For all the spin that Republicans are doing fine — they’re in control, have an agenda, know how to govern, etc. — sometimes reality, no matter how inconvenient, has a way of making it to the surface. House Republican leaders were forced to abruptly pull their $54 billion budget-cutting bill off the House floor yesterday, […]
For the better part of the last six decades, the House and Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committees have held a joint hearing, before crafting their budgets, in which leaders of veterans’ groups are able to share their concerns directly with lawmakers from both chambers and both parties. It’s become an important “tradition” for everyone involved. And […]
Republicans perfected the execution of “wedge” politics. They’d find otherwise united Dems and peel off supporters using cultural wedges — affirmative action, gay rights, flag burning, etc. — to divide and conquer. Newsweek’s Howard Fineman reported today that Dems are taking a page from the GOP playbook and going with something Fineman calls “Wedge Strategy […]
This week, Bill Frist clearly suggested he was less concerned about “black sites,” the CIA’s secret prisons in Europe, than media reports about the facilities. This afternoon, Frist stopped suggesting and made it explicitly clear. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says he is more concerned about the leak of information regarding secret CIA detention centers […]
The Hill reported a couple of weeks ago that Bush couldn’t count on Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum to be an enthusiastic ally anymore, as the struggling Pennsylvania senator realized that standing by an unpopular president isn’t exactly a recipe for success. As it turns out, we’re seeing the effects of Santorum’s concerns more clearly […]
The president may be the only president of an industrialized country to reject the seriousness of global warming — Bush isn’t convinced it’s real and allows his White House to edit out references to global warming from government reports — but his constituents, fortunately, believe otherwise. Most Americans believe global warming exists and a majority […]
On Tuesday, voters in Dover, Pa. made it clear that the activists who forced intelligent-design creationism into a science class curriculum had made a mistake. Local residents voted all of school board members who backed intelligent design out of office, replacing them with a slate of candidates who backed real science. TV preacher Pat Robertson, […]
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: * Now that Gov.-elect Jon Corzine (D) is leaving the Senate, the positioning to be his replacement is almost ridiculous. Howard Dean and Harry Reid want Corzine to appoint acting Gov. Richard Codey […]
There’s been some debate — or at a minimum, ambiguity — over whether the president fully supports Dick Cheney’s efforts to protect the CIA’s ability to torture detainees. This week, a State Department official described Cheney’s camp as a “shrinking island,” with key administration officials, including Condoleezza Rice and John Negroponte, opposing Cheney’s position. Even […]
So much for the Republican leadership’s clever ideas. To briefly recap, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert announced Tuesday that they wanted a formal congressional investigation into the leak to the Washington Post about “black sites,” the CIA’s secret prisons in Europe. The idea, apparently, was to put Dems on the […]