The Carpetbagger Report

There was a point in the early summer in which it looked like John Edwards looked at Barack Obama as a rival to be targeted. Edwards publicly questioned Obama’s electability, and accused the Illinois senator of “stealing” some of his policy proposals. As a strategy, this made perfect sense. With Hillary Clinton leading the field, […]

With the Bush administration re-writing the privacy rule book — and in some cases, simply throwing it away — it probably shouldn’t come as too big a surprise that Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, wants the American electorate to expect privacy to mean something different from now on. (thanks to Zeitgeist […]

Admiral William Fallon, head of U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, has heard plenty of war-mongering rhetoric from the right when it comes to Iran. In some circles, most notably Rudy Giuliani’s inner circle, the debate is basically over whether to start the bombing raids this morning or this afternoon. […]

Barack Obama made his first appearance on Meet the Press in quite a while yesterday, and subjected himself to Tim Russert’s aggressive questioning. Most political observers probably tune into interviews like these, watching to see if the pugilist will knock his opponent down — in this case, if Russert will “nail” Obama with a subject […]

Iowa Democrats hosted a boisterous Jefferson-Jackson dinner last night, with 9,000 enthusiastic attendees packing the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines. If you missed C-SPAN’s coverage, most of the candidates posted their appearances on YouTube: Dodd, Edwards, Obama, Richardson, and Clinton (though Clinton’s clip is only a brief excerpt). Biden hasn’t posted his speech, while […]

Here’s an unexpected turn of events: the Bush administration wants England to be more like France when it comes to a conflict in the Middle East. The Bush administration is losing patience with Gordon Brown over Iran, with senior American diplomats frustrated by his reluctance to declare bluntly that the Islamic state must never be […]

If anything, Hillary Clinton’s leads in recent polls have almost been too big. As the race for the Democratic nomination tightens, as these races almost always do, it gives the appearance of Clinton faltering and losing momentum. It’s probably not a fair characterization. After all, when a frontrunner goes from a big double-digit lead to […]

It’s rather unusual for high-profile columnists at the same newspaper to engage in a public quarrel, but the NYT’s Paul Krugman and David Brooks have been going at it, slyly. In a recent column about race and politics, Krugman noted the Republican Party’s use of the Southern Strategy to pit whites and blacks against one […]

In noting the relative political insignificance of presidential candidate endorsements, the NYT’s Michael Powell reported today: So the most unlikely pairing of the presidential campaign is unveiled, with the Rev. Pat Robertson flashing a television-practiced smile at Rudolph W. Giuliani, the thrice-married, pro-abortion-rights former mayor of New York. This same preacher once said that the […]

This seems to come up every couple of weeks, as if the political establishment expects action. That doesn’t make it any more likely. Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney said Saturday his political advisers have warned him against giving a speech explaining his Mormon faith. During a house party overlooking Squam Lake, Romney was asked by […]