The bipartisan fiscal commission created by President Obama in February was due to vote on its final report by December 1. But at a press conference on Capitol Hill a little over an hour ago its chairmen, Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson, said there’s been a change of plan. Bowles and Simpson have come up with a …
During a press gaggle on Air Force One today, White House press secretary Bill Burton said that national security advisor Tom Donilon woke the president at 3:55 am with the news of North Korea’s artillery attack on a South Korean island.
Two thoughts: First, this may be the closest we’ve come to the infamous “3 am phone call” that …
Doesn’t really seem that way:
American businesses earned profits of $1.66 trillion at an annual rate in the third quarter, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago, at least in nominal or non-inflation-adjusted
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This is startling–and more than a little discouraging:
KABUL — Afghans in two crucial southern provinces are almost completely unaware of the September 11 attacks on the United States and don’t know they precipitated the foreign intervention now in its 10th year, a new report showed on Friday…
Few Afghans in Helmand and
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Obama tells his veep to focus “day and night” on getting Senate approval for the seriously endangered nuclear arms treaty.
PS Republican foreign policy mandarin Dick Lugar (last seen trying to prevent a horrible Outbreak-type bioterror scenario) is ticked off about the START holdup. I’d never known Lugar to raise his voice before. But …
This Sunday’s New York Times magazine features a long “is she running?” story about Sarah Palin, by the estimable Robert Draper. I haven’t had a chance read it yet, but here’s a taste:
“I am,” Sarah Palin told me the next day when I asked her if she was already weighing a run for president. “I’m engaged in the internal
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Michael Cohen responds to my thoughts about his take on Karzai’s unhappiness with the U.S. war effort in his country:
A few people have raised the point that this is not the first time Karzai has complained about the US military and the death of Afghan civilians from American arms. And the cynical might argue, as Crowley does, that
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So Mitch McConnell has folded, handing Jim DeMint and company a victory in their Tea Party-backed crusade to eliminate the scourge of earmarks, which they call a perfect symbol of institutionalized Washington corruption. The House GOP has done the same, and even the Obama White House–seeing an obvious winning issue–is hopping the …
The president, in need of some positive news, seems to be in a horse-trading mood:
Washington (CNN) — In a bid to ratify the new nuclear missile agreement with Russia during the lame-duck session of Congress, the Obama administration is offering to spend $4 billion more over five years for nuclear weapons
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From former Obama budget director Peter Orszag:
Social Security is not the key fiscal problem facing the nation. Payments to its beneficiaries amount to 5 percent of the economy now; by 2050, they’re projected to rise to about 6 percent. Over the same period, federal health care costs will increase six times as much.
Orszag goes …
So says Salon:
Gingrich has now been repeating the exact same formulation about his plans for about a year and a half. And every time he does it, the media reports it as if it’s new. That’s despite the fact that, by our non-comprehensive count, Gingrich has repeated in 20 separate interviews that he will make his decision in February
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The Afghan president calls for a smaller American troop presence and reduced military operations in his country. And Michael Cohen, a sharp liberal critic of the war, is extremely frustrated:
It’s hard to imagine a greater indictment of US strategy than to have the president of Afghanistan basically argue that that strategy is
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You can find reasons to slam the guy from both the left and the right. But not every member of Congress chooses to spend their spare time trudging through Africa on missions like this one:
Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, and a delegation of Pentagon officials visited the laboratories on Wednesday for the first
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