Officially, Barack Obama has better things to worry about. “We’re not very focused on that race,” White House spokesman Jay Carney tells reporters about the Republican presidential primary. But those same reporters are bombarded with a dozen e-mails a day from the Democratic National Committee, which Obama effectively controls, trying to mess with the Republican [...]
My print column this week, which can be found here by TIME subscribers, is about Newt Gingrich–who is, without doubt, one of the more interesting specimens in American politics, a combination of vile rhetoric and occasionally interesting policy ideas. What can you make of a guy who, on the one hand, called President Obama the [...]
The Obama administration won’t allow over-the-counter sale of the morning after pill, ducking a political fight. Democrats begin to close the enthusiasm gap. Their party rolls drop in key states. Elizabeth Warren pulls ahead of Scott Brown.
With Iowa’s critical caucuses creeping up and Newt Gingrich white hot in the Hawkeye State, Mitt Romney’s campaign is still playing it cool.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, once given up for dead in the Republican presidential primary, picked the right moment for a dramatic comeback. With less than a month to go until voting begins, Gingrich now leads the field of GOP contenders in Iowa, South Carolina and Florida and is within striking distance of the lead [...]
–The number of years former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has been sentenced to serve in prison for trying to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat. “I am unbelievably sorry,” said Blagojevich, who will have to serve out at least 12 years of his sentence.
Democrats may be taking Newt seriously as a potential nominee. But boy will he spend a lot of time on the defensive in the weeks and perhaps months to come. Alex Massie flags just one vivid example of why this is the case: a 2008 talk in which Gingrich warns that the Bush administration’s success [...]
Last week I drew attention to a Bloomberg analysis of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that said that if you “add up guarantees and lending limits… the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion” to rescuing the financial system during the credit crisis in 2008. It turns out Bloomberg and I were both unjustifiably gigging the Paulites’ collective dander, or at least that’s what the bunker-busting Bernanke says.
Somewhat lost in the Newt Gingrich supernova is the fact that Rick Perry still has something the other fallen front-runners of 2011 lack: a big pot of campaign money that he can use to cause mischief on the airwaves in early primary states. As National Journal reports, he’s planning a last stand of sorts in [...]
Christopher Hitchens is attacking his terminal illness with the same intellectual rigor he has applied to every profound moral problem and stray annoyance that life has tossed his way. It is an exhilarating spectacle.
