About a month ago, the Justice Department was scrambling to come up with a coherent excuse for having fired former New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias. They came up with a weak accusation: Iglesias was guilty of “absentee landlordism,” because he had to take 40 days of annual duty in the naval reserve. (The excuse […]
There was a fairly startling news item over the weekend that didn’t get quite enough attention. Apparently, the Bush administration is willing to give up on its own North Korea policy, and allow Kim Jung Il to make prohibited arms deals. Three months after the United States successfully pressed the United Nations to impose strict […]
Apparently, different people chose to honor the fourth anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s downfall in different ways. First, there’s the White House’s way. As Iraq observed the fourth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein yesterday, the lead item on the White House Web site, under the heading “LATEST NEWS,” was a photograph of Clifford the […]
Today’s edition of quick hits. * Remember when we were counting on Moqtada al-Sadr and his forces to lay low while U.S. troops tried to bring some semblance of stability to Iraq? Never mind: “[I]n a message sent to an anti-American demonstration today in Najaf, Sadr urged Iraqi security forces to stop working with American […]
The Congressional Black Caucus Institute can’t say it wasn’t warned. Democratic activists and officials implored the CBC Institute not to partner with Fox News for a debate with the Democratic presidential candidates. The CBC Institute struck the deal anyway — assuming that they needed candidates, not activists, to pull off a successful event. As of […]
In case you missed it, about a week ago, this item ran on some overseas news wires. The government of Belgium’s French-speaking region of Wallonia, which has a population of about 4 million, has approved a tax on barbequing, local media reported. Experts said that between 50 and 100 grams of CO2, a so-called greenhouse […]
Last month, House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, inviting her to participate in an upcoming hearing on the president’s infamous “16 words” — the White House’s 2002 claim that Saddam Hussein had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger, a claim that was ultimately based on […]
There’s been a surprising amount of attention lately on embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales preparing for his upcoming Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, which if the conventional wisdom is to be believed, will determine whether he keeps his job. A strong, persuasive performance, in which Gonzales can explain why his fairly obvious lies aren’t as bad […]
I am so spectacularly tired of debunking the right’s absurd attacks on Speaker Pelosi’s Syria trip that I promised not to do anymore posts on the subject. But Joe Lieberman’s nonsense yesterday requires just one more visit to the subject. [Yesterday] on CNN, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) said he “strongly disagrees” with Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s […]
The LA Times’ Tom Hamburger takes a closer look at what I think is still one of the under-reported angles to the prosecutor purge scandal — the alternate communications system the White House set up for staffers. When Karl Rove and his top deputies arrived at the White House in 2001, the Republican National Committee […]