No, you say? Then why, in a survey last year, was he ranked one of the most admired journalists in America? (I know, I know — many of you think “admired journalist” is a contradiction in terms). A lot of Americans get their news, or a portion of it, from Stewart and Colbert (and Leno, [...]

Corporate cousin Entertainment Weekly (EW to the hip) has a great read about the making of Oliver Stone’s sure-to-be-controversial movie on the sitting President of the United States. Josh Brolin plays Dubya, Elizabeth Banks is Laura. The movie is slated to premier late this year, while Bush is still in office. Here’s the cover:

I managed to wean my focus away from the presidential campaign just long enough yesterday to read an outstanding op-ed by Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post about how the next great international crisis and war could well ignite over…..Abkhazia. “Ab-wha’?” you ask. And that’s Applebaum’s point exactly. We’re so consumed with our domestic election [...]

For much of the day yesterday, The Huffington Post carried this banner headline: CLINTON CAMP SAYS IT WILL USE THE NUCLEAR OPTION All that was missing was a Drudge-style siren. The gist of the story, which first carried the headline “Clinton Camp Considering Nuclear Option,” was that Clinton folks might try to “ram” a decision [...]

Yesterday, as we all know, was the fifth anniversary of President George W. Bush’s unforgettable and unforgivable “Mission Accomplished” speech on the deck of a stage set (er, aircraft carrier) off the coast of San Diego. Now that we’re in the sixth year of an Iraq mission that has yet, and may never, be accomplished, [...]

Few people in American politics have more stories — or more scars — than Harold M. Ickes, the flamboyant and foul-mouthed son and namesake of FDR’s great cabinet secretary and the man in whose hands rest Hillary Clinton’s slim-but-still-real chances of wresting the Democratic presidential nomination away from Barack Obama. Ickes’ job is convincing uncommitted [...]

David Sirota applies his Race Chasm theory to the Pennsylvania primary in an interesting blog post this morning. The theory is really an observation, but a keen one: Obama tends to win states that have either a) virtually no African-American population, and therefore minimal white-black racial tension; or b) states with an African-American population substantial [...]

Sure, Vladimir Putin is an autocrat answering to a compliant press largely controlled by his own government. With this response, he is also the envy of every American politician ever confronted with accusations of sexual impropriety: “I have always reacted negatively to those who with their snotty noses and erotic fantasies prowl into others’ lives.” [...]

First I read Mike Allen’s Politico Playbook, in which Laura Bush’s chief of staff revealed that the elaborate reception at the White House for Pope Benedict XVI was “a sign of the President and Mrs. Bush’s respect and love and friendship with the Holy Father.” I cringed. Then I heard Ed Henry on CNN inform [...]