House [tag]Speaker[/tag] [tag]Dennis Hastert[/tag], at the request of the president, made a surprise visit to [tag]Baghdad[/tag] over the weekend. Arriving at 4 am, Hastert said he was impressed with the number of lights he saw. The speaker and his party saw it as a sign of progress, of how much power had been restored in […]
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 what will probably be the last poll before tomorrow’s special election, SurveyUSA reports that [tag]Brian Bilbray[/tag] (R) narrowly leads [tag]Francine Busby[/tag] (D), 47% to 45%. The pollsters noted that Busby leads […]
A Senate vote on a full repeal of the [tag]estate tax[/tag] is slated for this week (probably Thursday), and as part of its coverage, the Washington Post ran dueling op-eds on the issue from [tag]Sebastian Mallaby[/tag] and Sen. [tag]Jeff Sessions[/tag] (R-Ala.). Readers can decide for themselves who makes the stronger case, but I think Ezra […]
When [tag]Bush[/tag] touts the “importance” of a constitutional [tag]amendment[/tag] to ban [tag]gay marriage[/tag] today from the White House, keep in mind the rhetoric is shallow. Though Bush himself has publicly embraced the amendment, he never seemed to care enough to press the matter. One of his old friends told NEWSWEEK that same-sex marriage barely registers […]
The LA Times has a very disturbing report today on the [tag]Pentagon[/tag] putting together a guide for troops on how to handle detainees — and leaving a few key details out. The Pentagon has decided to omit from new [tag]detainee[/tag] [tag]policies[/tag] a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans “humiliating and degrading treatment,” […]
Having been born and raised in [tag]Miami[/tag], I feel it’s my duty to point out reports that help to show just how bizarre a place [tag]Florida[/tag] really is. Take, for example, last night’s 60 Minutes interview with Carl [tag]Hiaasen[/tag]. Whether he’s writing fiction or journalism, Carl Hiaasen’s main character is always Florida, that axis of […]
A few things to mention this morning… First, as some of you might have noticed over the weekend, I’m filling in for Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly this week. My plan is to keep up a pretty normal schedule: I’ll still post the usual amount of content here; I’ll still be chipping in at the […]
This week, the AP’s John Solomon decided that he wanted to tarnish Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. One story, followed by another, and then a third, tried to characterize a non-story as an ethical scandal from a man who not only has great integrity, but who hadn’t done anything wrong. It reached a point in […]
Well, was it? There are, to be sure, several major blogs that follow rigged voting machines and purged voter rolls much closer than I do, but the issue is of particular significance this week because Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has written a thorough report for Rolling Stone in which he makes the case that Republicans […]
According a front-page piece in the WaPo today, the [tag]president[/tag] who famously equates disagreement with disloyalty is suddenly open to subtle forms of [tag]dissent[/tag]. A White House long accused of squelching internal dissent and ignoring outside viewpoints has been reaching out in its moment of weakness to prominent figures who have disagreed with the president. […]