More flip-flopping? Another move to the center? There was much clucking in the media today over the significance of Barack Obama’s reported refusal to fist-bump a little boy yesterday in Ohio yesterday. The brouhaha (which was quickly picked up in a mass e-mail by the Republican National Committee) started with this excerpt from a pool [...]

I suppose it can’t be an “underplayed” story if it was on A1, but I’m still a little surprised this didn’t stir up more discussion today: More than 900 cases alleging that government contractors and drugmakers have defrauded taxpayers out of billions of dollars are languishing in a backlog that has built up over the [...]

At a meeting Tuesday in Denver, about 100 conservative Christian leaders from around the country agreed to unite behind the candidacy of John McCain, a politician they have long distrusted, marking the latest in a string of movements that bode well for McCain’s general election prospects among the Republican base. “Collectively we feel that he [...]

Observers (depending on their politics) have noted with either satisfaction or fear that the McCain campaign is running “a typical Republican campaign.” Now the campaign has shifted adviser Steve Schmidt from bus duty to “day-to-day campaign management,” so we should expect some changes. Schmidt’s been involved in Republican politics basically since he was old enough [...]

Hitchens gets waterboarded: I fought down the first, and some of the second, wave of nausea and terror but soon found that I was an abject prisoner of my gag reflex. The interrogators would hardly have had time to ask me any questions, and I knew that I would quite readily have agreed to supply [...]

• “Historians will quibble for a long time as to whether we should have gone into Iraq … that’s a matter for historians.” Quibble? [The Intelligencer] • “They’re back like Indiana Jones. Tuck a T shirt into a high-waisted pair.” [Brand X] • “Paid for by Matthew 25 Network, Matthew 25.org is not authorized by [...]

Three days in, and the outrage machine still churns over Wesley Clark’s clumsy comments last Sunday. (For those who have not yet viewed the TPM gag reel of cable news hyperventilation, click here.) The conservative editorial page of the New York Post weighs in today, alleging in rather broad strokes a concerted, unapologetic Obama surrogate [...]

So what did the former Secretary of State tell the Democratic and Republican nominees-apparent in those private meetings that were first reported yesterday by National Journal’s Hotline On Call blog? Colin Powell’s endorsement has been a matter of much speculation of late, with Bob Novak having gone so far as to predict that Powell “probably [...]