After a miserable performance in the Ames Straw Poll, former Wisconsin governor and former HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson is leaving the Republican presidential field just a little smaller. After a sixth-place finish in Saturday’s Iowa Straw Poll, Tommy Thompson, the four-term governor of Wisconsin and former secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, […]
In April, some White House recess appointments really annoyed Senate Democrats. Looking ahead, Harry Reid & Co. didn’t know what to expect Bush to do when the Senate broke for August, but the prospects were discouraging. One report suggested Senate Dems would limit the recess to just 10 days, while another noted that Reid would […]
Several months ago, I had a constantly-updated list of John McCain’s many policy flip-flops, as the one-time GOP maverick abandoned every position that made him popular, on route to currying favor with the conservative Republican base. The list got up to 17, which is quite a few flip-flops for one candidate. As it turns out, […]
Meet the Press offered one of the more compelling line-ups in a while yesterday morning, with the “debate” between Daily Kos’ Markos Moulitsas and Democratic Leadership Council Chairman Harold Ford, Jr. You’d think, given recent history, that there is no love lost between the two, and a high-profile confrontation on national television could lead to […]
He won’t be frog-marched out of the White House, but the man the president affectionately refers to as “Turd Blossom” is stepping down. Karl Rove, U.S. President George W. Bush’s senior political adviser, will voluntarily step down from his White House post at the end of the month, senior administration officials said Monday. Rove, who […]
The Brookings Institution’s Michael O’Hanlon caused quite a stir a couple of weeks ago with an NYT op-ed, co-written with Ken Pollack, on U.S. “progress” in Iraq. The piece immediately became The Most Important Opinion Piece Ever, at least as far as Bush and his supporters are concerned. The two, who recently returned from an […]
In describing the resent FISA “revisions,” Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter gets shrill. I hate to sound melodramatic about it, but while everyone was at the beach or “The Simpsons Movie” on the first weekend in August, the U.S. government shredded the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, the one requiring court-approved “probable cause” before Americans can be […]
The LAT had an interesting item today, speculating about whether presidential candidate Fred Thompson will follow Senate candidate Thompson’s style, and campaign in his favorite prop. Thompson was the front runner for the GOP nomination [in the late spring of 1994], but Rep. Jim Cooper, his presumed Democratic opponent, had a big lead in the […]
More U.S. cities will soon have more cameras watching more Americans. The Department of Homeland Security is funneling millions of dollars to local governments nationwide for purchasing high-tech video camera networks, accelerating the rise of a “surveillance society” in which the sense of freedom that stems from being anonymous in public will be lost, privacy […]
George W. Bush openly mocked the very idea of “nation building” as a presidential candidate in 2002, but after 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan, Bush seemed to appreciate the importance of his responsibilities and the task at hand. He was aware of the fact that Afghans had been abandoned by the West before, and […]