Articles from Contributor
In South Carolina, GOP Gubernatorial Race Gets Ugly
Front-runners will always absorb their share of potshots, but rarely do they come in forms like this. Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley, a Tea Party favorite backed by Sarah Palin, is no stranger to internecine warfare; in recent weeks, she’s twice denied allegations of extramarital affairs. But the most recent attack on …
Public Service Announcement
To the commentariat: I know many of your posts are still getting trapped in moderation purgatory. We haven’t entered the censorship era on Swampland or hatched a plot to silence certain commenters. (Not even Karen, who our comment filter has apparently blacklisted as well.) It’s a technical glitch, and the High Sheriffs are working with …
The Brewer-Obama Faceoff
Our colleague Elizabeth Dias files this report:
Two days ago Michelle Obama launched Let’s Move Outside! at Red Rock Canyon in Las Vegas to fight childhood obesity. This afternoon Obama faced a different desert activism outside the White House as he met with Arizona Governor Jan Brewer.
Arizona’s controversial immigration
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1,000 Words: Awkward Conversations Edition
What Motivates Glenn Beck?
Dave Weigel has an interesting Q & A with Alexander Zaitchik, who’s in the midst of a publicity tour for his new Glenn Beck bio, Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance. Zaitchik, whose book evolved from the must-read profile he penned last fall on the conservative talk show host, sees Beck as less of an ideologue than a …
BP Tries the “Cut-and-Cap” Method
The widely derided “junk shot” failed. The “top kill” approach was a flop. Enter the “cut-and-cap” method. Using giant shears, BP sliced off a riser from its still-gushing Gulf of Mexico oil well Thursday morning in an attempt to place a cap over the leak and siphon oil to tankers on the surface. During a briefing in Metairie, La., …
Morning Must Reads
-BP chief Tony Hayward — a guy who can seem blithely dismissive of the damage that his company has wrought — admits the obvious: the oil giant lacked proper techniques to combat a spill of this magnitude. The Post’s Peter Whoriskey surveys the potential economic impact on the Gulf economy, and the findings are not encouraging. At the …
Dispatch from Kentucky
I have a Time.com piece up on Rand Paul’s victory party last night. For a candidate who framed himself as the crusading outsider, the shindig was a pretty genteel, insider-y affair, populated more by personal connections, campaign coordinators and influential backers than Tea Party folks. (There were none of the ubiquitous “Don’t Tread …
How the Arizona Immigration Law May Look in Practice
As debate over SB1070 continues to rage, The Arizona Republic convenes a panel of experts to parse its practical applications. It should come as no surprise that when and how the controversial new law should be enforced remains open to interpretation. The five-person panel included two Arizona legislators: a Republican who sponsored the …
Is the White House Girding for a Specter Loss?
Bob Schieffer of CBS says that’s what sources are telling him privately about tomorrow’s Pennsylvania Senate primary. (Via Greg Sargent.)
“In all candor, I have been told on background and so forth that the White House is preparing for a Specter loss here, and that the president doesn’t want to be associated with that,” the network’s …
How to Kill a Jobs Bill
In a Rasmussen poll taken last month, just 11% of voters surveyed said they thought Congress was doing a good job. A March NBC/Wall Street Journal poll — held a few days before the health-care bill’s passage — found that 17% of voters supported the performance of the legislative branch. A full 50% of voters in that poll said they’d …
Quote of the Day
“The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.”
-Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, during an interview with the Guardian