Doesn’t seem to be much of one, at least not on Maine Republican Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. MSNBC is reporting that Democrats don’t expect to find the 60 votes needed to break a Republican filibuster this afternoon and overturn the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays in the military. Here‘s the Portland …
Witchcraft is fun to talk about, but when it comes to the outcome of the midterm elections almost nothing is more important than the potential impact of big-spending Republican independent groups nationwide. In the new issue of TIME I explain this network of independent groups that are blasting Democrats on the airwaves nationwide, with …
Today’s New York Times considers other Senate moderates who might be endangered by the rolling Tea Party wave. An obvious candidate is Maine Republican Senator Olympia Snowe, a frequent party line-crosser–she voted for Obamacare in the Senate Finance Committee (though not the final version)–who represents much of what the new GOP …
Politico spotlights a good angle to the subject of my new print piece this week: the huge Republican money steamroller poised to flatten Democrats from coast to coast in the midterms. If you read my story you’ll see that Karl Rove is a central player in this effort, particularly through the anodyne sounding group American Crossroads, …
Amid all the talk of the Delaware Tea Party darling’s background promoting a philosophy of abstinence so strict that it excludes what Woody Allen once called “sex with someone I love” I wondered about the state of the abstinence movement in the U.S. nowadays. It seems like something one heard of in O’Donnell’s promotional heyday about 15 …
Together at last, on the issue of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Reid promises a DADT vote for next week, although a likely GOP filibuster seems like a pretty big obstacle.
In a quick break from politics here, check out this priceless story about the Italian mafia’s adventures in wind farms and solar energy.
Wise words from Ezra Klein:
It’s not that there is no argument too crazy to be obsessed over by liberals, but that there’s no crazy argument liberals won’t obsess over. They’ll totally ignore plenty of arguments that aren’t that crazy. And so too will conservatives. But the crazy stuff is fun to write about, or put on television. It
…
Democrats are eagerly chastising Newt Gingrich for his claim that Barack Obama governs according to a “Kenyan, anticolonial” mentality. But that’s not at all surprising. The more interesting question is whether any Republicans will follow suit. At least one prominent conservative pundit already has. Says National Review‘s
John Boehner may have been speaking yesterday from the principled position that extended tax cuts for some Americans are better than extended tax cuts for no Americans. But it’s a little amusing to see his spokesman describe his position this way:
“Despite what Obama says, Republicans are not holding middle-class tax cuts hostage and
…
The Associated Press does a “fact check” on a passage from Obama’s presser today that also caught my ear:
President Barack Obama told voters repeatedly during the health care debate that the overhaul legislation would bring down fast-rising health care costs and save them money. Now, he’s hemming and hawing on that….
[Obama said]
…
I might have missed it, but at today’s White House press conference I don’t think anyone asked the president about yesterday’s important court ruling enshrining Bush-era claims to sweeping executive power, powers that the Obama Justice Department has sought to protect. As the New York Times complained yesterday, “Barack Obama told voters …
I’m struck by Hillary Clinton’s speech today about how we are in the midst of a “new American moment,” one that demands leadership from–and the values of–the United States to make the world a better place. Clinton’s message may seem like typical foreign policy mush. But in the current moment it amounts to a striking rejection of the …
