It’s late-September 2004, just six weeks before Election Day. John Kerry is awfully close to Bush in the polls, and Americans’ concerns about the war in Iraq are escalating. An op-ed appears in the Washington Post that helps change the conventional wisdom among the DC chattering class: I see tangible progress [in Iraq]. Iraqi security […]
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) has sunk his teeth into the latest Cheney scandal and he isn’t letting go. Today’s edition is particularly devastating. In a letter to the White House counsel’s office, Waxman notes that White House spokesperson Dana Perino told reporters last week, “The president and the vice […]
I noted a couple of weeks ago that the California Republican Party has found itself in an embarrassing jam. The state GOP hired Christopher Matthews, a Canadian citizen, as its state deputy political director through a coveted H-1B visa, which seemed odd, given that the party was implicitly suggesting that there are no Americans in […]
The ACLU, MoveOn.org, and a variety of other civil liberties groups have made today a “Day of Action to Restore Law and Justice” on Capitol Hill. The goal is straightforward: convince Congress to “restore the right of habeas corpus.” Coinciding with this important effort is an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal from James Taranto […]
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: * Rudy Giuliani lost his South Carolina campaign chairman, Thomas Ravenel, last week to federal cocaine-distribution charges. Yesterday, Giuliani picked a replacement, Ravenel’s father, Arthur. The new chairman is perhaps best known for […]
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t pay too much attention to Sally Quinn’s WaPo columns. Her reputation for being the social director of the Georgetown cocktail circuit is well deserved; Quinn’s columns tend to let readers know what Republican socialites in DC are chatting about. Hardly the stuff of Pulitzers. But today’s Quinn piece is a little startling […]
We learned last week that of the 1,000 U.S. employees at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, only 10 have a working knowledge of Arabic. I suggested that perhaps the State Department could address the problem by reaching out to some of the dozens of well-trained Arabic linguists the Pentagon threw out of the military for […]
The White House has had almost a week to come up with some semblance of a rationale for Dick Cheney arguing that he’s not part of the executive branch. There are some clever spin doctors in the vaunted White House communications office and some creative lawyers in the WH counsel’s office; surely someone will come […]
For quite a while, much of the DC establishment has wondered whether a respected “elder statesman” in the Republican Party would step up to challenge the president’s war policy in a forceful way. Apparently, Chuck Hagel doesn’t count, because he broke with the party line years ago, and Gordon Smith doesn’t count, because his criticism […]
Today’s edition of quick hits. * If the Justice Department is telling the truth, it is still weighing a decision on whether Dick Cheney is part of the executive branch. Today, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) insisted that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should step aside from the Justice Department’s internal debates on the matter. “It’s clear […]