VP Omar Suleiman just announced curtly on Egyptian TV that Mubarak has stepped down and transferred power to the supreme council of the armed forces. The contrast with Mubarak’s statement of last night is telling: Mubarak went on and on, made as if he was only transferring some power, and again defended his record–the crowds [...]
Just five years ago, the Conservative Political Action Conference still had a Doris Day feel, like a time warp to 1978, when everyone was still filled with nostalgia for 1961. Pat Boone was the musical act, and he played before a screen that showed flapping flags, rhyming the word “God” with the word “God.” It [...]
If Don Berwick’s first appearance before a hostile congressional committee is any indication, there is no way the Medicare/Medicaid chief will ever earn the support of enough Republicans to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Berwick, installed via recess appointment last July, gave testimony and took questions from members of the GOP-controlled House Ways & [...]
The heirs to Ronald Reagan’s conservative legacy gathered Thursday in a hotel ballroom to exchange variations on the dominant theme in today’s Republican politics: It is evening in America. “The Germans are buying the New York Stock Exchange,” announced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. “The U.S. is becoming the laughing stock of the world,” exhorted [...]
As Hosni Mubarak clings to power in Egypt, President Barack Obama and his foreign policy aides face two problems. First, with diminishing influence over Mubarak, they have to try to ensure the dictator fully relinquishes control. Obama took a stab at this problem Thursday evening after Mubarak’s oblique and seemingly insufficient declaration that he was [...]
John Pistole, head of TSA since July, was verbally probed and prodded this morning at a hearing held by the Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Transportation. Among the divisive topics was Pistole’s decision to allow collective bargaining among the TSA’s officers (appropriately called TSOs). Alabama Republican Rep. Mo Brooks expressed concerns that collective bargaining was one [...]
Newt Gingrich talked policies, and the crowd seemed to like it. Rick Santorum announced that “America belongs to God,” and he was politely applauded. But it was Donald Trump, a real estate investor who became a reality show star, who finally got the crowd’s 2012 election juices going on the first day of the Conservative [...]
