The Wall Street Journal has a superb page-one take-out today on Rep. John Murtha’s unabashed pursuit of pork on behalf of his western Pennsylvania district. The figures are eye-popping, and dispiriting: Murtha has funneled literally billions of dollars to his hometown of Johnstown, Pa., and the rest of his district, over the course of his [...]

Fact: Chuck Norris has not endorsed Mike Huckabee. Chuck Norris is Mike Huckabee.

Spencer Ackerman has a smart analysis over at Tapped. I’m a bit less sanguine about the Sadr-Hakim peace holding for very long–there are constant skirmishes between the two factions throughout the Iraqi south, I’m told. But Ackerman’s point about the rise of Sunni military power–67,000 militia-men in arms–is a good one. The trouble is, this [...]

The Giuliani campaign put out a press release today heralding its acquisition of Joe Allbaugh’s services as a “senior adviser” on campaign strategy and homeland security. Allbaugh, you’ll remember, was once a member of the so-called Iron Triangle — the trio of top advisers to then-Gov. George W. Bush in Texas (the other two were [...]

Norman Podhoretz responds to arguments that we should consider deterrence when it comes to Iran. First, I want to say that I think the attitude expressed by Fareed Zakaria represents an irresponsible complacency that I think is comparable to the denial in the early ’30s of the intentions of Hitler that led to what Churchill [...]

As you probably expected, the topic Matt Lauer really wanted to discuss with Obama strategist David Axelrod and Clinton adviser Howard Wolfson this morning was how aggressively Obama planned to attack Clinton at the Democratic debate in Philly tonight. In attempting to lower expectations, however, Axelrod said something that caught my attention. After a set-up [...]

I should have posted on this earlier, but David Kirkpatrick’s piece about the evangelical flock’s growing impatience with their right-wing leaders in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine was probably the most important piece of political journalism I’ve seen this year…yet another sign that we’ve reached the raggedy edge of the right-wing pendulum swing. It also [...]

An audio-only ‘Cast with Pollster.com‘s Mark Blumenthal, getting into some detail about what makes Iowa polls so unreliable.

00:34 Mitt says, “I’m not in favor of privatizing Social Security or making cuts.” 1:03 Mitt says, “You call it privatization, I call it a private account.” “You see, I’m only telling you what you want to hear,” Mitt continued, “Why is that so hard to understand?”