The incomparable Jonathan Allen of CQ finds Barack Obama’s name on one of the earmarks in the spending bill that just passed the House, which is essentially a leftover bill from last year to fund the current fiscal year. President Obama, who took a no-earmark pledge on the campaign trail, is listed as one of [...]
John McCain and Henry Kissinger have weighed in on Afghanistan in the past 48 hours–and both have a good grasp of the problems we’re facing there, but their solutions diverge, at least in emphasis, and these nuanced disagreements illuminate the mind-boggling difficulties we’re facing in the Af/Pak region. McCain’s speech at the American Enterprise Institute [...]
Here’s a web story from Scherer and me on the furor over the earmarks in the 2009 omnibus bill passed by the House yesterday. Roll Call’s Keith Koffler also reports today that Obama tried, and failed, to convince Congress to trim some of the earmarks. An excerpt for those of you who don’t have Roll [...]
Ross Douthat and Andrew Sullivan, two wise conservatives, have some interesting things to say about the Obama speech. Less interesting conservatives of the knee-jerk variety, like Pete Wehner and Bill Kristol, are complaining that the President didn’t have enough to say about foreign policy last night. Uh-huh. It was a budget speech. There will be [...]
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Various conservatives have jumped on my support for President Obama’s attempt to negotiate with Russia–and my belief we should keep in perspective Russia’s various attempts to intimidate its near-neighbors. My favorite is Michael Goldfarb, who served as a McCain pistolero during the campaign and now blogs for the Weekly Standard. As we saw last year, [...]
As a renter who has long had no real hope of affording any house or condo in my D.C. neighborhood, I have some sympathy for Joel Stein’s point here about the housing bailout. A lot of optimistic people bought houses near the historic height of the market, say November 2005, for absurdly high prices, say [...]
My story about Barack Obama’s speech last night is here.
So at least we have an answer. There are indeed limits to the Slumdog Millionaire touch of gold. Not every tale of a plucky Indian lad can capture the hearts of Americans. How bad was Bobby Jindal tonight? On “Charlie Rose,” David Brooks called the Louisiana Republican’s remarks the worst response to a speech ever, [...]
