In the course of reporting a story for this week’s TIME magazine, which is about the White House’s determination to take the fight to its critics, I came across a lot of sentiments like this quote about Fox News that I noted a couple days back. “They are the paid political programming for a party, [...]
Just…wow. I honestly don’t know what’s more shocking–that France’s culture minister, the same fellow who vociferously defended Roman Polanski and complained the director was being “thrown to the lions,” has a history of paying for sex with “young boys” in Thailand or that HE WROTE ABOUT IT IN A BOOK FOUR YEARS AGO. And not [...]
John McCain returned to the Senate in 2000 a virtual liberal: throwing bombs at his Republican leaders (and especially George W. Bush). John McCain returned to the Senate in 2009 a virtual conservative: a model Republican and leading critic of President Obama – especially, these days, on the war in Afghanistan. McCain’s favorite role in [...]
Let me get this straight: the U.S. Congress has voted to send an historic $7.5 billion in economic and humanitarian aid, over five years, to Pakistan–and the Pakistani is complaining? Yes, yes, I know there are sensitivities, but the strings attached don’t seem all that onerous: that the civilian government remain in charge of the [...]
Cutting through the smoke and baloney on Afghanistan. Note: There was an error–soon to be corrected, I hope–in communication between me and the fact-checker. I actually believe that the President’s final decision will be a bit more robust than the plan advocated by Les Gelb: 20,000 troops, equally divided between troops sent to secure Kandar [...]
If you are out there somewhere reading the Congressional Budget Office’s preliminary analysis of the Senate Finance Committee’s health care bill (and, really, aren’t we all?), I am sure you have already noticed an intriguing line-item under SUBTITLE I-MATERNAL, INFANT AND EARLY CHILDHOOD VISITATION. It says “Assisted Suicide.” Have we finally found where they have [...]
The much-anticipated CBO score is here. I’ve just begun to read it. The good news/bad news seems to be that it reduces the deficit by $81 billion over 10 years, but leaves 25 million uninsured (one-third of them illegal immigrants). Will post more soon. UPDATE: Jonathan Cohn gives us the comparisons to the House bill:
Yochi Dreazen in the Wall Street Journal has encouraging word that the military is bolstering its intelligence efforts–in both sense of the word–on Afghanistan and Pakistan on two fronts. At the Pentagon, Brigadier General John Nicholson has been put in charge of a new Af/Pak coordination office, which is very good news as Nicholson has [...]
On a recent visit to New York, White House adviser David Axelrod met over coffee with Roger Ailes, the president of the Fox News network, which President Obama has described as a “television station that is entirely devoted to attacking my administration.” According to accounts from both the White House and Fox News, the meeting [...]
