A White House briefing on Libya today, featuring deputy national security advisor Denis McDonough, shed little new light on the ongoing kinetic military operation in North Africa. And, disappointingly, neither McDonough nor White House press secretary Jay Carney would give a hint about the substance of President Obama’s speech this evening. It remains unclear whether [...]
Rolling Stone has published a trove of grisly photos from a now infamous case of a small group of U.S. soldiers who allegedly murdered Afghan civilians early last year. This case made headlines last summer when the Army charged five soldiers in the murders of three unarmed Afghan civilians. In a particularly morbid twist, the [...]
Earlier this morning, religious leaders and anti-poverty advocates announced that they will begin fasting to protest budget cuts that they argue “balance the budget on the backs of poor people.” Progressive evangelical leader Jim Wallis and David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, joined former Democratic congressman Tony Hall in calling on others to [...]
As Michael Crowley pointed out in his reflection on the death of Geraldine Ferraro over the weekend, the first woman to appear on a major party presidential ticket inspired countless women of all political persuasions. As an 11-year-old candidate for student council president of my elementary school, I proudly wore a “Mondale-Ferraro” button along with [...]
Rested from its weeklong recess, Congress returns on Monday for its latest round of budget brinksmanship. After a half-dozen stopgap funding bills in as many months, the threat of a government shutdown looms once more, with the lights set to go off on April 8 — unless the two parties can hammer out a deal [...]
Geraldine Ferraro, who died today, was a trailblazer for women in American politics–someone praised for her smarts and toughness (as well as, in this tribute by a female journalist, her fashion sense). The New York-born Ferraro was a lawyer, prosecutor and Congresswoman until Walter Mondale named to his presidential ticket in 1984, fully 24 years [...]
Jerusalem Just had dinner with a young Palestinian activist who told me that his friends were feeling more positive toward the US than they had in years because of the military action in Libya. “It’s on Al-Jazeera all the time,” he said, “Libyans dancing in the streets and saying, ‘Merci Obama, Merci Sarkozy.’ Everyone was [...]
Jerusalem It is very easy to overplay the news that some Al Qaeda sympathizers have joined the ranks of the Libyan rebels–as Drudge, who leads with it, does this morning–but that doesn’t diminish the irony: the same sort of Islamic extremists who were our “freedom-fighters” against the Russian puppet regime in Afghanistan (and later became [...]
Jerusalem I woke up this morning to find that Bob Herbert, whom I’ve known for 25 years, is leaving the New York Times. His last column sums up the views he’s been professing from that lofty perch for the past 18 years–and a good deal of what I’ve been feeling lately.
Adam Serwer writes today about a state mortgage program set up in Minnesota during Tim Pawlenty’s tenure that structured loans to avoid interest payments barred under Islamic law. He speculates it could become a problem for the ambitious Pawlenty among conservatives who “believe Sharia-compliant finance is part of a ‘stealth jihad’ to subvert the Constitution.” [...]
