The Office of Congressional Ethics has released its report detailing charges that Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters of California intervened on behalf of a bank in which her husband owned stock. We already knew that Waters was facing House ethics charges, the details of which were first made public in a March 2009 New York Times [...]
My curmudgeonly pal Les Gelb–an inside-outlaw if there ever was one in the foreign policy priesthood–has a fascinating post up at the Daily Beast about the Pentagon Papers, Wikileaks, Vietnam and Afghanistan. Gelb is in a particularly good place to write about this, since he was the director of the Pentagon Papers project and therefore [...]
Tomorrow doesn’t quite rival Super Primary Tuesday, when voters in 11 states hit the polls on the same day in June, but three states—Michigan, Kansas and Missouri—are going to chuck candidates out of the 2010 race, and there are plenty to choose from. Here are a few crowded house races that, for the sake of [...]
Sorry, KT, but I’m purloining your swamp headline. And this time, Dems are looking looking at really filibustering — or at least getting rid of it. This has been the most productive session since LBJ’s Great Society, so why are Democrats looking at dismantling the filibuster? And can they do it? Here’s a look at [...]
When the Portland, Oregon police re-opened a long dormant investigation into a sexual assault allegation against Al Gore by a masseuse, I suggested that the ugly headlines that ensued might actually be in Gore’s best interest. The accuser’s statement had appeared online for everyone to read and the National Enquirer–enjoying a new dose of political [...]
I have a certain weakness for Charlie Rangel. He’s a stone, flat-out war hero–his service in frigid Korea, during a terrible moment in that war, in an Army that was just learning how to integrate (in other words, an institution that was still racist in many ways)–has always earned him some extra tolerance from me, [...]
The New York Times is reporting–and the Huffington Post is trumpeting–the fact that there is a new emphasis on counter-terrorism in Afghanistan. This is not news. In April, I reported that counterterrorism–the targeted killing of mid-level Taliban leaders–was the only part of the war that was working. And then I did it again here. And [...]
