Pet Peeve Watch: Snow storms don’t disprove global warming

I’ve noticed that a few conservative sites are excited about this Drudge item from last night: House Hearing On ‘Warming Of The Planet’ Canceled After Ice Storm The Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality hearing scheduled for Wednesday, February 14, 2007, at 10:00 a.m. in room 2123 Rayburn House Office Building has been postponed due […]

Abusing Lincoln

Frank J. Gaffney Jr., president of the far-right Center for Security Policy and a columnist for the conservative Washington Times, wrote a column this week blasting congressional lawmakers who support a non-binding resolution on Bush’s escalation policy. Gaffney’s piece led with this quote: “Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine […]

Bush finds his inner Clinton — several years too late

The WaPo’s Glenn Kessler and Edward Cody noted today that the administration’s newly-struck deal with North Korea was reached because the president “was willing to give U.S. negotiators new flexibility to reach an agreement.” That’s not a sentence I expected to see anytime soon. Bush isn’t supposed to believe in “flexibility” when it comes to […]

GOP leaders admit they ‘lose’ the Iraq debate if they stick to the issue

The resolution the House is debating this week is surprisingly straightforward; House Dems even managed to keep the whole thing to just 58 words. Point #1 says we support the troops; point #2 says Congress “disapproves” of Bush’s escalation strategy. And yet, listening to this week’s debate, it seems as if most of the Republican […]

Tuesday’s Mini-Report

Today’s edition of quick hits. * Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-Ga.) died this afternoon after battling cancer and lung disease. The 65-year-old Norwood died at his home in Augusta, Ga., his office said. House members debating the war in Iraq briefly interrupted proceedings for a moment of silence in his honor. My condolences to his family. […]

How to prove a point to al Qaeda, Take 1

For me, this summarizes perfectly the entire current state of the debate over the war in Iraq. A friend on the Hill responds to GOP Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s argument on the House floor that, by withdrawing from Iraq, America would show al Qaeda that we can’t stomach combat casualties: “Which raises the question, just how […]

Restoring habeas corpus

When the Military Commissions Act, which among other things suspended habeas corpus for suspected terrorists, went to the Senate floor in September, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) noted, “Surely as we are standing here, if this bill is passed and habeas corpus is stricken, we’ll be back on this floor again” after the courts reject the […]

Tears of a clown

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), who’s never showed much of anything in the way of emotion, reportedly takes this week’s floor debate over a non-binding resolution on troop escalation so seriously, he began crying about it this morning. Boehner appeared at a stake out of House GOP leaders that featured an appearance by Rep. […]

‘The Terrorism Index’

The Center for American Progress and Foreign Policy, an influential journal published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, launched an interesting project last summer. CAP and FP asked 100 leading American foreign-policy analysts, from both sides of the aisle, for their perspectives on the war on terrorism. The participants included some serious heavy-hitters, including […]

Newsweek’s ‘periscope’ stuck looking backwards

Newsweek publishes a weekly “Conventional Wisdom watch” graphic, with arrows denoting whether major players are going up, down, or sideways. It’s not exactly intended to be real news; the box is more “infotainment.” That said, it often offers a sense of how major news stories are being perceived. As Greg Sargent noted, this week’s piece […]