I noted earlier that, two weeks after much of the right went after the Frost family, another S-CHIP family stepped up to endorse the bipartisan compromise legislation recently vetoed by the president. Bethany Wilkerson, a two-year-old who was born with a heart defect, was able to get life-saving surgery thanks to her S-CHIP coverage. The […]
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: * Barack Obama’s campaign distributed another email request for donations this morning, which wouldn’t be unusual except for how blunt it is: “The situation here is simple. We are $2.1 million behind. We […]
About a month ago, the NYT published an op-ed from seven infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division. The piece, “The War as We Saw It,” was a sweeping condemnation of everything we’ve heard from war supporters. As these seven troops explained, U.S. forces are an unwelcome occupying force, the U.S. mission is […]
Last week, three Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee contacted telecommunications companies, inquiring about their participation in government surveillance programs. Apparently, Verizon participated quite a bit, even when the administration didn’t get any of those pesky warrants. Verizon Communications, the nation’s second-largest telecom company, told congressional investigators that it has provided customers’ telephone […]
As recently as 2000, Bob Jones III wrote an open letter that referred to both Catholicism and Mormonism as “cults which call themselves Christian.” And yet, seven years later, a top official at the conservative, fundamentalist Bob Jones University is throwing his political support to Mormon presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. Robert R. Taylor, dean of […]
A couple of weeks ago, Graeme Frost and his family joined congressional supporters of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) to endorse the bipartisan expansion of the policy. As has been well documented, some far-right activists went after the Frost family, using bogus information to argue that Graeme doesn’t deserve coverage from the state […]
There’s some trepidation in scrutinizing candidate’s campaign coffers too closely. Measuring presidential hopefuls by their fundraising totals and cash-on-hand seems like the ultimate in political inside pool. The typical American doesn’t know or care how much money a campaign raises or spends. But the numbers matter anyway. First, the coffers are pored over by reporters […]
Today’s edition of quick hits. * For nearly seven years, the Bush gang held to the opinion that the Middle East peace process is not worthy of its time, in part because Clinton invested heavily in the process. Now, slowly but surely, the administration seems to be coming around: “Saying the time is now for […]
In the era of YouTube, I’d thought most political professionals would have learned by now that cameras can record video and audio, and that a person on camera may soon find their public comments online. The “macaca” incident should have driven this point home for everyone quite a while ago. But, no. Over the weekend, […]
In light of the growing scandal surrounding Blackwater private security forces in Iraq, and efforts on the part of the Maliki government to expel the contractors from the country, Bush administration attorneys are apparently contemplating an awkward legal question: are Blackwater guards who’ve killed Iraqi civilians our own “unlawful combatants”? As a rule, it’s a […]