The good news is several House Republicans expressed outrage yesterday over a White House controversy involving classified materials. For a change, these GOP lawmakers want Congress to take its oversight responsibilities seriously and launch a formal congressional investigation. The bad news is these House Republicans are still talking about the Clinton White House. House Republicans […]
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: * Less than a month ago, a Quinnipiac University poll in New Jersey showed state Sen. Tom Kean, Jr., maintaining a narrow lead over Sen. Bob Menendez (D). A new Quinnipiac poll, released […]
New York magazine has a great feature story in its new issue on Stephen [tag]Colbert[/tag] and his bombastic, over-the-top, O’Reilly-like on-air character. New York’s Adam Sternbergh raised an interesting point I hadn’t seen explored much elsewhere: Colbert’s on-air personality…leads to a peculiar comedic alchemy on the show. During one taping I attended, Colbert did a […]
The one minor flaw in the Mark [tag]Foley[/tag] scandal has been a nagging detail: the [tag]Bush[/tag] [tag]White House[/tag] hasn’t been connected to the mess at all. What fun is that? How can the [tag]Republican[/tag] establishment screw up this badly without any fingerprints from the Bush gang? We’re in luck. TNR’s Ryan Lizza reports today that […]
[tag]Fred Kaplan[/tag]’s 2004 piece for the Washington Monthly on U.S. policy towards [tag]North Korea[/tag], “Rolling Blunder,” is the definitive take-down of the Bush administration’s approach to the burgeoning crisis. Digby referred to the article the other day as the “gold standard,” which is the perfect description. Of course, the crisis has worsened since 2004, and […]
Long-time readers may recall that we’ve been covering David Kuo, the former second-in-command at the White House Faith-Based Office, since he first went public with his concerns in early 2005. Kuo, an evangelical Christian and conservative Republican, joined the Bush gang after stints with Bill Bennett and John Ashcroft, thinking he would help implement an […]
Today’s edition of quick hits. * Mark Foley seemed to have a unique fondness for the pages’ dormitory, didn’t he? * I promise to stop linking to Keith Olbermann’s must-see commentaries just as soon as they stop being so extraordinary. (thanks to reader C.K. for the reminder) * In an entirely entertaining turn of events, […]
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has dipped more than a toe into the blogosphere in recent months, yesterday going to so far as to write a post on North Korea (which, in part, blamed Clinton’s “failed” policy) at Captain’s Quarters, one of the right’s leading blogs. I’m not surprised that McCain would conduct some extensive online […]
Chances are, most Americans have never heard of Dr. [tag]K.A. Paul[/tag], leader of a group called the Global Peace Initiative, but he’s an entertaining character. It was Paul, for example, who told an audience in Cleveland on Monday that voters should oust Republicans from the congressional majority because, as he sees it, the GOP is […]
After a series of horrific school shootings in recent weeks, the White House decided to host a panel discussion in Maryland on school safety. Victims and their families spoke, the president listened, the Attorney General was on hand to discuss some law-enforcement efforts, and most of the discussion appeared intentionally driven towards promoting some kind […]