Michael Crowley

A stunning couple of days for Barack Obama and the war in Afghanistan. Given that Obama says the war plan remains the same–“This is a change in personnel but it is not a change in policy,” Obama just said in the Rose Garden–Petraeus seems about the most solid and safe choice imaginable. More thoughts shortly.

While Stanley McChrystal and his inner circle may be quick to mock and insult senior Obama administration officials, that explosive Rolling Stone article featured very little substantive disagreement between McChrystal’s team and President Obama’s stated Afghanistan strategy. But in reality the military is awfully skeptical of Obama’s …

A striking footnote to the McChrystal-Rolling Stone fiasco is the fact that the one top Obama administration official for whom McChrystal’s team has praise is… Hillary Clinton. Not that this is so shocking; as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Clinton steeped herself in defense issues and rubbed elbows with the military …

A new poll conducted by the Denver Post and Denver’s 9News offered further evidence that Tea Power has reached Colorado. In that state’s Senate GOP primary race (to fill the seat left by Ken Salazar’s appointment as Interior Secretary), Weld County prosecutor Ken Buck is thumping the state’s former lieutenant governor, Jane Norton, by 53 …

Columbus, OH — Perhaps no state highlights the challenges facing Barack Obama and the Democrats this fall more than Ohio. The state’s unemployment rate is pushing 11 percent, above the national average, and although there is precious little sense here that an economic recovery is underway. Voters are feeling not just economic …

A couple of weeks ago I looked back on Barack Obama’s heralded address to the Muslim world in Cairo last June, and found little evidence that the president’s “new beginning” had done much to improve America’s standing in those nations. Now comes more downbeat data from the Pew Global Attitudes Project. While opinions of Obama still run …

Sure it’s a longshot. An asteroid-hitting-the-earth sort of longshot, even. But just imagine if Jim DeMint were to have, say, some terrible skeleton in his closet that emerges a few days before the election. This man would then become a U.S. Senator:

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But precious as a Senate seat may be, …

However vicious we already know the Taliban to be, but it’s still shocking to read that they have hung a seven year old boy for being a “spy.”

On the one hand, you’d like to think that this sort of depravity will repel the Afghan people and dim their already limited sympathies for the Taliban. On the other hand, almost all the news …

The Washington Post‘s Jonathan Capehart has some interesting thoughts about the strange frustration in some quarters that Obama won’t show more anger over the BP spill:

African American men are taught at very young ages (or learn the hard way) to keep our emotions in check, to not lose our cool, lest we be perceived as dangerous or

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A few years ago I was having dinner in Washington with one of the more recognizable names in Democratic politics. A gregarious African-American man stopped by the table to pay his respects to my dinner partner. As his visitor walked away, the Democrat turned to me and declared: “Future Speaker of the House.”

“Who is that?” I …

Fresh from the AP:

WASHINGTON — Administration officials dangled the possibility of a job for former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff last year in hopes he would forego a challenge to Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, his rival in an Aug. 10 primary, administration officials said Wednesday.

These officials declined to

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In the wake of BP’s hugely disappointing “top kill” failure in the Gulf, the Obama administration is jacking up the tough talk. Speaking in the Rose Garden today, the president himself vowed to support an independent commission’s effort “to follow the facts wherever they lead, without fear or favor.” And Attorney General Eric Holder is …