It was only this morning that the newspapers and cable news networks were erupting–and the conservative bloggers smarming oodles of schadenfreude–over Barack Obama’s impending first legislative defeat. TARP funds–the big bank bailout–would never pass the Senate. He’d have to begin his presidency with a veto. Oh dear. But, uh, TARP passed this afternoon. And Geithner [...]

As described on the Senate floor by Orrin Hatch.

Ezra Klein, as usual, has some smart thoughts about what fiscal responsibility really means–hint: it isn’t about this year or next year’s deficit, it’s about long term structural responsibility. Meanwhile, Karl Rove, as usual, has some utterly predictable and utterly political thoughts about the same topic in the Wall Street Journal. He begins with an [...]

It seems to me that, at this point, there is only one course here that makes sense: Governor Paterson should appoint a well-respected figure who would agree not to run in 2010. (Judith Kaye, maybe?) With a caretaker in place for the next two years, the other contenders could compete for the job the old-fashioned [...]

The Page notes that Caroline Kennedy’s public approval in New York state is slipping, while Andrew Cuomo, once an in-law of the Kennedy clan, is gaining ground. This seems like bad news for Camelot fans, given that Kennedy is campaigning as the inevitable successor for Hillary Clinton’s senate job. (The whole “inevitable” thing didn’t work [...]

The Washington Post’s piece about the Congressional struggle to approve the rest of the $350B bank bailout bill has this revelatory nugget: “The Republican base hates this. So a lot of people are saying why anger the base in the name of good policy when it’s going to happen anyway?” said Sen. Robert F. Bennett [...]

One of the more interesting decisions Barack Obama has to make is what he’s going to call the struggle against terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda. Bush called it the Global War on Terror (GWOT), which gave him rhetorical leave to do all sorts of warlike, over-the-top and inappropriate things, like invade Iraq–an act that aggrandized Al [...]