At 1:30 p.m. today, in Room 226 of the Dirksen Building, Senator Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., will hold a hearing on the “History and Legality of Executive Branch Czars.” Since Feingold is a liberal Democrat, this raises eyebrows. Why would Feingold embrace a topic–so often distorted and misunderstood–that has been the purview of Fox News
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It is always good to remember that our troops–and those of our allies–in Afghanistan are fighting a new sort of war, according to a strategy (Counterinsurgency) that emphasizes humanity over brutality, and that many of those who are killed are involved in the provision of basic services like clean water and sewage, transportation and …
According to the Guardian, Ahmadinejad is not Jewish. Oh well, it would have been nice to think so. Why? Because those who demonize The Other deserve to be exposed as the imperfect, mongrel individuals they are. In the end, as DNA testing inevitably shows, we are all everyone, we are all The Other. Certainly, we’re all Africans. Which is …
This is insane. The guys at Conservapedia (aka, “the trustworthy encyclopedia”) have decided to retranslate the Bible in what they’re calling the Conservative Bible Project, because “liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations.”
And you thought liberal bias was limited to the evil mainstream …
One of the more popular rumors in Iran when I visited last June was that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is Jewish. Now the Telegraph newspaper in London has gone public with the story. Apparently, he comes from a line of weavers–yes, tallit-weavers–who changed their names recently, to prosper in the Islamic Republic. Indeed, Ahmadinejad’s name, …
Once again, Paul Slansky catches what the rest of us missed this week. Swampland commenters, what made your week?
There will be a fair bit of second-guessing and recriminations to come, now that the IOC has bounced Chicago in the first-round. One question is whether this does anything to tarnish Valerie Jarrett’s unique role as Obama’s wise voice of counsel. Jarrett’s role in Chicago’s Olympic bid pre-dated her arrival at the White House, but once …
It is possible that the defeat of Chicago at the International Olympic Committee, a stunning, first-round defeat, will be good for the president over the long haul. His loyalties to his hometown are unquestioned, but the prospect of Olympic building scandals, of friends and fundraisers benefiting form the Olympic spending, and the …
The Senate Finance Committee’s rejection of two public option amendments has set off a flurry of other proposals that could upend the reformed health care system imagined in the Chairman Max Baucus’s original bill. Earlier today, Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell introduced an amendment that would empower states to set up their own …
Can John Ensign survive this story in the New York Times? The headline sticks to the boilerplate: Senator’s Aid After Affair Raises Flags Over Ethics But the article has lots of new, dishy details, including this passage:
President Obama issued an executive order this afternoon, prohibiting government employees from texting and emailing while driving government vehicles or while driving on government business or while driving and using electronic devices purchased by the government. The idea is that the federal government should set a good example to …
Does anyone at the Vatican talk to each other? Or are these guys just really really awful at public relations? Earlier this week, the Holy See’s ambassador to the United Nations delivered a defiant statement in response to allegations that Vatican officials haven’t done enough to deal with sex abuse within the church. The statement …
Austan Goolsbee is a funny guy–for an economist. (I kid.) But he lives in a town, Washington, D.C., that is not funny, unless you are laughing at us, which is rather easy to do. So depending on how you look at it, he either has a low bar or a high bar to clear before becoming D.C.’s funniest person, which he did Thursday night. As …