New Mexico’s former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias has been one of the more hard-to-explain firings in the administration’s prosecutor purge. Everything about his record suggests he’d be the last federal prosecutor any sane administration would want to get rid of. As recently as 2004, he was up for a promotion. In 2005, former Deputy Attorney […]
As if the administration didn’t have enough problems, the controversy surrounding the politicization of the General Services Administration seems to be yet another debacle gone horribly awry. We learned on Monday that GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan and White House Deputy Political Director Scott Jennings joined in a videoconference in January to discuss how the […]
I mentioned this in passing earlier, and hope you’ll forgive the redundancy, but the fact that White House officials are largely giving up on their email accounts is of growing significance. Over the last week or so, we’ve learned that White House deputy political director J. Scott Jennings communicated with Justice Department officials about the […]
When the president nominated [tag]Sam Fox[/tag], a major right-wing donor who gave $50,000 to the [tag]Swiftboat[/tag] Vets, to be ambassador to Belgium, it raised a few eyebrows. When the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on Fox’s nomination, Sen. John Kerry, as one might imagine, wasn’t pleased to see him. Kerry wasn’t alone. For […]
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: * In about a half an hour, the political arm of the National Organization for Women will endorse Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. A message posted on the NOW website says PAC Chair Kim […]
About two weeks ago, we started hearing about the panic and paralysis that had taken over the [tag]Justice Department[/tag] in the wake of the [tag]prosecutor[/tag] [tag]purge[/tag] [tag]scandal[/tag]. “You have no idea,” said one Justice official, “how bad it is here.” How’s the nation’s federal law-enforcement agency doing now? Apparently, it’s getting worse — the New […]
We talked on Monday about a depressing media display: a four-minute discussion on The Chris Matthews Show about the prosecutor purge scandal with four powerful media figures from leading news outlets, all of whom treated the controversy as a big joke. Perhaps the low-point of the segment came when Time managing editor Richard Stengel explained […]
If there were any justice, yesterday’s edition of CNN’s Situation Room would be a campaign-altering moment that would dog Sen. [tag]John McCain[/tag] (R-Ariz.) for the next two years. In just a matter of minutes, he was exposed as a fraud. On Monday, McCain appeared on Bill Bennett’s radio program, toeing the right-wing line on “progress” […]
Following up on yesterday’s item, the [tag]Senate[/tag] took up a measure to remove a [tag]withdrawal[/tag] timetable from the spending package that pays for the [tag]war[/tag] in [tag]Iraq[/tag]. As recently as a few days ago, [tag]Republicans[/tag] appeared confident that they had the votes. They didn’t. Senate Democrats scored a surprise victory yesterday in their bid to […]
Today’s edition of quick hits. * Coordinated truck bombs in Iraq killed at least 48 people today and wounded dozens more. The attacks in Tal Afar, the second in four days, occurred about five minutes apart at popular markets in the northern and central parts of the city, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad. As of […]