The news that McLatchy has abandoned political polling reminded me of a conversation I recently had with my old pal Walter Shapiro–one of America’s premier political writers, now working for AOL’s Politics Daily. Walter has been working the primaries around the country hard, as always, this election year and a few months ago he wrote [...]
Yesterday I wrote about the sharp conservatism of Mitt Romney’s attack on Barack Obama’s START treaty with the Russians. Romney approaches the treaty’s fine print with the attitude of a Cold War hawk, i.e. that the Russians are nefarious enemies who should be treated with extreme mistrust. To Romney, every ambiguity in the treaty’s fine [...]
As Jay wrote a few weeks ago, Sharron Angle has quickly become Harry Reid’s biggest asset. Whether she’s threatening to sue Reid for posting her own political positions, ducking the press like the plague or forcing her staff to assure folks that no, she’s not in favor of armed revolution, Angle’s candidacy has underlined the [...]
“Another thing we can do for jobs is make toys of me, especially for the holidays. Little dolls. Me. Like maybe little action dolls. Me in an army uniform, air force uniform, and me in my suit. They can make toys of me and my vehicle, especially for the holidays and Christmas for the kids. [...]
I have a micro-profile of Bobby Jindal in this week’s dead-tree edition that managed to sneak through the newly erected paywall. Jindal’s hands-on approach to the oil-spill crisis has drawn plaudits; he’s been a ubiquitous presence in the Gulf, and his withering assessment of the allegedly sluggish federal response seems to match the instincts of [...]
TIME’s energy and environment writer Bryan Walsh takes a look: In a preliminary look at the American Power Act—the climate legislation that has been put forward by Senators John Kerry and Joseph Lieberman—the CBO found that the bill would actually reduce the budget deficit by about $19 billion over the 2011 to 2020 period. The [...]
–As West Virginia’s Attorney General examines the state’s ambiguous succession process, Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin is pushing for a speedy special election. He said he would “highly consider” running for the seat but will not appoint himself in the interim. –A British panel basically cleared the University of East Anglia scientists implicated in “Climategate” of [...]
James Verini has a fascinating profile of Tom Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in the latest issue of The Washington Monthly that should be must-reading for anyone who wants to understand the major political players in Washington. How powerful is the Chamber? According to Verini’s reporting, in 2009 the Chamber spent $120 [...]
