A fight over al Qaeda that Obama is happy to have

About half-way through last night’s debate in Cleveland, Tim Russert asked Barack Obama if he reserved the right, as president, to “go back into Iraq, once you have withdrawn, with sizable troops in order to quell any kind of insurrection or civil war?” After wrapping up a previous point in relation to Afghanistan, Obama responded: […]

Obama reminds us of the Schiavo controversy

Towards the very end of last night’s debate in Cleveland, Tim Russert asked Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama if, looking back, there were any voted they’d like to take back. Clinton, coming closer to conceding a mistake than I think I’ve heard before, pointed to her 2002 vote on the Iraq AUMF, before transitioning to […]

Wednesday’s campaign round-up

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: * A new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll suggests Dems still have some work to do in the general election: “In head-to-head contests, the poll found, McCain leads Clinton by 6 percentage points (46% […]

The missing White House emails that will never be found

The last we heard from the White House on the subject of its missing emails, one presidential spokesperson was telling the nation, “I wouldn’t rule out that there were a potential 5 million e-mails lost…. We screwed up, and we’re trying to fix it,” while another presidential spokesperson was also telling the nation that White […]

Washington Times improves its style guide, much to the right’s chagrin

For all the criticism I’ve directed towards the far-right Washington Times and its new editor, John Solomon, it’s only fair to give credit where it’s due — the paper changed its style guide this week, immediately making the paper more readable. Chances are, the typical newspaper reader never pays any attention to an outlet’s style […]

As much as I appreciate McCain’s denunciation of Cunningham…

This got quite a bit of attention yesterday, and with good reason. John McCain, to his credit, denounced a right-wing loud-mouth for being a bit of an ass at one of the Republican’s official campaign events in Ohio. A supporter of John McCain, speaking at an official campaign event in Ohio attended by the Arizona […]

Stop Tim Russert before he moderates again

In the last post, we talked a bit about how Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama did in last night’s debate in Cleveland. But I’d remiss if I neglected to note how truly awful Tim Russert was as a moderator. His performance was rather embarrassing — for all of us. This had to be one of […]

Cleveland rocks? Clinton, Obama spar, but did they connect?

If last week’s Democratic debate in Texas seemed a little too cordial given the political climate, last night’s debate in Cleveland featured some of the conflict the political world craved. This very well may have been Hillary Clinton’s last opportunity to take some rhetorical shots at Barack Obama, and possibly throw him off his game […]

Tuesday’s Mini-Report

Today’s edition of quick hits. * More discouraging economic news: “Consumer confidence plunged, the wholesale inflation rate soared, the number of homes being foreclosed jumped, home prices fell sharply and a report predicts big increases in health care costs. Consumer confidence weakened significantly as Americans worry about less-favorable business conditions and job prospects. The New […]

Can McCain blow off the Federal Election Commission?

I’ve been following John McCain’s travails with the Federal Election Commission with great interest, in part because the senator seems to want to pick a fight with Barack Obama over their relative commitments to public financing, and in part because it’s a rather blatant example of McCain blowing off the rules — Bush/Cheney-like — the […]