who told an audience in Cleveland on Monday that voters should oust Republicans from the congressional majority because, as he sees it, the GOP is […]
After a series of horrific school shootings in recent weeks, the White House decided to host a panel discussion in Maryland on school safety. Victims and their families spoke, the president listened, the Attorney General was on hand to discuss some law-enforcement efforts, and most of the discussion appeared intentionally driven towards promoting some kind […]
I can appreciate that word-choice hasn’t always been the president’s strong point, but this one is even more embarrassing than most. SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN: Thank you, Mr. President. Back on Iraq, a group of American and Iraqi health officials today released a report saying that 655,000 Iraqis have died since the Iraq war. That figure […]
If accurate, this is simply stunning. A team of American and Iraqi public health researchers has estimated that 600,000 civilians have died in violence across Iraq since the 2003 American invasion, the highest estimate ever for the toll of the war here. The figure breaks down to about 15,000 violent deaths a month, a number […]