The McCain-Roemer Link

As Mark Halperin notes this morning on The Page, John McCain’s new TV spot about what makes him angry was done explicitly in homage to a 1987 spot for Buddy Roemer, when Roemer won as an underdog Democratic candidate for Louisiana governor. As it turns out, Mark McKinnon, who is McCain’s media adviser (and who produced George W. Bush’s …

Re: Tonight in Iraq

Mark Kukis’ wrenching yet hopeful piece on life in Baghdad right now is here. I’m glad Joe reminded me of it — I forgot to let Mark know that I’m thankful for him, and the rest of our colleagues in Iraq right now. We need their eyes and their thoughts and we need them.

UPDATE: (And, yes, thank you Paul Dirks.)

In the Arena In the Arena

FISA Confusion and Correction

I may have made a mistake in my column this week about the FISA legislation passed by the House, although it’s difficult to tell for sure given the technical nature of the bill’s language and fierce disagreements between even moderate Republicans and Democrats on the Committee about what the bill actually does contain.
Democrats say …

In the Arena In the Arena

Shaking up the Army

Fred Kaplan of Slate is excellent, as always, in his analysis of the importance of David Petraeus coming home, briefly, to chair the Army promotions board.

I agree with Matt Yglesias’s concerns, especially this one:

The trouble here is that though the counterinsurgency people are, I think, generally correct about the sort of scenarios

Social Security

In this week’s Dead-Tree TIME, I look at a phenomenon I don’t recall seeing before in a Democratic primary: The leading contenders are having an argument over Social Security. That program, of course, is something that Democrats usually fight about with Republicans, not each other. Why now? As Obama strategist David Axelrod sees it, the …

“Grim” Rudy

Much has been written and said about the Roger Ailes/News Corp/Rudy Giuliani connection, about how Fox News and all the News Corp properties are transparently working to secure Rudy both the GOP nomination and the White House. This post is not an effort to dispute those suspicions, or to contest the obvious prefence the Fox News Channel …

SwampCast: Head versus Heart

This SwampCast looks at what might happen should the surging Huckabee wind up in showdown with Rudy Giuliani. A note — I mention, in the cast, that Republican primary voters like Rudy because he’s “tough on terrorism.” I want to distinguish that from the notion that that Rudy actually has that much experience fighting terrorism, though …