Final vote – 246 to 182. Reps. Jim Marshall (D-Ga.) and Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) were the only Dems to break ranks, while 17 Republicans voted with the majority. What about the rumors about several dozen Republicans joining Dems on this? Either there was some serious last-minute arm twisting, or the GOP was doing a very […]
On January 10, shortly before the president announced his escalation strategy in a nationally televised address, the White House held a press briefing to explain the Bush policy to reporters. An unnamed senior administration official, speaking from Tony Snow’s podium, specifically emphasized benchmarks that will let Americans gauge progress in Iraq. “Well, here’s — but […]
For the better part of 2006, it seemed we could barely go a few days without learning of another congressional Republican facing a federal criminal investigation. I doubt 2007 will top it, but this year’s already off to a good start — if you’re a defense attorney. This one takes a few twists and turns, […]
I suspect it was quite embarrassing. The Washington Times’ Frank Gaffney repeated a bogus quote from Abraham Lincoln as the lede in his column this week. Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) saw the column, and used the fabricated quote as part of his argument in support of the president’s Iraq policy. Oops. Of course, accidents happen. […]
As the communications director for Joe Lieberman’s 2006 Senate campaign, Dan Gerstein developed a relationship with the broader blogging community. It wasn’t a good relationship — I think I’d call it “tense,” and maybe “acrimonious” — but the two sides got to know each other fairly well. By November, Gerstein’s contempt for the netroots was […]
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, the pro-choice, pro-gay rights serial adulterer, will speak at TV preacher’s Pat Robertson’s Regent University in April, the school announced yesterday. The news comes just one day after Regent announced […]
If there’s one iron-clad rule of the punditocracy, it’s this: once everyone agrees on a controversial point, it’s time to write the opposite. For example, the entire political world now agrees that George W. Bush is the least popular president in a generation, overseeing a disaster in Iraq, and will find it next to impossible […]
We learned two weeks ago that the Justice Department’s decision to inexplicably fire a series of U.S. Attorneys may have been influenced by administration higher-ups. Pressure “did not come from the people who would know about the U.S. Attorneys’ job performance (their supervisors at the Justice Department), but rather from power players in the White […]
Yesterday we learned about the Defense Department’s pre-war “planning,” if you could call it that, in August 2002, based on wildly optimistic expectations that are almost comical in hindsight. As the NYT noted, the newly declassified plans “provide a firsthand look at how far the violent reality of Iraq today has deviated from assumptions that […]
Picking out the most spectacularly dumb comment from this week’s House debate over Iraq escalation isn’t easy. One could certainly make an argument on behalf of Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-Fla.), who summarized her policy position by saying, “In the South, we have a wonderful saying and it goes like this: Get ‘er done.” A reasonable […]