And not just because he still has that microphone. Democracy Corps–the same folks who determined last fall that Rush would make such an excellent political villain–have a new poll out demonstrating that Rush is just as polarizing as you would think. His favorability split is 26/53, which means you can bet we’ll continue see more anti-Rush ads in the [...]
You can’t make a false statement in testimony before Congress. It’s a felony. Big deal. So Coca-Cola fans everywhere can take comfort in the fact that White House budget director Peter Orzsag was telling the truth when he confirmed Tuesday that he is a Diet Coke man. The Wall Street Journal reports: “Orszag acknowledged to [...]
Chas Freeman has withdrawn his name from consideration as the chairman of the National Intelligence Council. His withdrawal statement is relayed here by Laura Rozen in all its pugnacious glory. The guy goes out with guns blazing–a bit too hot, for my taste. He pins his departure on “the Israel Lobby,” which is imprecise. He [...]
Rainn Wilson (a.k.a The Office’s Dwight Schrute) has just launched the website SoulPancake.com, which is part-blog, part-online community to discuss philosophy and spirituality. Says Wilson in an introductory video: “I am sick of spirituality being airy-fairy, hippy-dippy, and precious. I want to de-lameify talking about God and religion.” Well, hoorah for that, I say. But [...]
Reading this update by Justin Horwath and Andy Mannix on the Senate race in Minnesota, I’m coming to the conclusion that it is not going be over any time soon. Which suggests to me that Al Franken was nearly 30 years too early in this classic bit on Saturday Night Live (read to the bottom [...]
Elsewhere on Time.com today, Douglas McIntyre has assembled a list of the 10 major newspapers most like to fold or go digital. Many are publications struggling in a two-paper (or more) town, like the Philadelphia Daily News and the Detroit News. The Detroit Free Press is already gearing up to stop home delivery Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, [...]
Hidden deep within the stimulus bill was a big pot of money for the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, to change education in America: $4.3 billion for “incentive grants” which will be awarded to states on a competitive basis based on the state’s ability to do things Duncan and Obama want; and $650 million, which [...]
Here‘s a story from me today on Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, who is polling just below Joe Lieberman these days. I also wanted to include this link to my interview with Dodd late last night. Be forewarned, the audio isn’t great as we had been told up until that last minute that we [...]
President Obama has issued this memorandum promising to take a far more modest approach to “signing statements,” a practice that was abused by George W. Bush as a means of overriding the will of Congress. Among the key passages: I will issue signing statements to address constitutional concerns only when it is appropriate to do [...]
The most important sentence I heard last week came from Mark Zandi, the noted economist who has been advising both political parties on the economic crisis. “The difference between a recession, a very severe recession and a depression is a lack of confidence,” he said. It is a troubling thought, even though it’s not at [...]
