In case you missed it, about a week ago, this item ran on some overseas news wires. The government of Belgium’s French-speaking region of Wallonia, which has a population of about 4 million, has approved a tax on barbequing, local media reported. Experts said that between 50 and 100 grams of CO2, a so-called greenhouse […]
Last month, House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, inviting her to participate in an upcoming hearing on the president’s infamous “16 words” — the White House’s 2002 claim that Saddam Hussein had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger, a claim that was ultimately based on […]
There’s been a surprising amount of attention lately on embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales preparing for his upcoming Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, which if the conventional wisdom is to be believed, will determine whether he keeps his job. A strong, persuasive performance, in which Gonzales can explain why his fairly obvious lies aren’t as bad […]
I am so spectacularly tired of debunking the right’s absurd attacks on Speaker Pelosi’s Syria trip that I promised not to do anymore posts on the subject. But Joe Lieberman’s nonsense yesterday requires just one more visit to the subject. [Yesterday] on CNN, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) said he “strongly disagrees” with Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s […]
The LA Times’ Tom Hamburger takes a closer look at what I think is still one of the under-reported angles to the prosecutor purge scandal — the alternate communications system the White House set up for staffers. When Karl Rove and his top deputies arrived at the White House in 2001, the Republican National Committee […]
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: * John Edwards announced late on Friday that he will boycott the debate co-hosted by Fox News and the Congressional Black Caucus, scheduled for Sept. 23, though he will participate in the CBC’s […]
For a couple of months, the prosecutor purge scandal has produced a series of disconcerting questions, but the one simmering just below the surface has been about the U.S. Attorneys who weren’t fired. If eight were fired for failing to politicize their offices, what did the other 85 do to keep their jobs? There are […]
If you take a look at Walter F. Murphy’s Wikipedia page, he sounds like an accomplished and impressive scholar. “He won a Distinguished Service Cross for his service as a Marine in Korea,” the page says. “He held the chair of McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton. In addition to non-fiction works on political science, […]
If [tag]Rudy Giuliani[/tag] really wants to convince voters that he’s an expert on foreign policy, I’d like to offer the former NYC mayor a helpful tip: pick up a newspaper once in a while. Giuliani recently told a supportive audience, “It’s something that I think I know, I think I know as well as anybody […]
One of the problems with public perceptions about crazed TV preacher Pat Robertson is that most perceive him as just a crazed TV preacher. He’ll go on his crazed daily television show (The 700 Club), offer crazed commentary just about everything, and then make crazed rationalizations for his lunacy. The media marvels at his madness, […]