If you’re not watching the Homeland Security Committee’s hearing on the question of Muslim-American radicalization, you just missed an incredibly powerful moment as Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota testified. Rest assured, though, that footage of his testimony will be played and re-played in coverage of the hearing. Ellison, one of two Muslim members of [...]
I’m of two minds about the hearings on domestic terrorism that Rep. Peter King is holding today. I’ve been a staunch defender of Muslims–of their patriotic record as American citizens, of their right to build houses of worship anywhere they want, including near Ground Zero. But let’s face it: there have been a skein of [...]
Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz speaks to protesters at the State Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin on March 9. (REUTERS/Darren Hauck) –With Wisconsin Democrats still at large, state senate Republicans passed legislation stripping many collective bargaining rights from public workers last night. Passage of the bill was always overwhelmingly likely; Republican lawmakers simply had the votes. But [...]
Mike Huckabee’s recent eruptions about Barack Obama were clearly over the line, but given the paranoid fantasies of the Republican electorate–51% believe Obama isn’t American-born–the Republican candidates will find a way to insinuate the President’s illegitimacy.
You wanna cut? We’ll show you cuts. That seems to be the new mantra Democrats have adopted in response to the GOP’s assault on spending. Dems this week have suggested expanding the debate from discretionary spending to taking on all of the sacred cows: farm subsidies, Medicare, Medicaid, taxes and the Pentagon. Well, almost all. [...]
There’s a line in Greg Brown’s song “Where Is Maria” where he describes someone as “smug as a commentator on NPR.” I was always tickled by that line, even though I knew it to be unfair. As I traveled the world, I kept bumping into NPR reporters who were doing difficult, dangerous work in the [...]
Over the course of ten presidential campaigns, I traveled a lot of miles with David Broder of the Washington Post. We traveled on campaign planes and buses; we traveled scrunched together in cars, filled with quartets of snuffling and coughing journalists, traversing Iowa–somehow, always, a windy, blizzardy 2-hour drive from one event to the next–during [...]
As predicted, the Senate this afternoon rejected both the House and Senate versions of a bill to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year, sending negotiators back to the drawing boards. The House version, titled House Resolution 1, or H.R. 1, failed 44-56 with three Republican senators voting against it from the [...]
During the last presidential campaign, John McCain had to withstand some ribbing, if not all-out ridicule, for his many and various abodes. (The situation was hardly helped by his noted failure to remember precisely how many there were). Take this Paul Schwartzman write-up from the Washington Post: Indoor and outdoor swimming pools! Spas and state-of-the-art [...]
