I guess yesterday’s speech from Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) wasn’t persuasive; the long knives are out. Idaho Sen. Larry Craig’s political support eroded significantly Wednesday when three fellow Republicans in Congress called for his resignation and party leaders pushed him from senior committee posts in the Senate. The White House expressed disappointment — and no […]
This has been making the rounds today, and it’s just too odd to ignore. On the August 28 edition of MSBNC Live, hosted by MSNBC general manager Dan Abrams, Tucker Carlson, host of MSNBC’s Tucker, asserted, “Having sex in a public men’s room is outrageous. It’s also really common. I’ve been bothered in men’s rooms.” […]
Yesterday, the NYT and the LAT ran news-analysis pieces suggesting that the president will finally have a “fresh start” at governing now that Alberto Gonzales and Karl Rove have resigned. The argument doesn’t make a lot of sense — it’s not as if there’s a sensible, reasonable president, waiting with baited breath to start governing […]
The NYT’s headline makes it sound like the latest data is encouraging: “Census Shows a Modest Rise in U.S. Income.” The article reflects a more dispiriting reality. The nation’s median household income grew modestly in 2006, the Census Bureau reported yesterday, even as the percentage of people without health insurance hit a high. Experts said […]
I know I mentioned this earlier, but let’s take a moment to consider the Idaho Values Alliance’s statement on the Larry Craig sex scandal in a little more detail. The IVA is considered a fairly major player in Idaho Republican politics — it’s the state’s largest religious right group — and its decision to call […]
A few weeks ago, I noticed a few bloggers debating which Wall Street Journal editorial was the most fundamentally dishonest. There are almost too many pieces to choose from, but I’d argue that today’s gem on global warming is at least as bad as anything I’ve ever seen the paper run. You know the story: […]
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: * The rumors are true: Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) has won the support of the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), which as the WaPo noted, is among the most “politically active and […]
I’ve watched with some amazement the radicalization of the modern Republican Party that started in earnest with Gingrich, continued through DeLay, was made more severe by Cheney, and continues on today through some odd sense of ideological inertia. The consequences of this radicalization for the political landscape have been sweeping (and devastating), but it’s also […]
The AP noted this morning, “On the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, anger over the stalled rebuilding was palpable Wednesday throughout the city where the mourning for the dead and feeling of loss doesn’t seem to subside.” How could anyone feel anything but anger? For all the rhetoric from the administration, exactly two years after […]
At a press conference last month, the president said Congress has one, and only one, role to play in shaping war policy: handing over big bags of money, with no questions asked and no strings attached. “Let me make sure you understand what I’m saying,” Bush said. “Congress has all the right in the world […]