A forum at the Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government got unexpectedly interesting tonight, when Hillary Clinton pollster Mark Penn lit into Barack Obama on the Iraq war, contending that, for all his talk of how he opposed the invasion in 2002, “there’s not much of a difference” between the way Obama voted and the way Clinton voted, once …
Documents: Dumped
They’re up on the House Judiciary site. I’ve just been skimming but my preliminary take is that the Lam thing is still pretty darn interesting. Favorite bit so far: The letter protesting Lam’s “catch and release” enforcement of immigration law signed by Randy “Duke” Cunningham. And that’s actually how he signs it, with quotes around the …
More: Re: There Oughta Be a Law
Thanks for the response, Old Man Kinsley. I’ll try to type something out here before the early bird special ends the second wave of documents goes up (which could settle the whole “scandal” issue to both our satisfaction).
First of all, I am clearly more easily amused than you are. For me, the spectacle of the Bush administration …
Been Bloggin’ So Long…Lordy, Lordy
Well, AnaMarie, first of all, thank you for noting how long I’ve been “doing this pundit thing.” Some day I’ll bore you with my tales of blogging from Valley Forge. That Washington—what a card. After a couple of drinks, he would take his wooden teeth and…
But not now, not now. Now I’m wondering: if no one is saying “that …
Update the Second: DoJ Document Dump
Re: There Oughta Be a Law
My temporary colleague Mr. Kinsley goes all Jay-pants (and tip-of-hat-less) with his second post on Swampland:
The trouble with this scandal, as a scandal, has been that—if you’re going to be honest (and why not?)—there is not only nothing illegal about the president firing a US attorney. There is nothing even really wrong with
…
Iraq–Four Years Gone
Greetings from Jordan on the fourth anniversary of the gravest foreign policy mistake in American history.
Several Swampland commenters asked that I review what I was thinking four years ago. I thought it might be interesting to look up what I wrote the week the war began. Here it is. My feelings about war had been extremely skeptical, …
There Oughta Be A Law
We’ll see what this next round of documents reveals, but the ball-moving development of today in the US Attorneys story is Adam Cohen’s piece on the Times Editorial Page. It plugs a big hole in the argument that this is a big deal story and not just, in the words of our Attorney General, “an overblown personnel matter.” …
DoJ Document Dump Update
Annb asks, I answer: The House Judiciary committee and the DoJ are both saying there will be a second wave of docs released by CoB today. Warm up your printers. They said that Friday, too, but now they’ve said it more than once.
Iglesias and Cummins on FNS
A request to Swampland’s sharp-eyed (and toothed) commenters: Where could one find a web-archived clip of fired ASUAs Iglesias and Cummins’s appearance on yesterday’s Fox News Sunday? The transcript gets at how devastating their interview was to the admin’s narrative, but one has to see how dignified yet sharp they are under Chris …
Welcome, Mike
As you can see, Mr. Kinsley is especially excited to join us here at Swampland. He’ll be here all week, folks.
Seriously, he’ll be here for a week.
Small Favors
Larry Small is in trouble again. A page one Washington Post story details some of the expenses he has put in for as Secretary of the Smithsonian (the top job at the world’s largest museum). Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), Small’s nemesis in this drama, has escalated his accusation from “champagne lifestyle” to “Dom Perignon lifestyle.” I …
Wow
This is pretty amazing, and very effective, I think. It’s increasingly apparent that the Great Divide in 2008 isn’t black v. white, or male v. female, but young v. old.
By the way, I could put together a reel of Obama sound bites that sounds every bit as trite as Hillary in this guerrilla mashup. But I wouldn’t have the skills or …