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: * Immediately after last night’s GOP debate, nascent presidential hopeful Fred Thompson appeared on Fox News to offer his analysis of his competitors (yes, it was breathtakingly unethical journalism). The former senator used […]
About a month ago, in the first Republican presidential candidates’ debate, Mitt Romney tried to explain how he perceives threats to the U.S. from the Middle East: “This is about Shi’a and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the worldwide jihadist effort to try and […]
Weekly Standard editor and Fox News contributor William Kristol is so disgusted by Scooter Libby’s conviction, and the president’s reluctance to pardon the convicted felon, that he’s publicly questioning Bush’s character. Will Bush pardon Libby? Apparently not — even if it means a man who worked closely with him and sought tirelessly to do what […]
On Sunday, Democratic presidential candidates were asked whether they’d let gay soldiers serve in the U.S. military. All eight said they would. Last night, Wolf Blitzer posed the same question to the GOP field. All 10 said they would not. The amusing part, however, was listening them try and explain why. Ron Paul, who claims […]
The good news from last night’s Republican debate in New Hampshire is that no one endorsed torture. The event lasted two hours, and the subject never came up. The bad news is these guys aren’t necessarily opposed to using nuclear weapons against Iran. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked, “If it came down to a preemptive U.S. […]
Today’s edition of quick hits. * I sure hope there’s some kind of coherent diplomatic strategy to back up Bush’s antagonistic attitude towards Russia: “President Bush risked further stoking a testy dispute with Russia over a new U.S. missile defense system on Tuesday, saying Moscow has ‘derailed’ once-promising democratic reforms.” Bush added that he’s seen […]
It’s a busy news day — Libby, Jefferson, a GOP presidential debate, the return of the Cold War — but let’s not forget that the U.S. Attorney scandal isn’t even close to being done yet. It’s been pushed off the front page, at least for now, but developments continue unabated. Right now, for example, the […]
In case you missed it, everything about this court ruling was encouraging — especially the judges’ rationale. If President Bush and Vice President Cheney can blurt out vulgar language, then the government cannot punish broadcast television stations for broadcasting the same words in similarly fleeting contexts. That, in essence, was the decision on Monday, when […]
Bush joined Czech President Klaus and Czech Prime Minister Topolanek for a media event this morning in Prague, where each read pleasant statements about friendly relationship between the Czech Republic and the United States. The assembled journalists seemed to be on the leaders’ minds. Topolanek, for example, mentioned that security, human rights, and peacekeeping missions […]
Following up on the item below on Scooter Libby’s 30-month prison sentence, Judge Reggie Walton also released nearly 400 pages of letters sent to the court by Libby’s backers, all of whom asked for leniency. It was quite a collection. Donald Rumsfeld talked about Libby’s “strong character and integrity,” John Bolton continued to suggest Libby […]