The Carpetbagger Report

The president responded to the failure of his immigration bill with a brief statement to the press. Take a look. Josh noted, “Have you ever seen such a sad-sack president? … He almost looks and sounds like someone has literally knocked the wind out of him.” I think that’s true, but also believe the president […]

Chris Matthews may go out of his way to help promote Ann Coulter’s bile, but it apparently makes him feel all icky. Concluding an hour-long interview with right-wing pundit Ann Coulter on the June 26 edition of MSNBC’s Hardball, host Chris Matthews said: “We have sold a lot of her books tonight. I don’t know […]

Way back in April, during the first round of debate on war funding, Bush excoriated lawmakers for “spend[ing] billions of dollars on pork barrel projects and spending that are [sic] completely unrelated to this war.” It was one of his more disingenuous complaints — the president’s own war funding proposal included funds for federal prisons, […]

The White House “offer” to the Senate Judiciary Committee was fairly straightforward: if members wanted to talk to WH staffers about the prosecutor purge, the discussions had to be a) private; b) not under oath; and c) without transcripts. It’s that last one that never made any sense. Indeed, the Bush gang never even tried […]

It’s been a discouraging week at the Supreme Court. Over the last four days, there have been five major decisions, all of them 5-4 rulings, all of them victories for conservatives, and all of them backed by the same five-member majority (Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy). Today’s ruling on school racial integration was probably […]

A couple of weeks ago, a confident president said his immigration package was going to pass. “I’ll see you at the bill signing,” Bush said So much for that idea. The Senate drove a stake Thursday through President Bush’s plan to legalize millions of unlawful immigrants, likely postponing major action on immigration until after the […]

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: * Fred Thompson made a campaign appearance in South Carolina yesterday, and received a warm welcome from a far-right audience, though activists apparently left the event unconvinced. Asked “what do you believe in,” […]

As part of the Washington Post’s multi-part profile on Dick Cheney, Bruce Fein, an associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, accused the Vice President of having made “monarchical claims” on power. In an interesting Slate piece, Fein, a self-identified conservative, follows up on these concerns and explicitly calls for the impeachment of Dick […]

Well, this hardly comes as a surprise. President Bush, moving toward a constitutional showdown with Congress, asserted executive privilege Thursday and rejected lawmakers’ demands for documents that could shed light on the firings of federal prosecutors. Bush’s attorney told Congress the White House would not turn over subpoenaed documents for former presidential counsel Harriet Miers […]

We’ve all been thoroughly entertained by Dick Cheney’s “unorthodox” argument that he is not part of the executive branch, a policy position the White House has refused to comment on. Late Tuesday, the Office of the Vice President shifted its rhetoric a bit, arguing that Cheney ignored an executive order because the document exempted him […]