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I first met Jose Antonio Vargas on a dirt road in Iowa. We were both lost, in separate rental cars, trying to find our way to a Mike Huckabee pheasant shooting event. He had been sent out in the frozen corn fields over the Christmas holiday by the Washington Post. I knew him already from [...]
*Updated, 2:00 PM Back when Florida executed prisoners in an electric chair, part of the ritual involved plunging the entire maximum security state prison into total darkness as they switched off the grid and onto backup generators. The purpose of this exercise was to protect Florida Power and Light from possible bad publicity–a company in [...]
JERSEY CITY, N.J., AND EXETER, N.H. — On his first day as a presidential candidate, Jon Huntsman wandered toward the back of his charter jet to meet the press. Reporters crammed into the aisles, hoisting their cameras and jabbing microphones in his face. Huntsman, wearing a black-and-white checkered shirt and holding a piece of string [...]
As I type this, Vice President Joe Biden is one floor below me, cloistered in a room with congressional negotiators trying to work out a deal to slash deficits and raise the debt ceiling before the Aug. 2 deadline, when the Treasury would start to default on U.S. obligations. The group will meet again Wednesday, [...]
–President Obama, as quoted in an official transcript of his appearance at a fundraiser Monday night in Washington D.C. The transcript was later corrected to note that both laughter and applause followed his statement about job gains.
With the Republican Party swinging back towards its isolationist roots, a man in Florida takes the stage, insisting that the U.S. must be “the watchman on the wall of world freedom.” But as Tim Padgett writes over at Global Spin, Rubio’s vision of idealistic intervention may have local roots.
More bad news for Newt’s Gingrich’s foundering presidential campaign: His top two fundraisers have quit, bringing the count of deserters from his 2012 operation to a whopping 18, according to the AP. His fundraising is reportedly so anemic that the candidate has been reduced to giving up his corporate jets for commercial flights. (Hopefully they [...]
There was a telling confrontation at last week’s Netroots Nation gathering of progressive activists, interrupting a panel discussion on “What to Do When the President Is Just Not That Into You.” A bisexual volunteer for President Obama reelection campaign approached the stage to hand a flyer to Dan Choi, a gay former Army lieutenant and [...]
Former White House spokesman Bill Burton is chortling on Twitter about this campaign-trail moment captured by the Washington Post: At one table, a boy offered Romney a $1 bill that he had folded origami-style for good luck. The candidate happily accepted it, but then rifled through his wallet looking for money to give the boy [...]
It now seems likely that President Obama will take a modest course on withdrawal from Afghanistan, with the consensus guess that he’ll withdraw 30,000 troops by the end of the 2012 fighting season. I had hoped for a larger draw down next year, but recent, depressing events in Pakistan have changed the equation. Some thoughts:
