On Thurday night, Mitt Romney made it through another debate with only a few scratches on his armor. Don’t underestimate how strange and surprising this is, especially when you recall how much hazing Romney endured four years ago. The common explanations for Romney’s recent success are true: He’s a smarter and stronger candidate than he [...]
President Obama announced on Friday his plan to offer relief to states that are chafing under the strict requirements of No Child Left Behind, the federal education standards championed by George W. Bush in 2002. The proposal would grant states waivers from some NCLB rules that officials have long complained are impossible to meet, including [...]
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You might not expect evangelical Christians to get involved in a political fight over mercury regulations. But when the Environmental Protection Agency proposed in March to tighten limits on industrial mercury emissions, the move caught the attention of an influential group of religious environmentalists who are now butting heads with pro-business Republicans seeking to weaken [...]
Iowans are restless. Six weeks after the political world converged on Iowa for the Ames straw poll, the pace of the race toward the first-in-the-nation caucus has slackened. It’s not that candidates aren’t barnstorming the Hawkeye State. But the field is fluid and so is the date. Here are five questions that loom as a sluggish summer gives way to what should be a fascinating fall.
Conway, Arkansas “You are sitting in a room with visionaries,” Mike Coats, the proprietor of Mike’s Place, told me. The visionaries looked pretty average old-fashioned American to me–a small city mayor, a small city Chamber of Commerce manager, a lawyer, a furniture store owner, a young African-American employee of Hewlett Packard. But they had done [...]
Over at Battleland, Mark Thompson, maestro of all military matters, marvels at the Texas governor’s response to last night’s debate question on what he would do if Pakistan’s nukes fell into the hands of the Taliban: This guy flew planes for the Air Force? He wants to be President? His baffling, incomprehensible non-answer is akin [...]
House Republicans finally manage to pass their stopgap funding measure, but its energy department cuts likely won’t pass the Senate. If you want some idea of Perry’s debate performance last night (beside reading Scherer’s Benadryl-laced masterpiece), go to 1:28 in this video or watch his answer on Pakistan below that:
Tell me where you’ve heard this before: Jewish voters are unhappy with Barack Obama. He’s seen as insufficiently supportive of Israel. There are questions about whether he can win enough Jewish votes to carry key states. If you guessed “during the 2008 Democratic primaries,” then ding, ding, ding! A loaf of raisin-studded challah for you! [...]
Most debates start at 8 p.m., but not on Fox News, where that’s Bill O’Reilly’s time slot. At the moment, Bill is talking about “blooters.” “It is a word. You can find it, if you look it up,” Bill says. “Don’t be a blooter.” The word is apparently Scottish slang, and it means something like, “bumbling idiot.” Which is actually an awesomely ballsy way to set up the sixth Republican debate. Bill rocks.
