The Carpetbagger Report

Given Texas’ legal and political culture, and given Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) penchant for the death penalty, this is quite a surprise. Gov. Rick Perry accepted a parole board recommendation Thursday to spare condemned inmate Kenneth Foster, the getaway driver in a 1996 murder who had been scheduled for execution within hours. The sentence […]

In the unlikely event you haven’t seen it elsewhere, the WaPo had a really interesting front-page piece today about how and why Democrats keep losing fights with the Bush White House over national security and counter-terrorism policies. The leadership (and the grassroots, and the netroots) is frustrated that the party knows what to expect, is […]

When the non-partisan Government Accountability Office launched an independent investigation of the administration’s Iraq policy, it found that Iraq has failed to meet 15 out of 18 congressionally-mandated benchmarks for political and military progress. But almost as interesting as the results was the GAO’s motivation for leaking its report: the agency can no longer trust […]

About a month ago, Adm. Michael Mullen, the incoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that the president’s “surge” policy had a short shelf-life — troop deployments could be maintained only through April 2008. The Boston Globe reported today that the surge could last a little longer, but not much. The Pentagon […]

If we withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, the civil war will follow us home. Oh wait, that doesn’t make any sense. Alright, how about, if we withdraw from Iraq, al Qaeda will take over. No, that doesn’t make sense either. OK, I’ve got it. If we withdraw from Iraq, the price of gas will triple. […]

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: * AP: “Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton will give to charity the $23,000 in donations she has received from a Hong Kong-born fundraiser who is wanted in California for failing to appear […]

It was just a couple of months ago that opponents of the president’s Iraq strategy felt like the winds had finally shifted. Dems were united in opposition, polls showed strong public support for the Dems’ withdrawal policy, a growing handful of Republicans had broken ranks, and several more GOP lawmakers had expressed strong reservations about […]

Just last week we learned that the White House is not only strongly resisting a bipartisan congressional effort to expand the Children’s Health Insurance Plan to include 4 million uninsured kids in the U.S., but our “compassionate conservative” president is also forcing states to limit access for children, too. Bush’s timing couldn’t be much worse. […]

So, where are we this hour on the scandal d’jour? Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) is the fourth GOP lawmaker to call on Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) to resign, and there will surely be plenty more as the day goes on. According to one theory, congressional Republicans have quickly unsheathed the long knives as part of […]

In May, the president signed legislation that funded the war in Iraq, and included a mandate that the administration report by Sept. 15 on whether Iraq is “achieving progress” toward 18 specific benchmarks. It was about establishing some measurable standards of success — meeting the benchmarks would reflect actual progress, falling short would reflect failure. […]