Michael Crowley

I don’t know how many Americans will note the death of former Chicago Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, but it comes at a symbolically ominous moment for Democrats, who are already trying to beat back a Republican narrative about corruption on Capitol Hill. As House Ways and Means chairman, Rosty was a jowly titan of the 1980s Democratic …

I hope you’ve already read TIME’s much-discussed cover story on the Taliban’s often sadistic treatment of women, and the additional moral pressure it places on Barack Obama’s decision making about Afghanistan. (Which is not the same as saying that we must stay in Afghanistan, by the way.)

Along those lines comes an especially awful …

Ted Stevens never worried much about making friends in Washington. “I’m a mean, miserable S.O.B.,” he once declared. He wasn’t speaking with contrition; he was bragging. Stevens was a tough character—brusque, short-tempered, and even vindictive. To underscore the point, he sometimes wore an Incredible Hulk necktie when he …

Update 12:48pm: A friend and former aide to Stevens tells an Alaska news channel that Stevens was killed in the crash. (However he now says that has not been confirmed.)

Nine people were aboard a plane that crashed in southwest Alaska today, including former Republican Senator Ted Stevens, a one-time Senate titan who was defeated in …

It wasn’t exactly a red-hot newsmaking weekend, but my former colleague Jon Chait noticed the same thing I did from the Sunday political talk shows — namely House Republican leader John Boehner’s awkward attempt to reconcile his critiques of Barack Obama’s fiscal responsibility with his support for extending the Bush tax cuts, which are …

The House ethics committee has released its charges against Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters of California, who, along with New York Democrat Charles Rangel, faces an ethics trial this fall that surely has Chris Van Hollen popping the Rolaids. In the new print issue of TIME, Jay and I have a story about how corruption, an that …

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the political dynamic preventing the Obama administration from pumping more spending into the economy, which some of its top economic officials believe would act as insurance against the possibility of a double-dip recession. Yesterday the Senate voted to approve $26 billion in direct aid to state …

Truly, election season has arrived:

Many of the ideas being promoted by Democrats to stop the slide are hardly new. House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) called the strategy “more meaningless than harmful” after voting for one Democratic proposal, a resolution to encourage packers of domestic fruits and vegetables to display the

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The Office of Congressional Ethics has released its report detailing charges that Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters of California intervened on behalf of a bank in which her husband owned stock. We already knew that Waters was facing House ethics charges, the details of which were first made public in a March 2009 New York Times …

When the Portland, Oregon police re-opened a long dormant investigation into a sexual assault allegation against Al Gore by a masseuse, I suggested that the ugly headlines that ensued might actually be in Gore’s best interest. The accuser’s statement had appeared online for everyone to read and the National Enquirer–enjoying a new dose …

When Republican chairman Michael Steele popped off earlier this month and warned that America’s war in Afghanistan is “a losing proposition,” he was nearly drummed out of his job for breaking with the party’s official line. But with every passing day there’s more evidence of unrest over the war among Republican elder statesmen. The …

A weird and fascinating little tale from Wired‘s Danger Room:

Active Denial has long been considered the “Holy Grail” of crowd control, for its ability to penetrate just a 64th of an inch underneath the skin, and inspire people to move — fast — from the pain that ensued. To Active Denial’s boosters, that made the

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