Mr. Swamp was mystified by the curious knot of security vehicles he encountered last night, as he took a shortcut to bring Swampkid #2 home from basketball practice. Mystery solved: Barack Obama last night, ducking into his first dinner party since moving back to Washington, at the Chevy Chase home of…conservative columnist George Will! Who, [...]

It’s Tuesday night, which means it’s almost time for another episode of “Homeland Security on ABC. As Jeff Rosen points out over at the New Republic, the over-the-top reality show rather hilariously–if unintentionally–highlights the fact that the good folks at the Department of Homeland Security spend very little of their time catching terrorists and most [...]

I spent the day at the Clinton confirmation hearings and came away impressed, as always, with the woman’s sheer ability to process information. Not a missed beat, not an “I’ll have to get back to you on that…” It was several hours into the hearing that the full force of the new Administration hit me. [...]

Treasury Secretary-designate Tim Geithner has been meeting this afternoon with the Senate Finance Committee to discuss two problems that have come to light regarding his personal finances. One of them involves a failure to pay self-employment taxes when he was working for the International Monetary Fund; the other, his employment of an immgrant housekeeper whose [...]

The new banner looks MUCH better.

We have argued here before that fixing the FDA should be at the top of Barack Obama’s priority list. This story–easy to miss back on A14 of the New York Times–underscores why: An official at the Food and Drug Administration overruled front-line agency scientists and approved the sale of an imaging device for breast cancer [...]

For decades, the Israeli government has boasted of being an oasis of democracy and pluralism in a region noted for authoritarian regimes. On the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs website you will find this description: In several Arab countries and Iran, minorities are suppressed. In stark contrast, minorities in Israel are entitled to equal rights [...]

You can tell it has been a while since Democrats in some parts of the country have had much to celebrate. In Austin, that little blue island of liberalism deep in the heart of Texas, the Burnt Orange report tells us that Travis County Democrats will be holding a Bush Retirement Party & President Barack [...]

Joe the Plumber, aka Joe Wurzelbacher, having bravely followed in the footsteps of Ernie Pyle and Michael Herr by “reporting” on the war in Gaza, brings us this insight, which just might win him a Pulitzer. “I think media should be abolished from, you know, reporting,” Wurzelbacher said. “You know, war is hell. And if [...]