The Carpetbagger Report

As the communications director for Joe Lieberman’s 2006 Senate campaign, Dan Gerstein developed a relationship with the broader blogging community. It wasn’t a good relationship — I think I’d call it “tense,” and maybe “acrimonious” — but the two sides got to know each other fairly well. By November, Gerstein’s contempt for the netroots was […]

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: * Rudy Giuliani, the pro-choice, pro-gay rights serial adulterer, will speak at TV preacher’s Pat Robertson’s Regent University in April, the school announced yesterday. The news comes just one day after Regent announced […]

If there’s one iron-clad rule of the punditocracy, it’s this: once everyone agrees on a controversial point, it’s time to write the opposite. For example, the entire political world now agrees that George W. Bush is the least popular president in a generation, overseeing a disaster in Iraq, and will find it next to impossible […]

We learned two weeks ago that the Justice Department’s decision to inexplicably fire a series of U.S. Attorneys may have been influenced by administration higher-ups. Pressure “did not come from the people who would know about the U.S. Attorneys’ job performance (their supervisors at the Justice Department), but rather from power players in the White […]

Yesterday we learned about the Defense Department’s pre-war “planning,” if you could call it that, in August 2002, based on wildly optimistic expectations that are almost comical in hindsight. As the NYT noted, the newly declassified plans “provide a firsthand look at how far the violent reality of Iraq today has deviated from assumptions that […]

Picking out the most spectacularly dumb comment from this week’s House debate over Iraq escalation isn’t easy. One could certainly make an argument on behalf of Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-Fla.), who summarized her policy position by saying, “In the South, we have a wonderful saying and it goes like this: Get ‘er done.” A reasonable […]

Today’s edition of quick hits. * With the House GOP caucus having announced that they will not whip tomorrow’s vote on the anti-escalation resolution, some sources indicate that as many as 60 House Republicans may break ranks and vote with Democrats in support of the measure. * MSNBC has signed Keith Olbermann to a contract […]

The New York Times’ David Brooks takes a shot at war critics today, saying, “[T]he liberal wing of the Democratic Party believes that the world … owes it an apology.” Brooks apparently believes there’s some bitterness about the fact that war critics have been on the right side of the war debate, while war supporters […]

On Friday, the House is going to pass a resolution supporting the troops and criticizing the president’s escalation strategy. On Saturday, the Senate may do the same thing. From a press release issued by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: (thanks to L.M. for the tip) “For nearly four years, the Republican-controlled Senate stood silent on […]

Perhaps the most important moment in yesterday’s White House press conference came when CNN’s Ed Henry pressed the president to explain why he and officials in Iraq had contradictory messages on Iranian weapons being used against Americans in Iraq. Henry asked Bush, “You saying today that you do not know if senior members of the […]