David Kris, the former head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division and an expert in national security law, has published in a scholarly journal a lengthy defense of the use of criminal prosecution as one tool in the larger counterterrorism toolbox. Kris is universally respected on both sides of the aisle: he worked on [...]
After the apology of senior advisor Vin Weber for referring to Michele Bachmann’s “sex appeal,” Tim Pawlenty’s team is learning the hard way that campaigning against a woman can be uniquely tricky. The charge of sexism constantly lurks just around the corner. It is frequently justified, because politics and media remains a male-dominated game, but [...]
In the coming days, the House Judiciary Committee is expected to debate a bill introduced by its chairman, Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas, that would require all businesses to use a federal electronic system to verify their employees’ citizenship status. The new measure is the most promising attempt in the current Congress to deal [...]
Washington these days feels like a 1960s game show. Our lucky contestants, House Speaker John Boehner and President Barack Obama, are on the stage in front of three doors, listening intently to the audience cheer before they choose which door to open. As the President and congressional leaders meet at the White House Thursday to [...]
News of the morning: Obama has put a very large deficit reduction deal in play. He’s looking to swap Medicare and Social Security cuts for some $1 trillion in new revenues, in part by tying future tax reform to immediate spending cuts. He may be risking liberal flight, but the fine print matters a lot. [...]
When President Obama meets at the White House on Thursday morning with Democratic and Republican leaders from Congress, all of Washington will be watching carefully for any hint of progress toward a deficit-reduction deal that can pave the way for a politically painful Congressional vote to raise the federal debt limit. But one group will [...]
There’s lots of spin out there concerning fund-raising numbers for GOP presidential candidates. Federal Election Commission filings are quarterly X-rays of campaign bank accounts, which political junkies pore over like treasure maps. And as the July 15 filing deadline looms, campaigns are leaking bits of information, trying to show early strength. You may hear a [...]
On Wednesday afternoon, a coalition of Ohio conservatives will flex their muscles in a show of force against President Obama’s health-care reform law. Activists opposed to a health-insurance mandate will submit nearly 550,000 signatures to Ohio’s Secretary of State in order to place a constitutional amendment – known as the Healthcare Freedom Amendment — on [...]
At Tuesday’s White House press briefing, Obama spokesman Jay Carney was asked whether the President might circumvent the tortured efforts to strike a debt-ceiling deal with Republicans and invoke the U.S. Constitution’s 14th amendment, which contains a clause providing that “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law…shall not be [...]
After two-and-a-half years of steady defeats in his battle with Congress over how to handle terrorist suspects, President Barack Obama has finally notched a win. Tuesday afternoon, Obama’s administration announced that it had transferred an alleged Somali terrorist, Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, to New York City for trial after months of secret interrogation on a Navy. [...]
