As you may have heard by now, a majority of the Senate wanted to consider a resolution criticizing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, but Republicans had enough votes to obstruct the measure from receiving an up-or-down vote. The Senate yesterday rejected a bid to conduct a vote of no confidence in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, […]
Today’s edition of quick hits. * AP: “The Army fell short of its recruiting goal for May, its first significant slip in two years. The active-duty Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force met or surpassed their May targets, although the Army National Guard and Air National Guard fell far short. With an array of special […]
Perhaps I can offer one last news item before the Senate takes up its no-confidence resolution regarding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. If anyone in the chamber is still undecided, they may want to consider the perspective of a former senior Justice Department official who came forward to say Gonzales has run the department like “a […]
Election analyst Stuart Rothenberg watched congressional Dems struggle recently with how they would fund the war in Iraq — with/without a withdrawal timeline, with/without benchmarks, with/without a date certain, etc. — and concluded that the party may not have gotten what it wanted, but it came out ahead anyway. Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill played […]
The administration continues to push the legal envelope beyond reason on detainees, and the federal judiciary continues to smack the administration down. In a stinging rejection of one of the Bush administration’s central assertions about the scope of executive authority to combat terrorism, a federal appeals court ordered the Pentagon to release a man being […]
According to the available data, most Americans support abortion rights. That majority gets significantly bigger when Americans are asked whether women impregnated by a rapist should be legally able to terminate their pregnancy. And then there’s Sam Brownback. Sen. Sam Brownback, campaigning for president before the National Catholic Men’s Conference, questioned whether rape victims should […]
As you’ve probably heard, the Senate is poised to consider a non-binding resolution this afternoon, in which the chamber will tell the president it has lost confidence in Alberto Gonzales’ ability to serve as Attorney General. In response, Senate Republicans are expected to present reasonable arguments in defense of Gonzales’ tenure and evidence of the […]
With three admitted skeptics of modern biology seeking the Republican presidential nomination (Huckabee, Brownback, and Tancredo), there’s far more interest than usual in evolution and politics. USA Today added to the interest late last week with a report that showed two-thirds of Americans believe “creationism, the idea that God created humans in their present form […]
We learned last week that the president was staffing up with a new team of eight lawyers in order to help defend the Bush gang from the various charges they’re facing from the various scandals they’ve created. The new additions bring the White House counsel’s office up to 22 lawyers, which is about what Clinton […]
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: * It was odd enough when Mark McKinnon, a senior media adviser to John McCain who also led George W. Bush’s ad efforts in 2000 and 2004, said he’d back Barack Obama if […]