A year ago, the senior managing director for Rudy Giuliani’s consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, said, “We bend over backwards and are very careful about who we do business with, for the most obvious reasons — from the beginning, Rudy’s brand of integrity and ethics always had to be preserved.” In retrospect, the comment seems almost […]
Today’s edition of quick hits. * Dealing with the aftermath: “The Bush administration scrambled Thursday to deal with the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto after having invested significant diplomatic capital in promoting reconciliation between her and President Pervez Musharraf. President Bush, speaking briefly to reporters at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, urged […]
Former President Bill Clinton caused a bit of a stir recently when he suggested Hillary Clinton, if elected, would send her husband and H.W. Bush around the world to help repair the United States’ image after seven years of deteriorating global standing. (Bush 41 reportedly isn’t interested.) In light of Clinton’s comments, Bush was asked […]
Apparently within striking distance in New Hampshire, and being touted in some circles as having an indirect route to the GOP nomination, John McCain has quickly become the center of Mitt Romney’s attention. The two had an interesting exchange yesterday, and pay particular attention to the senator’s response. Romney’s political quarry for the day was […]
Given the costs of healthcare in this country, I suppose this was inevitable. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Wednesday that employers could reduce or eliminate health benefits for retirees when they turn 65 and become eligible for Medicare. The policy, set forth in a new regulation, allows employers to establish two classes of retirees, […]
Way back in May, at the first debate for the Republican presidential candidates, there was an interesting exchange that signaled what we could expect from Mike Huckabee. Q: Governor Huckabee, this question comes from a reader in New York. In light of the scandals plaguing the current administration and its allies, involving corruption and cronyism, […]
Following up on an earlier item, I probably didn’t need another example of why most television news is unwatchable, but MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough offered one anyway. Within an hour of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination: This is just bizarre, for so many reasons. To hear Scarborough tell it, Giuliani “talks” about 9/11, so the Bhutto slaying necessarily […]
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: * Hoping to end nagging questions about the candidate’s health, Rudy Giuliani’s campaign offered a statement from Dr. Valentin Fuster, the former mayor’s doctor for the past seven years, who said the candidate […]
I got my first email that Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto had been killed at 8:47 a.m. this morning. I started hearing about “what this means” for the U.S. presidential race by about 8:56 a.m. (By 9:30 a.m., Joe Scarborough apparently was telling MSNBC viewers that this is good news for Rudy Giuliani.) It’s just […]
One of the more annoying qualities of the Bush White House’s policy on stem-cell research the last several years is its incoherence. It’s not just that the president has blocked potentially life-saving medical research, it’s that his rationale for doing so ends up contradicting itself. As Bush sees it, embryos are human life, and should […]