Ahmed Rashid, perhaps the best informed journalist in the world when it comes to Afghanistan and Pakistan, confirms my belief that Hamid Karzai’s recent maneuverings are part of a reconciliation strategy with the Taliban: According to U.S. and Afghan officials, Karzai’s first question when he arrives will be whether Washington supports his efforts at reconciliation with [...]
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will grill Goldman Sachs execs this morning, a day after releasing reams of documents that appear to show — despite Goldman’s testimony to the contrary — that the firm raked in money by shorting the housing market. I have a preview here, and we’ll be following along as the [...]
The cloture vote to stop a GOP filibuster on the Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd’s bill to overhaul just failed in the Senate 57-41. The vote took nearly an hour as Senators rushed through Washington traffic to make the first vote of the week. All Republicans voted Nay. Republican Senators Bob Bennett of Utah [...]
The Senate just failed to stop a Republican filibuster of the Financial Reform Bill. The Democrats forced the vote even though they knew the Republicans would stand together because they want “Republicans Block Financial Reform” headlines tomorrow…and also “My Opponent Backed the Bankers” ads in the fall. Republicans filibustered because they think that anything Democrats [...]
Tomorrow morning, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will hold a hearing into the role investment banks played in the financial crisis. To show how Wall Street’s titans “spread poison through the system,” as Sen. Carl Levin put it today, the subcommittee chose months ago to focus its investigation on Goldman Sachs — a serendipitous [...]
One of the casualties of the bitter year-long Congressional battle over health reform was good public standing of the endeavor as a whole. While individual policy proposals within the Democrats’ framework remained popular, the country soured on the patchwork package those policies formed. A Washington Post/ABC News poll released today paints a different picture for [...]
In memory of Doug Marlette My old pal Doug was always vehement in defense of the first amendment rights of cartoonists like him–and I vowed to continue his fight after he died, so here goes: This Ross Douthat column today is important. It is possible to respect Islam, be a devout Muslim and be a [...]
Steven Gray, over at TIME’s Detroit Blog, catches Michigan’s governor Jennifer Granholm preparing John Paul Stevens’ chair on the Supreme Court for someone, well, like the Jennifer Granholm. “I think it’s a very wise move to consider experience that is not just from the judicial monastery…not just me, but Janet Napolitano (the former Arizona governor, [...]
The Illinois Senate race is playing out like an academic case study in crises management. Imagine this: Your client, a former chief loan officer for a local bank, is a Democrat heading into a Republican election year, in a state long stained by political corruption. Amid enormous public outrage over the damage wrought by bank [...]
Up From The Comments: A Liberal’s Obama Lament
In the comments of my post below about President Obama’s 2010 campaign launch, Swampland commenter Square1 gives one personal summary of the reasons why Obama may have some trouble exciting the liberal base next time around. For Obama’s defenders here is a list of what I consider to be the Obama administration’s “major deceptions”. It [...]