Poll Day

If you’ve been reading this site for a while, you’ve come to expect this. If you’re new, welcome; we do this every Friday afternoon. It’s my weekly round-up of statewide presidential polls released over the last seven days, and this week features one of the longest lists since I started doing this. Note: Zogby Interactive/Wall […]

Bush’s recipe for defeat

(This post is considerably longer than usual. Sorry; I had a lot to say.) On Air Force One this morning, Bush compared himself to bicyclist Lance Armstrong and insisted both would come through in the end. “He’s going to win and I’m going to win,” Bush said en route to Florida and West Virginia — […]

Meet the new boss; same as the old boss?

My friend Poppy alerted me to a story you may be hearing a bit about over the weekend. Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, […]

The once-inevitable ethics war never came to fruition

Speaking of Chris Bell’s ethics complaint against Tom DeLay (see below), at the time of its filing, a long-standing ethics truce between the parties had been broken. Talk of a full-blown partisan war in the House was everywhere. Indeed, House Republicans talked a good game about all the attacks they were prepared to levy against […]

More calls for an independent investigation of DeLay

It’s encouraging to see a lot of follow-up on an Austin American-Statesman report from last weekend on Tom DeLay’s ethics troubles. As you probably recall, Rep. Chris Bell (D-Texas), screwed over by DeLay’s re-redistricting scheme, filed a sweeping complaint against the House majority leader with the House Ethics Committee last month. The Statesman noted, however, […]

Has anyone seen Rummy?

The AP’s Robert Burns had an interesting observation yesterday: No one’s seen Rumsfeld in a while. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, for years the most public face of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism, has suddenly become scarce. Burdened by the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal and constrained by the presidential election campaign, the Pentagon chief […]

I’m still not sure where Camejo is from

I don’t mean to blog a dead horse here, but I wanted to follow up for a moment about whether Ralph Nader’s running mate, Peter Camejo, is actually eligible to run for VP. Many of you saw my post the other day about this and sent in news clips that identify Camejo as having been […]

Bush plays hide and seek with the U.N. over Halliburton

I’ve never seen a group of people who have been more anxious to stonewall legitimate investigations than the Bush administration. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen reports just like this one over the last four years. The Bush administration is withholding information from U.N.-sanctioned auditors examining more than $1 billion in contracts […]

Things are getting ridiculous for the Illinois GOP

If I weren’t so excited about Barack Obama’s campaign in Illinois, I might even feel a little sorry for the state GOP at this point. After getting turned down by nearly every possible candidate, Republicans are more or less left with two options — Jack Ryan, who abandoned his Senate campaign after a sex scandal, […]

Falwell gets busted

TV preacher Jerry Falwell has, in recent years, been relatively cautious about using his tax-exempt ministries for partisan political purposes. He’s always been a GOP hack, and has repeatedly expressed support for Republican candidates, but in recent cycles, has generally kept his ministries out of the politicking business. This month, however, Falwell slipped — and […]