David Brooks writes today as a moderate-conservative anguished by Barack Obama’s budget. I’ve known David for almost twenty years now. We’ve had many wonderful conversations, publicly and privately, over those years, and I value the quality of his mind, his decency, his essential sanity. We both consider ourselves moderates, though of different sorts. But I [...]
The headline in the London Times is that the White House decided at the last minute to cancel a joint press conference between President Obama and British PM Gordon Brown, and instead do a “pool spray” in the Oval Office, where fewer reporters will have less time to shout out some questions. Says the Times: [...]
The New Yorker’s Steve Coll is doing for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 what Slate’s David Plotz did for the bible, reading the whole thing and annotating it. A fine public service, though I am not sure it will make for a good book though. Coll begins: I will limit this first [...]
This from the Associated Press: WASHINGTON (AP) — Ron Kirk, nominated as U.S. Trade Representative in the Obama administration, owes an estimated $10,000 in back taxes from earlier in the decade and has agreed to make his payments, the Senate Finance Committee said Monday. The committee said the taxes arise from Kirk’s handling of speaking [...]
Back in December, I had drinks with a prominent macroeconomist who has been, among other things, advising Congress on how to handle the economic implosion. I asked him just how far he thought the stock market could fall. He didn’t miss a beat. The market lost 90 percent of its value, peak to trough, during [...]
David Frum has been a voice of Republican sanity–calling Palin for the extreme liability she was during the general election–and here describing Rush Limbaugh’s dire impact on the GOP. I swear, I haven’t seen anything as diabolically funny in politics as Rahm Emanuel’s anointment of Limbaugh as uncrowned leader of the Republican Party…since Fox News [...]
One day all these twittering self-broadcasting members of Congress will figure it all out. In the meantime, we get videos like this. Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Republican, shows he is a good sport by hosting his own YouTube show and then inviting on Stephen Colbert to make fun of him. Now you know who [...]
A fair number of people, including some editors I know, are amazed that Barack Obama is actually trying to do what he said he would do during the campaign. And, I must admit, I wasn’t convinced he would go all the way with programs like cap-and-trade limitations on carbon emissions. But he is. And, I [...]
Ben Smith says GOP Senator Sam Brownback is publicly backing the nomination of fellow Kansan Kathleen Sebelius for the HHS job. So does that mean she’s a “real” Catholic? Was he persuaded by the folks at the recently-launched CatholicsforSebelius.org? And will his show of support quiet her anti-abortion critics at all?
The Washington Post convenes a symposium of wise people with regard to Iraq…and some not so wise people like Douglas Feith and Randy Scheunemann, who brought you this disaster and are now crowing that Obama has taken the McCain path out of Iraq. Here’s Scheunemann: Now, we should all hope President Obama continues to listen [...]
