Leading up to the war in Iraq, the issue of whether the United States would be viewed as “liberators” in Iraq was the subject of intense debate. The administration insisted we would be and our popularity would make the war go smoother, faster, and with fewer casualties on both sides. After some initially tougher-than-expected battles […]
I’m not sure if any of my readers are watching this season’s 24 on Fox. If you are and you haven’t yet seen this week’s episode, you may want to skip this post to avoid a potential “spoiler.” Carpetbagger, you ask, isn’t this blog is about government and politics? Why are you bringing up 24? […]
I’ve found that politicians will occasionally ignore polls and pursue a policy that may be politically unpopular. Polls, after all, are not always reliable. But when voters speak their minds at the ballot box, and enact a new law by popular demand via a referendum, politicians and lawmakers generally respect the electorate’s wishes. Generally, but […]
It would be easier to believe that President Bush was serious about finding qualified judicial nominees, and sincere when he says he wants to remove politics from the judicial nomination process, if he stopped nominating radically conservative activists for the federal bench. Since Bush took office over two years ago, the debate over judicial nominees […]
The American Prospect’s weblog, Tapped, had a terrific item yesterday about some controversial research indicating that publicly-financed tuition vouchers to religious and other private schools helps African American children. As Tapped explained, Paul Peterson, a long-time advocate of public aid for private schools, published a study showing “that black students who had won in a […]
I remember about three years ago, President Clinton would frequently make jokes about the 22nd Amendment, which prohibits a president from being elected more than twice, and how much he resented its presence in the Constitution. There was probably a kernel of truth in his jokes, but no one seriously ever talks about repealing the […]
Former Senator Carol Mosley Braun, who claims to be a Democratic presidential candidate, quietly released her Q1 fundraising totals yesterday. The grand total for the first quarter of 2003? $72,000. Only Carol Mosley Braun could make Dennis Kucinich look like a real candidate. After all, when he reported $180,000, I thought no one could do […]
In the midst of Rep. Barbara Cubin’s (R-Wyo.) outrageous remark last week suggesting that all black people are drug addicts, it was almost too easy to overlook the legislation being debated in the House at the time. The bill under consideration when Cubin made her now infamous comparison dealt with a Republican effort to protect […]
Since I mentioned all the fundraising totals for the other Democratic presidential candidates, I thought I’d mention that Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), easily the oddest of the field, collected an under-whelming $180,000 in the first quarter of 2003. That’s less than a fifth of what Bob Graham (D-Fla.) collected, and Graham was recovering from major heart […]
Many thanks to Carpetbagger’s friend, let’s call her Buffy, for giving him a heads up on a great article in today’s Salon. (Thanks, Buff) As the Salon article explains, the “spoils of war” are being divvied up by powerful American interest groups. While you’d expect that to include competing contractors vying for lucrative military contracts, […]