Conservatives are still upset about the line-up for the Republican National Convention

Dems are poised for one of their most unified national conventions in recent memory. Our friends on the other side of the aisle? Not so much. More than half the Republicans in the House have signed a formal complaint to President Bush about the failure to give prominent conservative, pro-life party members even one prime-time […]

Tom Harkin hasn’t forgotten the Plame Game

The right has been unusually excited about recent revelations from the Senate Intelligence Committee that allegedly call Joseph Wilson’s credibility into question. For his part, Wilson has very ably replied to each of the items in a detailed response to the panel, which Salon published online last week. I’m inclined to believe Wilson’s account, but […]

The one thing that can keep Bush from taking time off

The president who has taken more time off than any of his predecessors, including each of the last three Augusts, sounds like he’d like this summer to be like the others. Unfortunately for Bush, a certain annoyance — running for president — is getting in the way. [T]he 2004 campaign has ruined Mr. Bush’s Texas […]

The ties that bind

Let’s see, there’s a Middle Eastern country known to be a state-sponsor of terror, which has developed and used weapons of mass destruction, is trying to develop nuclear weapons, hates the U.S., threatens Israel, and thwarts any and all democratic reform. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq? Of course not. The country is Iran. And now we can […]

Poll Day

If you’ve been reading this site for a while, you’ve come to expect this. If you’re new, welcome; we do this every Friday afternoon. It’s my weekly round-up of statewide presidential polls released over the last seven days, and this week features one of the longest lists since I started doing this. Note: Zogby Interactive/Wall […]

Bush’s recipe for defeat

(This post is considerably longer than usual. Sorry; I had a lot to say.) On Air Force One this morning, Bush compared himself to bicyclist Lance Armstrong and insisted both would come through in the end. “He’s going to win and I’m going to win,” Bush said en route to Florida and West Virginia — […]

Meet the new boss; same as the old boss?

My friend Poppy alerted me to a story you may be hearing a bit about over the weekend. Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, […]

The once-inevitable ethics war never came to fruition

Speaking of Chris Bell’s ethics complaint against Tom DeLay (see below), at the time of its filing, a long-standing ethics truce between the parties had been broken. Talk of a full-blown partisan war in the House was everywhere. Indeed, House Republicans talked a good game about all the attacks they were prepared to levy against […]

More calls for an independent investigation of DeLay

It’s encouraging to see a lot of follow-up on an Austin American-Statesman report from last weekend on Tom DeLay’s ethics troubles. As you probably recall, Rep. Chris Bell (D-Texas), screwed over by DeLay’s re-redistricting scheme, filed a sweeping complaint against the House majority leader with the House Ethics Committee last month. The Statesman noted, however, […]

Has anyone seen Rummy?

The AP’s Robert Burns had an interesting observation yesterday: No one’s seen Rumsfeld in a while. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, for years the most public face of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism, has suddenly become scarce. Burdened by the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal and constrained by the presidential election campaign, the Pentagon chief […]