Last week, Senate Republicans burst a very dear bubble of New York Democrats when they blocked a funding bill for 9/11 responders. The measure, officially called the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, is aimed at improving health services and providing compensation for those on the scene—but it was primarily the $7 billion …
To round out this week’s Palin-tastic coverage, a note on her latest foe. The PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) crew objected to the most recent episode of her reality show, Sarah Palin’s Alaska. In a statement issued this week, VP Dan Mathews said this about Palin’s caribou hunting, which PETA called “Sarah Palin’s …
First, a few quick bits of context for Obama’s children’s book, Of Thee I Sing, released last week and now climbing up bestseller lists.
– According to the publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, Obama finished writing the book before he was in office. So let us put a hold on the indignation at his penning stories with a backdrop of 10% …
Some of the TIME crew traveled down to the Capitol this morning for a Tea Party rally headlined by Sen. Jim DeMint. He and other speakers extended promises to continue “the fight” — the fight to repeal “Obamacare,” the fight against the “liberal agenda,” the fight against earmarks, and plenty more where that came from. Here are some …
Listening to the 911 call of Brent McFarland, as he waits for an ambulance to come to the aid of his choking fiancee, is awful. He screams helplessly, tries to perform CPR, and begs her not to leave him for an excruciatingly slow 12 minutes. But what is arguably just as painful to witness is the ineptitude of the 911 responder, who …
Say what you want about Niccolò Machiavelli. He’s the champion of chicanery, the sultan of schemes. But the 16th-century author of The Prince, a how-to guide for the power-hungry, also identified the political truths that dominated the midterm elections earlier this month. And more often than not he didn’t just say it first — he …
There is a fantastically tricky (and admittedly nerdy) board game called Ex Libris that I used to play with the other English teachers at Winchester College. The title is a Latin phrase meaning, roughly, “out of book.” And the object was to concoct a first line — based on a given title, author and plot summary — that other players …
There may not have been a James Stewart or Julius Caesar elected to the Senate, but Arkansas’ Pulaski County is allowing us to live out one huckleberry fantasy. Sure, the spelling isn’t quite on and “Doc” is a sort of nickname for incumbent Democrat Charles Holladay, but the name was legitimate enough to make its way onto the ballot — …
As Scherer points out, Meg Whitman, former eBay CEO, spent almost $142 million on her bid to become the next governor of California. But her historically expensive attempt seems to have fallen short. (A quick moment to consider what she could have bought with that money: a 222-acre Bahamian island, a goat for every person in Egypt, or a …
Update: A few minutes before 1 a.m., the RGA announced they had won the majority of governors’ seats. Going into the election, Democrats held an edge of 26 to the Republicans’ 24.
Haley Scores One for the Mama Grizzlies
As Election Night wore on, the South Carolina gubernatorial race stayed nail-bite tight. At 9:30, with almost …
Oh, the insanity—of the Rally to Restore Sanity.
Since Jon Stewart announced this meeting of measured minds last month on his fake-ish newscast, The Daily Show, more than 200,000 people have professed via Facebook that they will attend. Arianna Huffington has offered to bus as many New Yorkers as want to go to the three-hour event …
Last week Swampland’s own Michael Scherer and White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer sat down to discuss President Obama — what he’s been trying to do in these final weeks before the election, how he’ll play the politics going ahead and what the administration wishes they could have done differently during the first half of …
In 2008, a scary, inaccurate adage made the rounds: Lose your house, lose your vote. It spread after the Michigan Messenger, a publication that described itself as “a coalition of long-time progressive bloggers, freelance writers and professional journalists,” reported that a local Republican group was planning to use lists of …
