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House Speaker John Boehner has joined forces in an odd coalition with the left to declare President Obama’s continued military action in Libya a dangerous and potentially unconstitutional power grab because Obama failed to consult Congress sufficiently about the mission. Boehner is moving a bill today that will attempt to force Obama to end the [...]
The House of Representatives on Friday is expected to hold two votes on U.S. action in Libya. One will fail and one will pass. House GOP leaders are hoping that the Democratic-controlled Senate will take up the one that passes. Unfortunately for them, the Senate is fixated on the one that will fail. All of [...]
At a Senate confirmation hearing for his new gig atop the CIA, David Petraeus was asked Thursday if he supported President Obama’s drawdown timetable for Afghanistan. Mark Benjamin parses the thicket of words and argues that Petraeus’ windiness says everything you need to know about the decorated general’s opinion.
War supporter Robert Kagan posits it: If the war is going badly in the summer and fall of 2012, it will be because of the decision the president made this week. Everyone will know he did it against the advice of his commanders. Everyone will know he did it for political reasons. So if the [...]
–David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker magazine, comparing the “disdain” Republican presidential candidates expressed for gay marriage during a June 13 debate in New Hampshire to the racial bigotry of the civil-rights era.
(This post was update at 6:35 p.m.) Yes, we’re back here again already, with at least one Republican claiming this week that Democratic health reform will kill seniors. Sigh. The target of the GOP attack is the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a controversial group to be appointed by the president and charged with slowing the [...]
Updated 12:30pm Republicans are demanding to know why President Obama isn’t at the table pin the deficit talks. Today, Jon Kyl, the No. 2 Senate Republican, and Majority Leader Eric Cantor abruptly withdrew from the talks saying they have gone as far as they can and now presidential leadership is needed – particularly on the [...]
The Club for Growth is a conservative advocacy group that favors lower taxes (and a flat tax), less spending, privatizing Social Security, deregulation, free trade, and so on. But its practical mission is weeding out moderates from the Republican Party. It seems to relish targeting the GOP’s grizzled veterans in favor of younger, more conservative replacements [...]
The news that President Obama has authorized the release of 30 million barrels of oil from the gulf coast caverns that hold America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve came in an unusual way. In the past, when a president has taken the extraordinary step of tapping the SPR, as it’s known, he has done so to maximum [...]
On the campaign trial – especially the presidential campaign trail – nuance rarely breaks through the fog of generalization. Mitt Romney is the frontrunner and a flip-flopper on the issues. Michele Bachmann is the Tea Party favorite and an evangelical Christian. Jon Huntsman worked for Obama, but might have a good shot in a general [...]
