Byron York

Obama: 'We cannot fully know' motive of Ft. Hood shooter; in address on killings, president celebrates diversity of armed forces

But in his weekly address, Obama says, "We cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing." And while the killings were "heartbreaking" and "despicable" and "devastating," the president says, it is important to remember not only that Hasan's fellow soldiers responded bravely in coming to the aid of the wounded but also that "Americans of every race, faith and station" have served in the U.S. armed forces. "They are Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and nonbelievers," Obama says. "They reflect the diversity that makes this...

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Poll: Huge majority doesn't want Democrats' health care bill

With House Democrats racing to pass their 2,000-plus page health care reform bill this weekend, a new CNN/Opinion Research poll shows that an overwhelming majority of those surveyed -- 72 percent -- want Congress either to make major changes, start over from scratch, or simply stop working on health care legislation. Just 26 percent want Congress to pass the current health care proposal as is, or with minor changes. This was the question asked by the CNN/Opinion Research pollsters: As you may know, several health care bills have been passed by committees in the U.S. House and Senate and they can be brought before Congress for debate and a final vote at any time. Which of the following...

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Democratic civil war update: MoveOn raises $3.6 million to attack party moderates

A few days ago, the left-wing activist group MoveOn.org began sending out emails seeking contributions to fund primary challenges against any Democratic senator who does not fully support "health care reform with a public option." Now there's an update: MoveOn executive director Justin Ruben says the group has raised $3,578,117 for the project and is thinking of new ways to punish errant Democratic lawmakers. "It's a huge sum, and the clearest signal yet that any Democrat who helps Republicans filibuster health care reform will face an enormous backlash from the grassroots," writes Ruben. And now, working in conjunction with Howard Dean's old organization Democracy...

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Democrat trap: Pelosi's wrath or voter backlash

The House is in the final rush toward passage of a national health care bill, and there's one thing Speaker Nancy Pelosi absolutely, positively does not want her Democratic lawmakers to do: Go home. "You meet constituents and get an earful from them -- that's the last thing she wants," says a key House Republican aide. "If you were a Democrat, and you went home last weekend and were asked about the health care bill, you could say, 'I'm still looking at it.' Well, now you've had it for a week, the vote is any day now. What are you going to say?" Better just to stay in Washington and avoid potentially uncomfortable scenes. The problem is, those constituents,...

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That 1,990-page Democratic health care bill? It's longer now; includes new government controls

It's become common practice to refer to the House Democrats' national health care bill as being 1,990 pages long. That's true of the bill introduced last week by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But now Democrats have added a 42-page "manager's amendment" to the bill. Some of the new language in the amendment replaces material already in the bill, but there are enough new provisions to ensure that the bill is now more than 2,000 pages long. And there will likely be even more additions to the bill before the final debate. What's more important is what is in the new amendment. Much of it reflects Democrats' concerns that their bill would cause an increase in health insurance premiums....

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Questions about New York 23

The race for New York's 23rd Congressional District certainly defied many pollsters. On Monday, I headlined a post here at Beltway Confidential "Conservative Hoffman takes dominant lead in New York 23," citing a new poll showing Hoffman with a double-digit lead. Other surveys showed Hoffman ahead by smaller, but still significant, margins. The polls also suggested that momentum was trending Hoffman's way. But by Tuesday night, Hoffman was the loser. What happened? At the moment, we don't as much information about the voters in New York 23 as we have from the Virginia and New Jersey governor's races, so it's hard to say with much confidence. But there are a number of...

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In Virginia and New Jersey, health care was a losing issue

Economic issues dominated the governors' races in Virginia and New Jersey. In Virginia, 62 percent of the voters named either the economy and jobs or taxes as their most important issue. In New Jersey, 58 percent named either the economy and jobs or property taxes as their top issue. The candidate who won on the combination of economic issues won the race. And what is also noteworthy is that the candidate who won on the issue of health care -- currently the top concern of President Obama and Democrats in Washington -- lost the race. In Virginia, 47 percent of the voters named the economy and jobs as their top issue. Republican Bob McDonnell won among them, 57 percent to 42 percent....

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In Virginia and New Jersey, negative attacks were losers

One key similarity in the Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey is that in each case the candidate who was perceived as running the more negative campaign lost. When exit pollsters in both states asked voters whether one candidate had attacked the other unfairly during the campaign, the results are striking. In Virginia, 65 percent of all voters said Democrat Creigh Deeds attacked Republican Bob McDonnell unfairly, while 51 percent said McDonnell attacked Deeds unfairly. (Part of the electorate believed both sides launched unfair attacks on the other.) Just 26 percent of voters said Deeds did not attack unfairly, while 40 percent said McDonnell did not make unfair...

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A divided party: Progressives threaten Democratic lawmakers

MoveOn.org is sending out emails today seeking more contributions for its campaign to defeat any Democratic senator who does not fully support Obamacare. Yesterday the left-wing activist group asked members to contribute "to a primary challenge against any Democratic senator who helps Republicans block an up-or-down vote on health care reform." Today, MoveOn reports that it has received $2 million in pledges in less than 24 hours. "It's a clear sign of how angry progressives would be at any Democrat who helps filibuster reform," MoveOn executive director Justin Ruben writes in the new email. "The larger the war chest we can offer a potential challenger, the...

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Obama can't be community organizer for the world

A lot of observers are having trouble figuring out the philosophical underpinnings of Barack Obama's foreign policy. How does the president see America's place in the world? How will he use American power? How much does he care about such things? There are no good answers at the moment, but there is a new theory going around: Obama approaches foreign affairs as he would neighborhood issues. "President Obama is applying the same tools to international diplomacy that he once used as a community organizer on Chicago's South Side," claims a new analysis in The Washington Post. As such, Obama is "constructing appeals to shared interests and attempting to bring the...

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First Lady: People ask my mom, 'What did you do to create Michelle Obama?'

First Lady Michelle Obama spoke at a mentoring event for girls at the White House today. In her remarks, she told the story of her career as a lawyer and hospital executive. But before that, the First Lady told the girls that they should relate to her, even though she is now living in the White House. "One of the things that my mom always said -- because people ask her all the time, 'What did you do to create Michelle Obama?'" Mrs. Obama told the audience. "And the one thing my mom has always said, and I agree, she said, 'You know, Michelle and Barack aren't new.' She says, 'Michelle and Barack are not unique.' She says, 'There are thousands of Michelle and Barack...

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House GOP health care bill to be filed this week

Although there are dozens of Republican health care reform proposals, the House GOP will unite behind a final health care plan this week. It will come as the "Republican substitute" to the final Democratic health-care bill. That bill, all 1,990 pages of it, was unveiled by Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week. Tomorrow, or possibly even tonight, Democrats are expected to file their truly final version of the bill, the so-called "manager's amendment." After that, Republicans will file their own bill. Will the GOP proposal be shorter than 1,990 pages? "A lot, lot, lot, lot shorter," says a well-connected House aide of the GOP bill, which is expected to be in the...

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Poll: Conservative Hoffman takes dominant lead in New York 23

Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman has pulled into a 17-point lead over Democrat Bill Owens in the congressional race in New York's 23rd District, according to a new survey by Public Policy Polling. That lead is in a three-way contest that includes the newly-withdrawn Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava; in a two-way contest between Hoffman and Owens, Hoffman leads by 16 points. In the three-way race, Public Policy Polling has Hoffman at 51 percent, with Owens at 34 percent and Scozzafava at 13 percent. In the two-way race, Hoffman leads Owens 54-38. Public Policy Polling admits that surveying the race has been somewhat chaotic in the last few days -- days in which the...

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GOP on health care: In 568 words, what's wrong with 1,990 pages

House Republican Leader John Boehner gave the Republican radio address today, and in 568 words made a simple and compelling case for what is wrong with the Democrats' 1,990-page health care proposal -- and for what should be done instead. "This 1,990 pages of bureaucracy will centralize health care decision making in Washington, DC," Boehner said. "It’ll require thousands of new federal employees. It’ll put unelected boards, bureaus, and commissions in charge of who gets access to what drug and what potentially life-saving treatment." "The best way to get a sense of what Speaker Pelosi’s takeover of health care looks like is to actually look...

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Memo: It's officially safe to criticize Barack Obama

There's a lot of buzz on Capitol Hill about a new health care memo, by strategist/communicator Frank Luntz, which is filled with advice for opponents of the Democrats' reform legislation. The memo analyzes the public's concerns that national health care will result in lower quality care at higher cost, with an out-of-control deficit to boot, and Luntz recommends language to help critics make the case against the legislation more effectively. For example, he suggests opponents would be better off avoiding the phrase public option; calling it the government option is better. The new memo updates a similar analysis Luntz wrote last May. Some of the advice is familiar. But one striking...

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At key moment, Obama leaves health post unfilled

Medicare and Medicaid, the federal government's health insurance programs for the elderly and poor, play a big role in the health care reform proposals being considered on Capitol Hill. President Obama and Democrats in Congress hope to cut Medicare spending by nearly a half-trillion dollars over the next decade, and reform plans call for a big expansion of Medicaid during the same period. The proposals raise serious questions. Is it really possible to take so much money out of Medicare and not affect coverage? Is expanding Medicaid a good idea? Congress would like to pose those questions, and many more, to the top administrator of the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Except there isn't...

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Obamacare bill: Now 2,000 pages long, give or take a few

Memo to Republicans: You can stop talking about the Democrats' thousand-page health care bill. You can start talking about the Democrats' two-thousand page health care bill. Breaking previous records in the health care sweepstakes, the new House bill introduced by Speaker Nancy Pelosi this morning is 1,990 pages long. UPDATE 1: The conservative Americans for Tax Reform has released an instant word-count analysis of the bill. According to ATR, the word "tax" appears 87 times in the legislation. "Taxable" appears 62 times, "fee" appears 59 times, and "penalty" appears 113 times. The word "shall" appears 3,424 times. UPDATE 2: Statement...

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Obama and race relations: hope soars, then plunges

A new Gallup poll suggests that the sense of hopefulness about race relations that soared with the rise of Barack Obama has now plunged back to its pre-Obama level. For more than 40 years, Gallup has asked the question, "Do you think that relations between blacks and whites will always be a problem for the United States, or that a solution will eventually be worked out?" The numbers have trended slowly over the years. In the 1970s and 80s, the number of people who thought race would always be a problem was on the rise. Then in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the trend changed, and those expressing optimism outnumbered the pessimists. Despite the gradual change, there have...

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Anti-Fox website takes up ACORN cause

With Congress getting ready to pass a continuing resolution that might -- or might not -- extend the ban on federal funds for ACORN, there's a new campaign urging lawmakers to restore federal funding for the community organizing group. The website DeFOX America, which is devoted both to attacking Fox News and defending ACORN, is asking readers to sign a petition urging Congress "to stand up to [Fox's] McCarthyite tactics by voting against any unconstitutional legislation that singles out specific organizations. This includes the continuing resolution that cuts off Federal support to the national anti-poverty group ACORN." I reported yesterday that the congressional defunding...

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For Dems, health care reform more important than war in Afghanistan

Twice as many Democrats say health care reform should be President Obama's top priority as say the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq should be his top concern, according to a new Gallup poll. Gallup asked people this question: "Which of the following should be Barack Obama's top priority as president -- the economy, health care, the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, energy, the federal budget deficit, or something else?" (The choices were rotated so that not every respondent heard them in the same order.) At the top of the list, cited most by Democrats, independents and Republicans, is the economy. But there are significant differences in what comes next. Among independents and...

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How Dems outmaneuvered GOP on ACORN

Last Thursday was a confusing day at the House Financial Services Committee. The committee was preparing to vote on legislation to create a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency when a fight erupted over ACORN, the community organizing group that was defunded by Congress after videos surfaced showing ACORN workers involved in a variety of corrupt practices. Although the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency -- designed to deal with issues like mortgages and credit-card fees -- has nothing to do with community organizing, Democrats offered an amendment that could allow ACORN and groups like it to participate in the new agency. Republicans offered an amendment of their own,...

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Will Congress' defunding of ACORN expire Saturday?

When both houses of Congress voted to defund ACORN several weeks ago, what they actually did was bar lawmakers and federal agencies from giving any money to the community organizing group for the duration of the temporary budget agreement, or continuing resolution, that was in effect at the time. Continuing resolutions are used to extend federal spending, and keep the government running, when Congress can't agree on appropriations bills for the fiscal year. When the congressional defunding of ACORN went into effect on October 1, there was a continuing resolution in place that would last until October 31 -- this Saturday. The ACORN ban was in that resolution, so it will also expire on...

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Obama's big change: He moves America to the Right

As promised, Barack Obama is bringing change to America. He's making it more Republican. It's not that more people are actually becoming Republicans or calling themselves Republicans -- the number of voters who formally identify with the party is at its lowest point in years. But we appear to be in the early stages of a shift in which political independents, people who not too long ago were sick of Republicans, are now leaning toward GOP positions on some key issues. They still call themselves independents, but they're worried by the left-leaning policies of President Obama and the Democratic Congress, especially on the economy. "The middle, which wanted to move away from George...

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Biden's popularity plunges; lower than Cheney's

Vice President Joe Biden's favorable rating has fallen to 42 percent in a new Gallup poll, down from a high of 59 percent just after last year's election. Biden's unfavorable rating in the new poll is 40 percent, up from 29 percent last November. (Eighteen percent of those surveyed say they have no opinion of Biden.) Biden's average favorable rating during his time in office so far is 45 percent -- well below the average 65 percent favorable rating for Vice President Dick Cheney during Cheney's first year in office. Vice President Al Gore's favorable rating during his first year, 55 percent, was also higher than Biden's. (Gallup did not measure vice presidential popularity before...

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NPR analyst compares Obama to Nixon, issues full apology

It's pretty unremarkable to describe the Obama White House's growing enemies list -- the insurance companies, Chamber of Commerce, Fox News -- as "Nixonian." But there's one place where, if you venture such an opinion, you'd better be prepared to apologize -- quickly and profusely. On National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation" Wednesday, NPR political editor Ken Rudin said the White House campaign against Fox News is a bad idea. "It's not only aggressive, it's almost Nixonesque," Rudin said. "I mean, you think of what Nixon and Agnew did with their enemies list and their attacks on the media; certainly Vice President Agnew's constant denunciation...

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Michelle Obama turns Breast Cancer Awareness Month into attack on insurance companies

First Lady Michelle Obama took part in a White House event this afternoon to mark National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. While such events have been mostly noncontroversial in the past, Mrs. Obama used the occasion to launch an extended attack on the insurance industry, the Obama administration's current target in the ongoing battle over national health care legislation. After paying brief tribute to people working in the field, Mrs. Obama noted the progress that has been made in breast cancer research and treatment since former First Lady Nancy Reagan took up the cause in the early 1980s. But there is still far to go, Mrs. Obama said -- and that brought her to the insurance...

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'Fierce urgency' for jobs, not health care

How many times have you heard Barack Obama talk about "the fierce urgency of now"? The president has used the quote, from Martin Luther King Jr., to call for quick action on the war in Iraq, on global warming, on homelessness, on education -- you name it. Now, Obama and his fellow Democrats are trying to convince the nation of the fiercely urgent need to enact national health care reform this very instant. "We have been waiting for health reform since the days of Teddy Roosevelt," Obama told the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation in September. "We cannot wait any longer. ... There comes a time to remember the fierce urgency of right now." But the...

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Few believe health care will improve if reform passes

In a new Gallup poll, Americans were asked to assume that health care reform passes Congress this year. If so, would the quality of their health care, or their health care costs, or their health care coverage, or the requirements insurance companies impose on them -- would those things get better, stay the same, or get worse? What's striking about the poll is the small number of Americans who believe their situation would improve under a national health care system. Nineteen percent say the quality of their health care will improve. Twenty-two percent say their health care costs will be lower. Twenty percent say their health care coverage will improve. And 25 percent say the...

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Why the White House attack on Fox is backfiring

There seems to be general agreement that the Obama White House's campaign against Fox News is actually directed at other news organizations -- to "get other journalists to think twice before following [Fox's] stories in their own coverage," according to an article in the Politico. Fox is beyond the pale, the White House is telling the press corps: You wouldn't want to have anything to do with that, would you? But the White House campaign appears to be backfiring. A number of mainstream journalists are reacting badly to the attempt to declare a journalistic organization off-limits. Why the negative reaction? Is it because of solidarity among reporters? A reflexive defense...

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Public to Congress: There's no rush on health care

President Obama and Democrats often stress the urgency of passing health care reform now. It just can't wait any longer, they say. But a new Gallup survey shows that the public is in no such rush to remake the health care system. In its latest poll, Gallup asked the following question: "If Congress is going to reform the health care system, should Congress deal with health care reform on a gradual basis over several years, or should Congress try to pass a comprehensive health care reform plan this year?" Fifty-eight percent of those questioned want reform on a gradual basis, versus 38 percent who want it now. Broken down by political party, the results show that Democrats...

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The public still opposes a health care makeover

In recent weeks, we've seen the return of the idea that passage of the Democratic national health care program is inevitable. And indeed, Democrats can point to some signs of progress. But as far as the big picture is concerned, after a wall-to-wall, 24/7 push by the White House and Democratic leaders, the public remains opposed to a health care makeover. Pollster.com's average of polls on the issue shows that 49.6 percent of those surveyed oppose a national health care makeover, versus 43.2 percent who support it. A graph of those results shows the trend lines moving farther apart, not closer. Pollster.com's listing of polls shows 35 different public surveys on health care reform...

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Carville sees conservatives as alien creatures

Are you, by chance, a conservative? A Republican? Did you vote for John McCain last November, as well as the GOP candidate in your local congressional race? If your answer to these question is yes, then you are very, very strange -- and perhaps not even fully American. At the very least, you're not one of the rest of us. If you don't believe it, just read "The Very Separate World of Conservative Republicans," a new report by Democracy Corps, the political research firm run by Democratic operatives James Carville and Stanley Greenberg. "The self-identifying conservative Republicans who make up the base of the Republican Party stand a world apart from the rest of...

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Lefty anger splits Dems -- and may sink them

"Harry Reid abdicates his leadership role," reads the headline at the lefty Daily Kos Web site. "Why Joe Biden should resign," reads the headline at the Huffington Post. "Whiner in Chief," reads the headline at The Nation, referring to President Obama. Self-styled progressives across the country are angry, not just at Obama, but at the rest of the Democratic power structure, as well. That anger is causing an ugly split inside the Washington Democratic world. "Can I speak freely about the liberal whiners?" asks a well-connected Democratic strategist. "These are the same people who have never participated in, much less won, a campaign, who have...

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53 House Republicans call on Obama to fire Kevin Jennings

A group of 53 Republican members of the House has sent a letter to the president asking for the removal of Kevin Jennings, the gay activist who now runs the Education Department's Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools. "It is clear that Mr. Jennings lacks the appropriate qualifications and ethical standards to serve in this capacity," the lawmakers write. The letter was written by Rep. Steve King, who last week became the first lawmaker to call for Jennings to be fired. Among the signers of the new letter are some prominent members of the House GOP, including Republican Conference chairman Rep. Mike Pence, along with Reps. Paul Ryan, Darrell Issa, John Carter, Patrick McHenry,...

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Poll: Obama personal popularity at new low

A new Gallup poll shows that the number of people who have a favorable impression of Barack Obama has fallen to its lowest point since he became president. Fifty-six percent say they have a favorable impression of Obama, versus 40 percent who say they have an unfavorable impression. (Four percent say they have no opinion.) Historically, a president's personal favorable rating has often been higher than his job approval rating; right now, Gallup has Obama's job approval at 52 percent. In January, just before Obama took office, 78 percent of those surveyed by Gallup had a favorable impression of him, with just 18 percent having an unfavorable impression. By March, the favorable number...

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Obama's not just a Nobel laureate; he's a "brave thinker"

This month the Atlantic is honoring 27 leaders who "embody the Atlantic's tradition of brave thinking." Among those "brave thinkers" chosen by the magazine are Jeff Zucker, the NBC-Universal president, honored for his decision to move Jay Leno from late night to prime time; Morgan Tsvangirai, prime minister of Zimbabwe, honored for standing up to the tyrant Robert Mugabe; and Trey Parker and Matt Stone, honored by the Atlantic for creating "South Park" and recently inking a "groundbreaking $75 million digital deal" with Comedy Central. Joining the group is President Barack Obama, who is honored not for a creating a new atmosphere of...

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Dems undermine free speech in hate crimes ploy

What does a hate crimes bill have to do with money for U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq? Nothing, except that the National Defense Authorization Act, which will win final passage in Congress and be sent to the president's desk this week, also contains the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which Democrats placed inside the defense measure over Republican objections. The crime bill -- which would broaden the protected classes for hate crimes to include sexual orientation and "gender identity," which the bill defines as a victim's "actual or perceived gender-related characteristics" -- passed the House earlier this year as a...

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Obama stands by Kevin Jennings -- or does he?

The Center for American Progress, the liberal think tank close to the Obama administration, has posted a blog entry headlined "Obama Stands By His LGBT Nominees Under Attack From the Right." The Center says that President Obama, in his speech to the Human Rights Campaign Saturday night, "strongly reiterated his support" for Kevin Jennings, head of the Education Department's Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, as well as for Chai Feldblum, a lesbian law professor nominated to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission -- although Obama did not mention either Jennings or Feldblum by name. This is the passage from Obama's speech in which the Center says the president...

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New poll: Support for tougher gun laws at lowest point in decades

A new Gallup poll shows that the number of Americans who favor tougher gun control laws has dropped to its lowest point in nearly 20 years. Gallup asked the question, "In general, do you feel that the laws covering the sale of firearms should be made more strict, less strict, or kept as they are now? Forty-four percent said more strict, 12 percent said less strict, and 43 percent said the laws should be kept as they are now -- making for a 55-44 majority opposed to tougher laws. That 44 percent is the lowest number since Gallup began asking this particular question in 1990. A year ago, in October 2008, 49 percent wanted stricter laws. Four years ago, in October 2005, 57 percent...

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Nobel timeline: How Obama won

The Nobel Committee says that there were a record 205 nominations for the Peace Prize this year (33 of them were organizations, not individuals). The path to Barack Obama's Peace Prize began last September, when the committee sent out invitations to a selected group of people, asking them for their nominations. The group included, according to the Nobel organization, "members of national assemblies, governments, and international courts of law; university chancellors, professors of social science, history, philosophy, law and theology; leaders of peace research institutes and institutes of foreign affairs; previous Nobel Peace Prize Laureates; board members of organizations that...

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Nobel committee: Obama is not Bush, and not too American

In its announcement that President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize this morning, the Nobel committee praised Obama for creating a "new climate" in the world in which "multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position" -- a clear reference to the Bush presidency. Then the committee praised Obama for a diplomacy "founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population" -- a clear reference to the committee's belief, or hope, that Obama does not believe in the strong assertion of specifically American values and attitudes. Here is the complete...

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Huh???!!!!! Even pro-Obama press is stunned by Nobel decision

From the Washington Post this morning: Obama is the third sitting U.S. president--and the first in 90 years--to win the prestigious peace prize. His predecessors won during their second White House terms, however, and after significant achievements in their diplomacy. Woodrow Wilson was awarded the price in 1919, after helping to found the League of Nations and shaping the Treatise of Versailles; and Theodore Roosevelt was the recipient in 1906 for his work to negotiate an end to the Russo-Japanese war. In contrast, Obama is struggling over whether to expand the war in Afghanistan, preparing to withdraw from Iraq, and searching for ways to build momentum to restart Israeli-Palestinian...

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Facts hurt Jennings in youth sex controversy

Conservative critics have a long list of objections to gay activist Kevin Jennings, the controversial head of the Education Department's Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools. But the most contentious, and emotional, issue in the Jennings affair concerns a 1988 incident in which Jennings, then a high-school history teacher at Concord Academy in Massachusetts, was approached by one of his students, a sophomore boy, who said he had become involved with an older man he met in the men's room of a Boston bus station. Instead of referring the situation to school authorities, Jennings gave the boy advice on condom use. Critics, like the Family Research Council, have hit Jennings hard over the...

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'We may have to save this president from himself on Afghanistan'

Democratic Rep. Donna Edwards, a vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, attended the premiere of the anti-war film, "Rethink Afghanistan" in Washington last night. In remarks afterward, Edwards quoted a House colleague, whom she did not identify, saying anti-war Democrats must work to rescue President Obama from his commitment to escalate the war in Afghanistan. "As one of my colleagues, who shall remain unnamed, said, 'Indeed, we may have to save this president from himself on Afghanistan,'" Edwards told the audience. "I take that really seriously." Edwards said she believes Obama is "capable of setting aside this language of a...

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Lawmaker sends letter to Obama: Fire Jennings now

Republican Rep. Steve King is sending a letter to the president today calling for the firing of gay activist Kevin Jennings, head of the Education Department's Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools. "The totality of Mr. Jennings' career has been to advocate for public affirmation of homosexuality," King writes. "There is more to safe and drug free shools than can be accomplished from the narrow view of Mr. Jennings who has, for more than 20 years almost exclusively focused on promoting the homosexual agenda." In the letter, King points to a foreword Jennings wrote for a 1999 book entitled Queering Elementary Education, as well as Jennings' work as founder of the Gay,...

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The continuing battle over Obama's radicals

Barack Obama is fighting a lot of political wars these days. The most important, of course, is the war over the war in Afghanistan. Then there's the war over health care. And spending. And the environment. And financial regulation. And on and on. They're all serious and time consuming. But the war that has become unexpectedly intense in recent days isn't about any particular policy. It's the war over personnel -- the president's choices to fill important but not necessarily high-profile jobs in his administration. Some of Obama's choices have been people with radical pasts -- or radical presents. Others are so overtly political that they can't see any line between serving Obama...

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Lawmaker calls on Obama to fire official in gay sex ed controversy

Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King is calling on President Obama to fire gay activist Kevin Jennings, the controversial head of the Education Department's Office of Safe & Drug Free Schools. Although Jennings has come under heavy criticism from social conservatives in recent months, King is the first member of Congress to call for his ouster. King says Jennings has no background in anti-drug work, and his experience in education has focused not on the issue of school safety but on introducing the topic of homosexuality into the classroom, including in elementary schools. "The totality of his life has been the promotion of homosexuality, and much of it within education," says...

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Axelrod: 'Politics' sank Obama's Olympics effort

Top White House adviser David Axelrod says "politics" played a key role in the International Olympic Committee's decision to reject President Obama's appeal in support of Chicago's bid to host the 2016 Olympics. In an interview moments ago on CNN, Axelrod said, "I don't view this as a repudiation of the president or the first lady. I think that there are politics everywhere, and there were politics inside that room." Axelrod said that a former head of the IOC was leading Madrid's effort for the games, and others involved in other Olympic bids also had connections with the IOC. "As with any process like this, there are all kinds of crosscurrents in the room,...

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Amid terror threat, Dems chip away at Patriot Act

You might not have heard, but some key parts of the nation's most important anti-terrorism law are set to expire in December. When the Patriot Act was originally passed in the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Congress put time limits on three of its most far-reaching provisions: "Roving wiretaps," which allow investigators to keep up with suspects who use dozens of cell phones to avoid being traced; "business records" authority, which lets investigators ask a special national-security court for access to records of a suspect's dealings with private businesses; and the "lone wolf" provision, which allows investigators to track individual terror...

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Top Obama adviser jokes that the president was born 'in a village in Kenya'

Austan Goolsbee, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, took part in the "DC's Funniest Celebrity" contest last night at a Washington comedy club. Goolsbee won the contest with a routine that mimicked the famous "Mr. Subliminal" skits on "Saturday Night Live" in which Goolsbee said something in his normal voice and then revealed his inner thoughts sotto voce. For example, Goolsbee said that veterans of the Obama campaign "share this bond, and we came here because we knew that the president had a lot of things to do. Number one on the list, we wanted to make sure -- all the Clinton people got their jobs back -- that we were going to...

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Michelle Obama: It's a 'sacrifice' to travel to Europe to pitch for the Olympics. But I'm doing it for the kids.

In her speech in Copenhagen today, First Lady Michelle Obama said her trip to Denmark, along with the travel of her "dear friend" and "chit-chat buddy" Oprah Winfrey, as well as tomorrow's visit by President Obama, is a "sacrifice" on behalf of the children of Chicago and the United States. "As much of a sacrifice as people say this is for me or Oprah or the president to come for these few days," the first lady told a crowd of people involved in the Chicago project, "so many of you in this room have been working for years to bring this bid home." "As first lady, as many of you know, I’ve made it a priority to bridge the gap...

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Has the liberal moment come and gone?

A new Gallup poll shows a sharp increase in the number of people who say they want the government to promote "traditional values." Gallup's question was simple: "Some people think the government should promote traditional values in our society. Others think the government should not favor any particular set of values. Which comes closer to your own view?" In the new poll, taken in the first days of September, 53 percent of respondents say they want the government to promote traditional values, while 42 percent say they do not want the government to favor any particular set of values. Five percent do not have an opinion. The results are a significant change from...

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Gen. McChrystal gets a rare chance to speak with the commander-in-chief

On "60 Minutes" Sunday, General Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, revealed that he had spoken only once with President Obama in the last 70 days, even as the situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating and the White House is considering an increase in American troops. Now, it looks like McChrystal will have another chance to speak, although not one-on-one, with the president tomorrow, when McChrystal will be part of the national security team meeting on Afghanistan. (The general will participate by videoconference from Afghanistan.) At today's briefing, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs fended off criticism that Obama should speak more often to his...

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Without Bush, media lose interest in war caskets

Remember the controversy over the Pentagon policy of not allowing the press to take pictures of the flag-draped caskets of American war dead as they arrived in the United States? Critics accused President Bush of trying to hide the terrible human cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "These young men and women are heroes," Vice President Biden said in 2004, when he was senator from Delaware. "The idea that they are essentially snuck back into the country under the cover of night so no one can see that their casket has arrived, I just think is wrong." In April of this year, the Obama administration lifted the press ban, which had been in place since the Persian...

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Iran smolders, Afghanistan burns, and Obama heads to...Denmark

With growing pressure for decisions on life-or-death issues in Afghanistan and Iran, this morning the White House announced that President Obama will soon travel to…Copenhagen. Obama will be in Denmark for just a few hours -- he leaves this Thursday and returns Friday -- which is just enough time to make a pitch for Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympic Games. He'll be following First Lady Michelle Obama, who is also going to Copenhagen as part of the promote-Chicago team. Here is the White House press release: Today, the White House announced that President Barack Obama will travel to Copenhagen, Denmark to support Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympic and Paralympic...

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Romney critical of Obama’s Afghan policy—but hesitant himself

Mitt Romney believes Barack Obama is going in the wrong direction on health care, the economy and a whole range of domestic issues. But there’s something else about the current political debate that disturbs the former governor. “The challenges here, in health care, cap and trade, card check and the economy, have taken America’s eyes off what’s happening internationally,” Romney says. “And I think [Obama’s] errors there could be not just alarming but dangerous.” He goes down a list: missile defense, apologizing for past American policies, Honduras, the Middle East. “I would have made it very clear to Israel that they are our friends,...

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Why does Obama keep snubbing the British?

At the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, and at the UN Security Council meeting before that, Barack Obama continued his administration's new policy toward Great Britain: declare that the "special relationship" between the U.S. and the U.K. is as strong as ever, and then act as if there is no such relationship at all. The British papers were filled with the news that the president would not grant Prime Minister Gordon Brown a one-on-one meeting. "Mr. Obama had refused five separate requests from the prime minister for a private meeting during his U.S. trip for the UN summit in New York," reported the Daily Mail. The White House downplayed the reports. "Stop reading...

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New York Times to Paterson: You're outta here

In a new editorial, the New York Times is calling on New York Gov. David Paterson, the state's first African-American chief executive, to withdraw from the 2010 governor's race. "As well meaning as Mr. Paterson has been," the Times writes, "he is not the right person for New York over the long haul." The paper says the Obama administration's effort to give Paterson the hook was "unwelcome and amateurish." Nevertheless, the editorial says Obama's push provided "a focus for what Mr. Paterson ought to be doing in coming months." The paper suggests Paterson is simply not up to the job of crafting a state budget and dealing with the New York...

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In Afghanistan, let U.S. troops be warriors

There was an international uproar when, on Sept. 4, in Afghanistan's Kunduz province, an American fighter jet under NATO command bombed a group of Taliban fighters who had hijacked two fuel tanker trucks. The trucks exploded, the fighters were killed, and so were a still-undetermined number of Afghan civilians. The civilian deaths sent shudders through the American military command, already fearful that civilian casualties would further alienate the Afghan public. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, was said to be angry and determined to tighten the U.S. force's already-strict rules of engagement even more to avoid future civilian deaths. Then...

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House Republicans: Investigate ACORN now

Republican Rep. Steve King has sent a letter to Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, asking Conyers to conduct "a complete and comprehensive full committee investigation" into the community organizing group ACORN. King and Conyers met Tuesday to discuss the matter and are expected to meet again tomorrow; so far, Conyers has not made a commitment one way or the other. In the letter, King writes that even though ACORN is "operating as a criminal enterprise and committing illegal and fraudulent activity," the group is still eligible to receive $8.5 million in federal grants, in addition to the estimated $53 million it has received since 1994....

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Rahm Emanuel: Health care will pass by Thanksgiving

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel says a national health care bill will be passed by both houses of Congress "before the members go home for Thanksgiving." Emanuel also claimed the bill will be "bipartisan" even if every Republican in the House and Senate votes against it. "Health care will be passed before the members go home for Thanksgiving," Emanuel said on the Charlie Rose program last night. "And it will not be just on the Senate finance, because the legislative process is a place where both bodies get to contribute." Rose asked about possible Republican support. "There are going to be bipartisan ideas and policies in this...

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New poll: Democrat lead over GOP is smallest in five years; doubts about Obama continue to grow

The new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll asked respondents whether they would prefer to see next year's elections result in a Congress controlled by Democrats or a Congress controlled by Republicans. The result: 48 percent say they would prefer Democrats in control, and 45 percent say Republicans. That three-point Democratic lead is down from seven points lead in July and nine points in April. It's also far smaller than the massive 19-point lead Democrats held over Republicans in June 2008. So in less than a year and a half, the Democratic margin has fallen from 19 points to 3. (The last time the Democratic lead was so slim was five years ago, in October 2004. The last time Republicans...

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Hollywood health push: Will Ferrell, Jon Hamm, Olivia Wilde join MoveOn in ad for Obamacare

MoveOn.org has just released a new ad, featuring several top Hollywood stars, which makes a strong plea for the passage of a public option in national health care reform. Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell The ad is in the form of a sarcastic public service appeal on behalf of insurance company executives. "Something terrible is happening," Ferrell says at the beginning. "Health insurance executives are getting a bad rap." Another voice continues: "As the health care debate heats up, we need to remember who the real victims are: health insurance executives. People are saying a lot of mean things about health insurance companies and...

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Democrats on path to repeat housing disaster

With all the attention paid to the health care battle, ACORN, and the president's "Full Ginsburg" appearances on five Sunday talk shows, few people noticed a hearing with an exceedingly boring title -- "Proposals to Enhance the Community Reinvestment Act" -- held last week in the House Financial Services Committee. But the session marked a key moment in the ongoing battle between Republicans and Democrats over what caused our current financial woes -- and how we might best avoid getting into the same trouble again. At the hearing, and in others across Capitol Hill, Democratic majorities are pressing hard to expand some of the very policies that led to the reckless...

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Walpin scandal update: Grassley blocks nomination, accuses administration of stonewalling

Republican Sen. Charles Grassley has blocked the ambassadorial nomination of Alan Solomont, currently chairman of the board of the government agency that oversees AmeriCorps, in retaliation for what Grassley says is the administration's stonewalling of Congress over documents relating to the firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin. Specifically, Grassley has sought, and been denied, information relating to the White House's role in the decision to fire Walpin. Solomont, a major Democratic donor, is chairman of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which includes AmeriCorps. His term ends in October, and President Obama has nominated him to be U.S. ambassador...

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New poll: Majority believe government is doing too much

A new Gallup poll shows that the number of people who believe government has its hand in too many areas of American life has reached its highest point in more than a decade. The question asked by Gallup was, "Some people think the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses. Others think that government should do more to solve our country's problems. Which comes closer to your own view?" Fifty-seven percent of those surveyed say government is doing too much, while 38 percent say it should do more. Five percent are undecided. The number of people who believe government is doing too much is up sharply from early March, when 47...

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SEIU chief: We won't be silenced by the 'ugly, anti-American' 'lies, stunts and smears' of 'attack dogs, Teabaggers and Glenn Beck'

Andy Stern, head of the Service Employees International Union, has just released a statement vowing not to be "silenced" by "right wing attack dogs" targeting "progressive individuals" and "community organizations." Stern, whose union has sometimes been linked with the community organizing group ACORN, which yesterday suffered an enormous blow when the House of Representatives voted 345-45 to cut off all federal funds for the organization, said his union will not be intimidated by a right-wing "backlash" that is "fierce, ugly and anti-American." Here is the full text of Stern's statement: This is a moment of profound change...

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Under fire, Democrats abandon ACORN in droves

Back in February, during the Democrats' frenzied rush to pass the $787 billion economic stimulus bill, Republican Sen. David Vitter offered a simple, 28-word amendment: "None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used directly or indirectly to fund the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now." Vitter's amendment was shot down, 51-45, with all the votes coming from the Democratic majority. At about the same time, GOP lawmakers introduced similar measures in the House. Those, too, were defeated by Democratic majorities. Fast-forward to Monday, Sept. 14. A Housing Department appropriations bill was moving through the Senate, and...

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The stunning, total defeat of ACORN

The ACORN vote in the House is stunning news. Just 48 hours after Republican Leader John Boehner introduced the "Defund ACORN Act," the bill -- which most Republicans thought Democrats would do anything to block -- passed by a resounding 345-75 vote. It would never have made it to a vote had not the Democratic leadership decided to allow it, and the winning total included 172 Democrats. Yes, 172 House Democrats voted to totally cut off funding for an organization that has worked for years on behalf of Democrats nationwide. Couple that with the 83-7 Senate vote to cut off housing funds to ACORN -- a number that included 50 Democrats -- and the votes signal the complete...

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Senate Republicans move to extend ACORN funding ban

Nebraska Republican Sen. Mike Johanns, who sponsored the successful amendment to ban federal housing funds from going to ACORN, has introduced the same amendment banning funds for ACORN in two other appropriations bills: the Interior Department appropriations measure and the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill. Johanns is expected to take to the Senate floor today to argue in favor of banning ACORN from those areas of federal spending. In the new amendments, Johanns is attempting to bar federal funding for ACORN at some departments that currently do not send any money to the organization. The idea is to make sure that federal funds for ACORN, once banned from the Housing...

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Dems push expanded Community Reinvestment Act; deny Act's role in mortgage meltdown; GOP cites ACORN connection

A number of experts believe that aggressive enforcement of the 1970s-era Community Reinvestment Act contributed to the mortgage meltdown, and thus to the greater financial crisis, by requiring financial institutions to lend to unqualified borrowers. Now, the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives is responding to that situation by proposing to expand the scope and power of the Community Reinvestment Act. This morning House Financial Services Committee chairman Rep. Barney Frank held a hearing on H.R. 1479, the "Community Reinvestment Modernization Act of 2009." The bill's purpose is "to close the wealth gap in the United States" by increasing "home...

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Grassley: 'We're being pushed aside'

Sen. Charles Grassley, one of three Republicans negotiating with Democrats on a Senate Finance Committee health care bill, tonight issued a statement saying he and his fellow Republicans have been "pushed aside" by the Democratic leadership in the rush to pass national health care. "We're operating under an artificial deadline set by the Democratic leadership and the White House," Grassley said. "I'm disappointed because it looks like we're being pushed aside by the Democratic leadership so the Senate can move forward on a bill that, up to this point, does not meet the shared goals for affordable, accessible health coverage that we set forth when this process...

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GOP leaders ask IRS to cut all ties with ACORN

Republican Reps. John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Dave Camp have sent a letter to Douglas Shulman, head of the Internal Revenue Service, asking that the IRS "sever all ties" with ACORN. Currently, the IRS has an agreement under which ACORN is part of a program to assist lower-income people in preparing their tax returns. But in light of those undercover video reports depicting ACORN employees in Baltimore, Washington DC, and New York City offering advice on, among other things, hiding income from the IRS, House Republicans are asking that the IRS-ACORN partnership be ended. "It is alarming to think that one of the IRS's largest and rapidly growing partners in a tax...

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Boehner: The 'Defund ACORN Act' will be introduced today

House Republican leader has just sent a letter to his fellow lawmakers asking them to become co-sponsors of the "Defund ACORN Act," which Republicans plan to introduce in the House today. In the letter, Boehner, citing undercover video reports of ACORN workers encouraging illegal activity, says, "It is evident that ACORN is incapable of using federal funds in a manner that is consistent with the law." Boehner says "immediate action" should be taken to cut off federal funds to the organization. "Simply put, ACORN should not receive another penny of American taxpayers’ money," the letter says. Here is the entire text of Boehner's "Dear...

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House GOP to call for total cutoff of federal funds to ACORN

Today House Republicans will introduce a bill that would end all federal funding to ACORN and its affiliates. Republicans are also sending a letter to President Obama on the same subject. The action comes after the release, on the website BigGovernment, of three undercover videos showing ACORN employees in Baltimore, Washington DC, and New York City offering advice on how to evade taxes, cover up prostitution activity, and abet the use of minors in prostitution. In the wake of those disclosures, the U.S. Census cut its ties with ACORN, and yesterday the Senate voted 83-7 to cut off housing funds for the organization. House Republicans point out that they have long pushed for a cutoff...

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Bush 43: Conservative movement is inconsequential

How many times during the last eight years did you hear that George W. Bush was a dangerous right-wing extremist? Probably too many to count. What you heard less often were expressions of the deep reservations some conservatives felt about Bush's governing philosophy. Conservatives greatly admired Bush for his steadfastness in the War on Terror -- to use that outlawed phrase -- and they were delighted by his choices of John Roberts and Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court. But when it came to a fundamental conservative principle like fiscal discipline, many conservatives felt the president just wasn't with them. You saw that throughout the 2008 Republican presidential primaries, when...

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Inside the 9/12 protest

Dr. David Dunch had never been to a political demonstration before. Yet on Saturday Dunch, a surgeon who has practiced for 25 years in Youngstown, Ohio, found himself marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, wearing a white medical coat with a small American flag tucked into the breast pocket, explaining what's wrong with President Obama's national health care proposals. "It's a mistake," Dunch says. "It's going to result in ultimate rationing and limiting care to our elderly. We need universal access of patients with pre-existing illnesses. We need to open up the 50 states to all insurance plans. We need tort reform. We don't have to trash the current system....

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'If they do, it'll blow the Senate up.'

Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, moments ago on Fox News, asked what would happen if Democrats attempt to pass a health care bill with a 51-vote majority by using the so-called "reconciliation" process....

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On illegal immigrants, White House sides with Joe Wilson, GOP; backs verification system for health benefits

In the wake of Rep. Joe Wilson's shouted accusation that President Obama was lying when he said proposed health care reforms "would not apply to those who are here illegally," the White House has released word that the president supports an enforcement system to prevent illegals from participating in a proposed government health insurance exchange. "Undocumented immigrants would not be able to buy private insurance on the exchange," the White House said in a statement published by MSNBC. "Those who are lawfully present in this country would be able to participate." The White House added that, "Verification will be required when purchasing health...

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Census bureau terminates relationship with ACORN; cites 'worsening negative perceptions'

In the wake of devastating video reports revealing corruption at local offices of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, the U.S. Census Bureau has cancelled its agreement calling for ACORN to work on the 2010 census. "The Census Bureau has established criteria for partnerships…and reserves the right to decline partnership or terminate an existing partnership agreement with any group that 1) may create a negative connotation for the Census Bureau; 2) could distract from the Census Bureau's mission; or 3) may make people fearful of participating in the census," wrote Census Director Robert Groves in a letter today to ACORN President Maud Hurd....

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DNC withdraws 'false' and 'misleading' ad accusing GOP of plotting to kill Medicare

The Democratic National Committee has stopped running an ad that accused several well-known Republican lawmakers of voting to abolish Medicare. The ads were run in Dayton, Ohio, against House Republican Leader Rep. John Boehner; Cincinnati, against Rep. Jeanne Schmidt; Columbus, against Rep. Patrick Tiberi; Palm Springs, against Rep. Mary Bono Mack; and Milwaukee, against Rep. Paul Ryan. The ad, which began running over the Labor Day weekend, featured photos of several of those lawmakers, and said: Republicans want to end Medicare. You heard right: Republicans actually voted to abolish Medicare for future generations. One of the most important programs for seniors. America’s...

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Democrats stifle Republican health care plans

Rep. Tom Price, the Georgia Republican who heads the House GOP Study Committee, came to President Obama's speech Wednesday night itching to make a point. Price, who also happens to be an orthopedic surgeon, has often heard the president accuse Republicans of criticizing Democratic health care proposals while having no plans of their own. He expected Obama to do the same Wednesday night. "We knew the president would at some point say something like, 'and the other side has no ideas,' " Price says. So Price and his Republican colleagues brought with them copies of the more than 30 health care reform bills they have proposed in the House this year. Obama didn't directly accuse...

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Obama on Joe Wilson: 'We all make mistakes'

At the cabinet meeting today, the president was asked whether he accepted Rep. Joe Wilson's apology for last night's "You lie!" incident. Obama's response: Yes, I do. I'm a big believer that we all make mistakes. He apologized quickly and without equivocation, and I'm appreciative of that. I do think that, as I said last night, we have to get to the point where we can have a conversation about big, important issues that matter to the American people without vitriol, without name-calling, without the assumption of the worst in other people's motives. We are all Americans; we all want to do best for our country. We've got different ideas, but for the most part, we have the...

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GOP leader: Obama 'thumbed his nose at the American people;' speech 'remarkable in its arrogance'

I just got off the phone with Rep. Tom Price, the Georgia congressman who heads the Republican Study Committee. Price called the president's last night address to a joint session of Congress a "classic campaign speech" with little new to offer. "He was clearly trying to bolster his folks to vote for a plan that the American people don't support," Price said. "I think he probably helped his cause. I think it will be temporary. But I think he also thumbed his nose at the American people in not recognizing or even acknowledging their sincere concerns and fears and anger that they articulated over the month of August. It really was remarkable in its arrogance...

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Obama: I used to say 47 million uninsured. Now, it's 30 million.

In his speech tonight, the president introduced a new number in the health care debate. Remember all those statements from Democrats, including Barack Obama himself, that 47 million Americans are without health insurance? That's no longer the operative number. "There are now more than thirty million American citizens who cannot get coverage," the president said in tonight's speech. But on August 10, at a town hall meeting, Obama referred to the "46, 47 million people without health insurance in our country…" And on July 23, he said, "This is not just about the 47 million Americans who don't have any health insurance at all…" What's the...

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GOP plans quiet demonstration during president's speech

Tonight some House Republicans are planning to attend the president's address to a joint session of Congress carrying copies of GOP health care bills. If the president says, as he has done on many previous occasions, that opponents of Democratic health care proposals have no plans of their own, those Republicans plan to hold up copies of their bills in protest. "If the president decides again that he is going to assert that there is no plan on our side, we're going to show him that's not true," says one GOP aide. Rep. Tom Price, head of the Republican Study Committee, plans to attend tonight's speech carrying a copy of H.R. 3400, the Empowering Patients First Act, which...

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Baucus: Public option is doomed

Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, just moments ago in the Hart Senate Office Building: I think, frankly, with increasing convction that a public option cannot pass the...

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Republican Speaker of S.C. House calls on Gov. Mark Sanford to resign

In a major blow to South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's hopes to remain in office, the Republican speaker of the state House of Representatives has just released a statement calling for Sanford to resign. "It is with great though and much trepidation that I feel compelled to send you this letter requesting that you resign from the office of Governor of South Carolina," Speaker Bobby Harrell wrote to Sanford today. "The events of the past several weeks have brought to light disturbing facts regarding you and your administration. More importantly, these events and your handling of these events have created an environment that makes it impossible for you to continue to lead...

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When Bush spoke to students, Democrats investigated, held hearings

The controversy over President Obama's speech to the nation's schoolchildren will likely be over shortly after Obama speaks today at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. But when President George H.W. Bush delivered a similar speech on October 1, 1991, from Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington DC, the controversy was just beginning. Democrats, then the majority party in Congress, not only denounced Bush's speech -- they also ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate its production and later summoned top Bush administration officials to Capitol Hill for an extensive hearing on the issue. Unlike the Obama speech, in 1991 most of the controversy came after, not...

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Why did the press ignore the Van Jones scandal?

On March 13, 2008, ABC News broke the story that Barack Obama's longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, had made a number of incendiary statements from the pulpit of Obama's church in Chicago. The most inflammatory of those remarks was Wright's notorious "God damn America" sermon. The news set off a media firestorm. "God damn America" was in the papers, magazines, the Internet, television, radio. It was everywhere, except one place: the news pages of America's most powerful newspaper, the New York Times. In the days, weeks, and months following the ABC report, the Times' news pages repeatedly failed to inform its readers that Wright had ever uttered those...

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On Labor Day, support for unions plunges to all-time low

This Labor Day brings word of a new Gallup poll showing that American public support for labor unions has taken a sharp dive in the last year and is at its lowest point since Gallup began polling in 1936. In response to the question, "Do you approve or disapprove of labor unions?" just 48 percent of respondents said they approve, while 45 percent said they disapprove. That's a steep fall from August 2008, when the numbers were 59 percent approve, 31 percent disapprove, and it's the first time approval of unions has ever fallen below 50 percent. Before this year, American support for unions had remained remarkably stable for nearly four decades. In August 2001, in the first...

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Van Jones resigns, says he was victim of 'vicious smear campaign'

The White House announced the resignation of green jobs adviser Van Jones early Sunday morning. In a departure letter, Jones, whose extensive record of radical politics became public in recent weeks, said he was the victim of a "vicious smear campaign" and that "opponents of reform" had used "lies and distortion" against him. Observers had been predicting Jones' departure after word spread that Jones signed a 2004 petition supporting the so-called "9/11 Truther" movement; that he was a self-professed communist during much of the 1990s; that he supported the cop-killer Mumia abu-Jamal; that in 2008 he accused "white polluters" of...

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The Van Jones (non) feeding frenzy

From a Nexis search a few moments ago: Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the New York Times: 0. Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the Washington Post: 0. Total words about the Van Jones controversy on NBC Nightly News: 0. Total words about the Van Jones controversy on ABC World News: 0. Total words about the Van Jones controversy on CBS Evening News: 0. If you were to receive all your news from any one of these outlets, or even all of them together, and you heard about some sort of controversy involving President Obama's Special Adviser for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, your response would be, "Huh?" If you heard that that adviser, Van...

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Obama's speech: Wrong setting for a sales job

Barack Obama's health care speech next week will mark the first time he has asked the leaders of the House and Senate for the opportunity to make a special address to a joint session of Congress. And if the president truly is as politically savvy as his White House staff believes, he won't do it again anytime soon. Putting aside the State of the Union address, which is a scheduled annual event, it's rare for a president to speak before a joint session of House and Senate. George W. Bush did it just once, shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Bill Clinton also did it just once, when he made an appeal for his national health care plan in September 1993. George H.W. Bush...

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Health care reform means more power for the IRS

There's been a lot of discussion about the new and powerful federal agencies that would be created by the passage of a national health care bill. The Health Choices Administration, the Health Benefits Advisory Committee, the Health Insurance Exchange — there are dozens in all. But if the plan envisioned by President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats is enacted, the primary federal bureaucracy responsible for implementing and enforcing national health care will be an old and familiar one: the Internal Revenue Service. Under the Democrats' health care proposals, the already powerful — and already feared — IRS would wield even more power and extend its reach even...

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Without Bush to bash, Democrats sink

Back in January, there was a lot of talk about the enormous lead that Democrats held over Republicans in party identification. According to Gallup, 52 percent of those surveyed in January identified with or leaned toward the Democratic party, versus 35 percent who identified with or leaned toward the Republicans -- a 17 percentage-point gap. The latest Gallup numbers? Democrats, 45 percent, Republicans 40 percent -- a five point margin. Gallup suggests the change "may be merely a reflection of the difficulties a party has in governing." No doubt. But Gallup also points out that the Democratic rise of 2008-2009 had much more to do with George W. Bush than with anything the...

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Obama adviser: Republicans are a--holes

RealClearPolitics has posted a video of Van Jones, President Obama's "green jobs" adviser (his official title is Special Adviser for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality), appearing at an event in Berkeley, California on February 11, 2009. Jones was asked why Republicans, who when they were in the majority had fewer than 60 votes in the Senate, were able to pass significant legislation while Democrats have had trouble doing the same. "The answer to that is, they're a--holes," answered Jones. The crowd erupted in laughter. "That's a technical, political science term," Jones said. "And Barack Obama...

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The clock is ticking on tax cheat Charlie Rangel

It hasn't gotten much attention amid news of Ted Kennedy, Obamacare and the worsening outlook in Afghanistan, but an extraordinary situation is developing in the House of Representatives. With each passing day, it's becoming more clear that the powerful committee chairman in charge of writing America's tax laws is a financial wheeler-dealer, a serial asset-hider, and a tax offender. Rep. Charles Rangel has been in the House since 1971. He's as old bull as you get in the Democratic hierarchy, and he waited through 12 long years of Republican rule to take over as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in 2007. Along with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and fellow Democratic power brokers Henry...

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Obama approval falls below 50 percent in key demographic groups

Gallup has released its latest breakdown of the president's weekly job approval rating, and for the first time, Barack Obama's approval rating has fallen below 50 percent among some formerly-solid demographic groups. Among men, Obama is now at 47 percent, falling from 53 percent four weeks ago. (Among women, Obama still has a narrow majority of support, at 53 percent, down from 59 percent a month ago.) Among people who have a college degree, Obama is at 47 percent, down from 55 percent four weeks ago. Obama is also at 47 percent among people who have some college, down from 54 percent last month. The only educational group among whom Obama is still doing pretty well is people who have...

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White House: "Our war on terror"

"War on terror" -- the Bush-era phrase that has disappeared at the Obama White House -- appeared again on Monday. When spokesman Robert Gibbs was asked about funding and troop levels for the war in Afghanistan, he said: We are not -- the President, whether it's the economy, health care, or anything, isn't going to -- we're not going to make -- we're not going to see the entire thing turn around in a few months, after years and years of neglect. You can't under-resource the most important part of our war on terror, you can't under-resource that for five or six or seven years -- whether it's under-resourced with troops, whether it's under-resourced with civilian manpower,...

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Straight from Hollywood: Sarah Palin and the Fourth Reich

Eli Roth, the horror-movie director who created a film-within-a-film in the new picture Inglourious Basterds, was asked by Time Out New York about how the experience affected him: QUESTION: You directed a fake Nazi propaganda film that airs in the middle of Inglourious Basterds. Was that the most twisted thing you’ve ever made? ANSWER: I thought I had made some horrific movies before, but there I was, filming that propaganda movie, Nation’s Pride. The whole thing is this guy in a bell tower shooting American soldiers and it’s all supposed to be about the glory of Hitler and the power of the swastika. I’m in the scene where they watch the movie. So there I am,...

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Sheehan: Pro-Obama media want the anti-war movement to go away

This week ABC News anchorman Charles Gibson, who extensively covered anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan's demonstrations against George W. Bush in 2005, said "Enough already" when it comes to Sheehan's plans to protest next week at Martha's Vineyard, where President Barack Obama will be vacationing. Now Sheehan has responded. "I am sure that he just wants me to go away like most of the rest of the anti-war movement has done under the Obama presidency," Sheehan writes at her website. One of the things I hear quite often from people from all over the political spectrum is: “Why don’t you just go away, you’ve had your 15 minutes of fame.” Yes,...

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Why Democrats may jam through health care plan

What will happen if Democrats try the "go it alone" strategy to pass national health care? That's not even a question in the House, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi has cut Republicans out of health care from the very beginning. House Democrats have been going it alone all along, and if they can agree among themselves on a health care bill, it will pass. But the Senate is another story. Republicans see the Senate as their great hope, and there's no doubt the GOP could do some serious damage to any Democratic bill. But Republicans have to face the fact that Democrats have the power, on their own, to pass a bill that could ultimately lead to the liberal dream of national health...

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ABC's Charles Gibson to Cindy Sheehan: Thanks for your sacrifice. Now get lost.

In an appearance August 18 on WLS radio in Chicago, ABC News anchor Charles Gibson was asked about anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan's plans to travel to Martha's Vineyard next week, where she will protest the Iraq and Afghanistan wars while President Obama is vacationing there. Gibson, whose newscast and network featured Sheehan when she led anti-war protests outside President Bush's Texas ranch in 2005, answered, "Enough already." That's a remarkably different stance from the one Gibson took four years ago. On August 9, 2005, the ABC anchor conducted an extensive on-air interview with Sheehan. "Cindy Sheehan is her name," Gibson began. "She says she's not...

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What happened to the antiwar movement? Cindy Sheehan hits 'hypocrisy' of Left, Democratic allies.

After my column, "For the left, war without Bush is not war at all," appeared Tuesday, I got a note from Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war activist who was the subject of so much press coverage when she led a protest against the Iraq war outside then-President George W. Bush's ranch in Texas. This is what the note said: I read your column about the "anti-war" movement and I can't believe I am saying this, but I mostly agree with you. The "anti-war" "left" was used by the Democratic Party. I like to call it the "anti-Republican War" movement. While I agree with you about the hypocrisy of such sites as the DailyKos, I have known...

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If you're married, you don't approve of Obama

Each week Gallup publishes a breakdown of its presidential job approval rating, broken down by demographic groups. Here's the latest one, released yesterday. Among what groups has Barack Obama's approval rating fallen to 50 percent or below? Several. First is among married people, where the president has a 47 percent approval rating. Then there are men, among whom Obama has a 50 percent rating. And people over 65, among whom he has a 48 percent rating. And white people, at 46 percent. If you're a political independent, you don't approve of Obama, either; he's at 46 percent with that group. Same if you go to church weekly; Obama's rating among regular churchgoers is at 45 percent....

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For the Left, war without Bush is not war at all

Remember the anti-war movement? Not too long ago, the Democratic party's most loyal voters passionately opposed the war in Iraq. Democratic presidential candidates argued over who would withdraw American troops the quickest. Netroots activists regularly denounced President George W. Bush, and sometimes the U.S. military ("General Betray Us"). Cindy Sheehan, the woman whose soldier son was killed in Iraq, became a heroine when she led protests at Bush's Texas ranch. That was then. Now, even though the United States still has roughly 130,000 troops in Iraq, and is quickly escalating the war in Afghanistan -- 68,000 troops there by the end of this year, and possibly more in 2010...

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Cindy Sheehan heads to the Vineyard; wants anti-war demonstrators to emulate health-care protesters; will anyone cover the story?

This morning the anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan -- the woman who spent so much time leading well-publicized protests outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas -- announced that she will demonstrate next week at Martha's Vineyard, where President Obama will be vacationing. "There are several things that we wish to accomplish with this protest on Martha's Vineyard," Sheehan said in a statement: First of all, no good social or economic change will come about with the continuation or escalation of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. We simply can't afford to continue this tragically expensive foreign policy. Secondly, we as a movement need to continue calling for...

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Netroots: We love Stewart, Colbert. Oh yeah, Obama too.

Earlier, I wrote about the declining interest in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan among the formerly-passionate antiwar activists attending the Netroots Nation convention. Here's one more bit from the Stanley Greenberg straw poll that was the basis for my earlier post. Greenberg tried to assess the attendees' feelings toward several people in the news. In the poll, he asked, "Please indicate your feelings toward some people using a scale from 0 to 100, with one hundred meaning a very warm, favorable feeling; zero meaning a very cold, unfavorable feeling; and fifty meaning not particularly warm or cold…The higher the number, the more favorable your feelings are toward that...

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The netroots agenda: War? What war?

It's not getting much attention, but the Netroots Nation conference (formerly known as YearlyKos, a spinoff from the left-wing website DailyKos) is going on in Pittsburgh this weekend. Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg has conducted a straw poll of the participants and found that a majority of those surveyed, 53 percent, say they "cannot support a health care reform bill that does not include a public option." Other results include word that most of the attendees are willing to compromise a bit on environmental legislation, even though it gives a lot of benefits to big corporations, and the finding that, amazingly enough, attendees voice near-unanimous approval, 95...

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Grassley, health care and 'quality bonus payments'

Sen. Charles Grassley, who is one of just three Republicans negotiating some sort of health care compromise in the Senate Finance Committee, is drawing fire back home in Iowa for statements expressing concern about the end-of-life provisions that the Finance Committee has now dropped from its version of the bill. Yesterday Iowa Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley accused Grassley of "doublespeak" for "continu[ing] to repeat the ridiculous claim that paying doctors to discuss end-of-life care with their patients is somehow 'pulling the plug on grandma,’ yet in 2003 he voted for a bill with a nearly identical provision allowing Medicare to reimburse doctors for end-of-life...

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GOP thinks the unthinkable: Victory in 2010

It's a possibility many Republicans speak of only in whispers and Democrats are just now beginning to face. After passionate and contentious fights over health care, the environment, and taxes, could Democrats lose big -- really big -- in next year's elections? Ask them about it, and many Democrats will point to the continued personal popularity of Barack Obama. But that's not the story. "I think what's going to happen is Obama's going to be fine, and the Democrats in Congress are going to get their asses kicked in 2010," says one Democratic strategist who prefers not to be named. "This is following a curve like the Clinton years: take on really controversial things...

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DNC: Palin and others concerned about end-of-life provisions are 'deathers'

The Democratic National Committee has just sent out a couple of press releases using the word "deathers' to refer to Sarah Palin and others concerned about end-of-life provisions in the Democratic health care proposal. One release is headlined, "Birthers, Deathers, and Republicans…Oh my!" and the other, about Palin specifically, is headlined, "Once a deather, always a deather." "Not surprisingly, and despite calling for a more civil debate, Sarah Palin is back to peddling malicious, repeatedly debunked rumors about health insurance reform in an effort meant to scare rather than inform Americans," the DNC says, referring to Palin's new statement...

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Grassley: We've taken end-of-life measures out of Senate health bill

Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, who is working with Finance Committee chairman Sen. Max Baucus on a health care compromise, has just issued a statement saying that concerns about end-of-life issues in the House health care bill are entirely legitimate. In addition, Grassley says the Finance Committee has "dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely" because of those fears and also because of concerns that they could be "implemented incorrectly." Grassley's statement: The bill passed by the House committees is so poorly cobbled together that it will have all kinds of unintended consequences, including making taxpayers fund health care subsidies...

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Obama's Post Office health care disaster

With a few hours' reflection, it's become clear that Barack Obama's reference to the U.S. Postal Service at yesterday's health care town hall was the most revealing, and damaging, thing the president has said in the entire health care debate. Explaining why he believes a public option would not crowd out and ultimately eliminate private insurance, Obama said, "My answer is that if the private insurance companies are providing a good bargain, and if the public option has to be self-sustaining…then I think private insurers should be able to compete. They do it all the time. I mean, if you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? No, they are. It's the Post...

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Will Obama pay the price for cutting Medicare?

In the health care debate, Barack Obama is getting away with the rhetorical equivalent of murder. To pay for the bulk of his proposed remake of the health care system, the president has a two-part plan. Half the money would come from tax increases, and the other half from reduced spending on Medicare. Obama proposes to come up with improvements in the vast Medicare system that will allow him to extend health care coverage to millions of currently uncovered people, make no cuts in existing Medicare benefits, and save money in the process. ÒWe will find the money through savings and efficiencies within the health care system,Ó Obama said at his July 23 news conference. Unlike a number...

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Rove: "Not a shred of evidence" to support Conyers charges

Former Bush White House adviser Karl Rove says House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers' two-and-a-half year investigation of the Bush administration's firing of several U.S. attorneys has "failed to produce a shred of evidence" to support Conyers' accusation that Rove was behind the purge. "There is absolutely no evidence of that whatsoever," Rove told me Tuesday. "They failed to produce a shred of evidence for their arguments." In a press release accompanying the release of 5,400 pages of White House emails, documents, and transcripts of interviews with Rove and former White House counsel Harriet Miers, Conyers wrote that, "After all the...

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Obama still won't come clean on single-payer

To add a little more to David's post. Today's town hall meeting in New Hampshire gave Obama a chance to explain clearly his position on a single-payer national health care system. He didn't do it. The opportunity came when a man brought up those old quotes in which Obama said he was a supporter of a single-payer health care system. (The man unfortunately referred to it as "universal," but the president picked up his meaning and addressed the question of single payer.) Here's the exchange: QUESTION: Mr. President, you've been quoted over the years -- when you were a senator and perhaps even before then -- that you were essentially a supporter of a universal plan. I'm...

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Oops. Never mind.

From the online magazine Salon, this headline previewing the president's town hall meeting in New Hampshire: OBAMA'S LIKELY HECKLERS At his Tuesday town hall, he'll have rowdy tea-partiers, Glenn Beck acolytes, birther admirers and an ex-aide to Abramoff-connected Rep. Bob Ney Oops. Better take that one back to the headline shop. Whatever else you want to say about the town hall, it is undeniable that the participants, including those who asked mildly skeptical questions, were perfectly well behaved. There were no incidents of any kind. People are usually on their best behavior in the presence of the president, and that's a good thing, no matter how contentious the issue...

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Cornyn: Build "firewall" to keep government out of end-of-life decisions

Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn just finished a conference call with reporters on the state of the health care battle. He was asked about the fears created by allegations of so-called "death panels" in the Democratic proposals. Calling such fears an "exaggeration" of what's in the plans, Cornyn nevertheless said that legislative provisions placing end-of-life counseling in the context of cost-cutting "create the specter" of government involvement in deeply personal decision-making. "We've got to have a firewall between private decision-making and government decision-making when it comes to end-of-life decisions," Cornyn said. From the...

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Limbaugh responds to David Brooks' "insane" comment

Last week House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that town-hall attendees critical of the Democratic health care makeover were "carrying swastikas and symbols like that" to meetings. The next day, Rush Limbaugh responded at length on his radio program, saying, "I have always bristled when I hear people claim that conservatism gets close to Nazism. It is liberalism that's the closest you can get to Nazism and socialism." On "Meet the Press" this morning, host David Gregory played a brief clip of Limbaugh's monologue -- a sentence in which Limbaugh said, "There are far more similarities between Nancy Pelosi and Adolf Hitler than between these people showing up...

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Just who do those little states think they are?

Ever since winning control of the House and Senate in 2006, and then adding the White House in 2008, some Democrats have become increasingly unhappy with the longtime traditions and, in some cases, the constitutional structure, of the legislative branch. First they denounced the filibuster. Why should the minority party in the Senate be allowed to gum things up and require more than a simple majority to pass a bill? Some Democrats who thought the filibuster was an invaluable tool of democracy when their party was in the minority would now like to get rid of the practice altogether. Then they became unhappy with the old-bull system. Why should the oldest, most senior lawmakers run...

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Times touts economic momentum, recovery; in 1992, not so much

The front page of the New York Times is filled with hope about the nation's economic situation. The lead story, "Job Losses Slow, Signaling Momentum for a Recovery," reporting a decline in the unemployment rate from 9.5 percent in June to 9.4 percent in July, begins by declaring that, "The most heartening employment report since last summer suggested on Friday that a recovery was under way -- and perhaps gathering steam." "Employers are no longer in a panic," one expert tells the Times. The paper reports that Obama administration officials "credited the stimulus package" for the improvement, and "some said" job losses would be far worse...

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The empty words of a journalist turned flack

Linda Douglass, the former CBS and ABC News correspondent who joined the Obama presidential campaign and later the administration, has emerged as the point person in the White House push back against “disinformation” regarding national health care. She’s one of several former journalists who are part of Team Obama, and her story, in particular, illustrates the difficulties that politically connected Democratic journalists can face both inside and outside the government. (Although a few Republican reporters have joined GOP administrations, this is mostly a Democratic problem, given the left-leaning sympathies of most journalists.) As a reporter, how does one keep from...

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Obama's dissident database could be secret -- and permanent

The White House request that members of the public report anyone who is spreading "disinformation" about the proposed national health care makeover could lead to a White House database of political opponents that will be both secret and permanent, according to Republican lawyers on the Senate Judiciary Committee who are examining the plan's possible implementation. On Monday, White House director of new media Macon Phillips posted a note on the White House web site complaining of "disinformation about health insurance reform." "These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation," Phillips wrote. "Since we...

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You can bet on it: Obama will raise your taxes

Each week the Gallup organization publishes an analysis of job approval for President Barack Obama, broken down by all sorts of demographic groups. You want to know the president's approval rating among voters 65 years or older? It's 48 percent. Voters with a high-school diploma or less? Fifty-six percent. Voters who call themselves liberal Democrats? Ninety-one percent. As far as income is concerned, Gallup reports its results for people who make less than $24,000 a year, those who make between $24,000 and $60,000 a year, those who make between $60,000 and $90,000 a year, and those who make more than $90,000. Obama is solidly popular (64 percent job approval) with voters making less...

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Geithner on raising taxes: "We're going to do what's necessary"

On ABC this morning, George Stephanopoulos tried to corner Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner into admitting that, given the unsustainably high deficits the Obama administration is facing, taxes will have to go up. Geithner wouldn't say yes, but he couldn't say no, so he resorted to vowing that the administration will "do what's necessary." STEPHANOPOULOS: Former deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman said it is no longer a matter of whether tax revenues should increase but how. Is he right? GEITHNER: George, it is absolutely right and very important for everyone to understand we will not get this economy back on track, recovery will not be strong enough to sustain unless we...

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Probe finds new clues in AmeriCorps IG scandal

After seven weeks of trying, investigators looking into President Barack Obama’s abrupt firing of AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin are still unable to answer the most basic question of the whole affair: Why did the president do it? They know the reasons the White House has given: That the 77-year-old Walpin was addled and not up to the job, that he had too many conflicts with the board of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees AmeriCorps, that his office had once distributed a parody newsletter that contained an allegedly sexist remark. They know all that. But they also know that AmeriCorps is one of Obama’s favorite federal programs....

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New poll is bad, bad news for Obama, Democrats

The results of the new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll are a major warning sign for Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress. On some key issues, the gains that Democrats had made on Republicans in the last couple of years have disappeared, and the GOP has begun to reassert itself. In other policy areas, traditional Democratic leads are diminishing. The results are found in the answers to the Journal's questions about whether respondents believe the Democratic or Republican party would do a better job of handling a particular issue. In the past, Democrats have usually led in areas like health care and education, while Republicans have led in issues like national security and...

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Obama, playing defense on the stimulus

Yesterday, the White House sent out a press notice saying that the president's town hall discussion in Raleigh, North Carolina today would be "about the impact of skyrocketing cost of health care and the need for real reform…" Now, Obama is speaking, and he has decided to spend much of his introductory speech defending his efforts to deal with the recession, including the auto bailouts and, especially, the $787 billion stimulus bill, which Obama said was "without any of the earmarks that waste tax dollars on pet projects." Obama also claims, as he has many times, that at the time the stimulus was passed, "there were some who thought doing nothing was...

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As Obama's ratings go down, down, down, Republicans attack, attack, attack

As he heads into an August recess that could be a make-or-break moment for his health care makeover, Barack Obama's job approval ratings continue to slip, little by little. The newest poll, done by the Democratic firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for National Public Radio, has Obama's job approval rating at 53 percent, with 42 percent disapproval. In the RealClearPolitics average of polls, Obama is at 54.0 approval, 41.1 disapproval. (As it happens, his disapproval in the RCP average topped 40 percent for the first time last Wednesday, the day of his health care/Gatesgate news conference.) Just look at the last ten polls listed in the RCP average. If you take out the two extremes, the...

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They rushed to pass Medicare before Barack Obama's 4th birthday

The president is often accused of being overly self-referential, and he was at it again today, at a health care event at AARP offices in Washington: Some of you may know that 44 years ago today, when I was almost four years old, after years of effort, Congress finally passed Medicare, our promise as a nation that none of our senior citizens would ever again go without basic health...

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What happens next with Sotomayor

This morning the Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on the Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination. The committee is divided between 12 Democrats and seven Republicans, and GOP sources expect the final vote to be 13 to six, with South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham the only Republican to vote for Sotomayor. Committee members are expected to deliver speeches explaining their vote, but in the end, the session is expected to be a straightforward affair. "There's not a rabbit in the hat," says one GOP source. "They [Democrats] can vote her out of committee whether we show up or not." From there, the nomination goes to the full Senate, where, even though her...

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GOP's teachable moment on the risks of Obamacare

Pick your average member of the House of Representatives, one who has a lot of work to do but hasn't been deeply involved in crafting the massive health care makeover bill. Who knows more about what's in that bill -- Mr. Average Democrat, or Mr. Average Republican? Bet on the Republican. For weeks now, GOP lawmakers have been studying the Democratic health care bill, and for months before that, they studied preliminary Democratic plans. Many rank-and-file Democrats, on the other hand, have been so ill-informed about what their leadership has been doing that it was only last week, when the party offered a five-hour class on the bill's contents, that some members began to grasp the details....

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Cheechakos, Sourdoughs, Denali and Sarah

Whatever else you might think about Sarah Palin, is there any other politician on the national stage who speaks the way she does? From her farewell speech yesterday, delivered in Fairbanks: And getting up here, I say it is the best road trip in America, soaring through nature's finest show. Denali, the great one, soaring under the midnight sun. And then the extremes. In the winter time it's the frozen road that is competing with the view of ice-fogged frigid beauty. The cold though, doesn't it split the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs? And then in the summertime, such extreme summertime, about a hundred and fifty degrees hotter than just some months ago, than just some months from now,...

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Obamacare haunted by unkept promises of stimulus

If Barack Obama fails to enact national health care, it will be because he sowed the seeds of his own demise last Feb. 17 -- the day the president, surrounded by Democratic leaders, signed the $787 billion economic stimulus bill....

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White House backs off "stupidly" accusation in Gates affair

On board Air Force One today, as the president headed for a health-care event in Cleveland, spokesman Robert Gibbs tried to pull back from the president's declaration, at his news conference last night, that Cambridge, Massachusetts police "acted stupidly" in arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. Reporters wanted to know why the president, who admitted that he didn't know all the facts of the matter, would so decisively declare that one side had acted "stupidly." From today's questioning: QUESTION: Robert, some people thought it was a little unusual that the President waded into the matter between Professor Gates and the Cambridge police -- a little...

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DeMint: Obama "doesn't understand health care"

South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint says he has "turned up the rhetoric intentionally" in the health care debate with the Obama White House because "it's the 11th hour as far as trying to stop this stampede for bigger and bigger government." In an interview with the Washington Examiner this morning, DeMint charged that the Obama administration is poised to make a mistake with its health care proposal on an even larger scale than the $787 billion economic stimulus bill. "Just as he said he misread the economy with his stimulus plan -- and that's a huge mistake, to spend a trillion dollars and then say maybe you didn't have the economy right -- he doesn't...

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Voters scared of Obama’s rushed ‘experiments’

With one word Monday, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele helped the GOP get back in the fight over health care and the entire Obama agenda. The word was “experiment.” “Candidate Obama promised change,” Steele said in a speech at the National Press Club. “President Obama is conducting an experiment.” Steele went on to accuse Barack Obama of carrying out dangerous experiments with the nation’s health care, with the economy, with taxpayers’ dollars. “Experiment” didn’t come from nowhere. “The term bubbled up from a set of focus groups we did with swing voters, independents, soft Republicans and soft...

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AmeriCorps IG sues government over "unlawful" firing

Gerald Walpin, the AmeriCorps inspector general who was summarily fired in June amid controversy over his investigation of a politically-connected supporter of President Obama, has filed suit alleging that the firing was "unlawful," "politically driven," "procedurally defective" and "a transparent and clumsily-conducted effort to circumvent the protections" given to inspectors general under the Inspectors General Reform Act of 2008. Walpin's suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, is against the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees AmeriCorps. Also named are Nicola Goren, the acting CEO of the...

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Why the GOP failed the Sotomayor test

For Republicans, the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor were a missed opportunity. Not an opportunity to defeat her — with 60 Senate Democrats determined to confirm President Barack Obama’s first Supreme Court choice, Sotomayor will undoubtedly prevail. But Republicans had a chance to delve deeply into Sotomayor’s record, to reveal the worldview and background of the next Supreme Court justice, and they didn’t take advantage of it. Part of that was because of Sotomayor herself. She carefully followed her coaching, answered slowly, avoided questions by putting them “in context” and refused to budge from scripted responses on...

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How Republicans missed their chance with Sotomayor

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are down to their last chance to make the case that there are serious questions about Sonia Sotomayor's fitness for the Supreme Court. One of the things they will do is stress a subject they have inexplicably downplayed so far: Sotomayor's 12 years of service on the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education fund. In the her first two days of testimony, Sotomayor appeared reluctant do discuss her time with PRLDEF (commonly referred to as "Pearl-Def"). When questioned about it by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham on Tuesday, she minimized her role in the organization, especially when Graham asked about a PRLDEF lawsuit that...

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Sessions: Sotomayor's testimony is "muddled, confusing, backtracking"

During a break in the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation hearings, Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, was asked whether Sotomayor has been "forthcoming" in her testimony, particularly in her explanations of several controversial speeches she has given. "How forthcoming is she being," a reporter asked, "and is it any different from what Justices Roberts and Alito did during their hearings?" "I don't think her testimony is close to the clarity and consistency of Judges Roberts and Alito," Sessions answered. "I just don't think it is. It's muddled, confusing, backtracking on issue after issue -- and these...

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Leahy explains his "wise Latina" misquote, but the video shows...

In his opening questioning of Sonia Sotomayor, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy substantially misquoted Sotomayor's famous "wise Latina" speech. "You said that, quote, you 'would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would reach wise decisions…'" Leahy said to Sotomayor. "So tell us, you've heard all of these charges and countercharges, the 'wise Latina' and on and on…tell us what's going on." Leahy's version of Sotomayor's quote was not what Sotomayor actually said. What she said, in her 2001 Berkeley speech was, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences...

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Leahy misrepresents Sotomayor's "wise Latina" speech

One way to lessen the impact of Sonia Sotomayor's "wise Latina" comment is to misquote it. That was what happened at the Sotomayor confirmation hearings today when Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy asked Sotomayor to comment on her controversial remarks. "You said that, quote, you 'would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would reach wise decisions…'" Leahy said to Sotomayor. "So tell us, you've heard all of these charges and countercharges, the wise Latina and on and on…tell us what's going on." If Sotomayor had said what Leahy said she said, it's unlikely there would ever have been a...

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Arlen Specter: I'm still relevant. After all, I helped kill Bork.

Today's hearing for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor was a huge comedown for Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania senator who as a Republican was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee for the John Roberts and Samuel Alito confirmation hearings. Now, after switching to the Democrats in an open bid to save his job, Specter is next-to-last in seniority among Democratic senators on the committee. (He is ahead of Sen. Al Franken, who joined the committee just days ago, well after Specter.) Specter skipped the morning session of the Sotomayor hearing Monday, but showed up to make his opening remarks after lunch. After the hearing, I asked Specter how his experience this time differs...

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Will Republicans expose the two Sotomayors?

Sonia Sotomayor's opening statement at her Supreme Court confirmation hearing was, to many ears, brief and boilerplate. But to Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans listening intently just a few feet away, Sotomayor drew a map for the questioning they hope will expose the fundamental flaws in her judicial views. The theme Republicans will stress is this: Which is the real Sonia Sotomayor? The one testifying before the committee or the one who's been giving speeches and writing legal opinions for nearly two decades? "If you look at her opening statement, there are places where she is attempting, on the eve of her confirmation, to do a 180 on things she has said over the...

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What the Republicans will ask Sonia Sotomayor

There's been a lot of discussion about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's views on affirmative action, quotas, and the role of federal judges. But with confirmation hearings set to begin Monday morning, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are becoming increasingly concerned about Sotomayor's positions on gun rights. At issue is Sotomayor's opinion in a recent Second Amendment case in New York. Sotomayor held that even though the Supreme Court has ruled the federal government cannot deny the right to bear arms, state governments are still entitled to do so -- in other words, that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states. "This is a huge issue, one of...

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AmeriCorps stonewalls questions of White House involvement in IG firing

A top official of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the government agency that oversees AmeriCorps, has refused to answer questions from congressional investigators about the White House's role in events surrounding the abrupt firing of inspector general Gerald Walpin. Frank Trinity, general counsel for the Corporation, met with a bipartisan group of congressional investigators on Monday. When the investigators asked Trinity for details of the role the White House played in the firing, Trinity refused to answer, according to two aides with knowledge of the situation. "He said that's a prerogative of the White House, so he didn't feel at liberty to disclose...

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The Republican governors' dilemma

GEORGETOWN COUNTY, S.C. - At the Fourth of July parade here, one float after another was a joke about Gov. Mark Sanford. There was a man in a wig and a sequined dress wailing, "I'm looking for my soul mate!" A sign on his truck asked, "Wanna dance?" A sport utility vehicle rolled by, decorated with a map of Sanford's world -- 169 miles from here to Columbia, the state capital, and 4,935 miles to Buenos Aires. Another float urged people to visit SoulMate.gov, which, it turns out, is an amusing joke but not a real Web site. Meanwhile, a few miles up Highway 17, Katon Dawson, until recently head of the South Carolina Republican Party, was conducting an informal poll...

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Battle lines drawn in AmeriCorps IG scandal

Key Republicans in both the House and the Senate are accusing the White House of giving “incomplete and misleading” information to investigators probing the president’s abrupt firing of AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin. In return, the White House is hinting that documents concerning its actions in the Walpin affair may be protected by executive privilege.

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Barney Frank: Let's spend TARP profits before taxpayers can get them

When President Obama announced on June 9 that some financial institutions would be allowed to repay Troubled Asset Relief Program dollars, he said the massively expensive TARP bailout had made money for the federal government. "It is worth noting that in the first round of repayments from these [TARP recipients], the government has actually turned a profit," the president said. Indeed, TARP supporters have long held out the hope that the program might be profitable. But now Rep. Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has come up with a proposal to spend any TARP profits before they can be returned to the taxpayers. Last Friday, Frank introduced...

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Sessions to White House: Quit stalling on Sotomayor documents

Says Sotomayor's involvement with PRLDEF was "deeper than previously thought" A spokesman for Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions says documents provided by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund show that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor played a "deeper than previously thought" role in controversial positions taken by the PRLDEF. And Sessions' office says the White House and PRLDEF have still not turned over all the material requested by the Senate Judiciary Committee for Sotomayor's confirmation hearing. PRLDEF turned over some material last night -- just two weeks before the scheduled beginning of the Sotomayor hearing -- and Republicans say there is...

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Democrats play word games on immigration

On June 24, Sen. Charles Schumer gave a remarkable speech on immigration. Preparing the way for the Obama administration's expected push for comprehensive reform, Schumer seemed to adopt a newer, tougher-sounding tone as he promised that a bill would be passed during "this Congress." "People who enter the United States without our permission are illegal aliens, and illegal aliens should not be treated the same as people who entered the United States legally," Schumer said. "Illegal immigration is wrong -- plain and simple," he continued. "When we use phrases like 'undocumented workers,' we convey a message to the American people that their government...

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Stand with Jenny (and not with Mark)

The Palmetto Family Council, a big social conservative group in South Carolina, has launched a new campaign called "Stand with Jenny." According to the Council, the purpose is to encourage First Lady Jenny Sanford "for her strength, her courage, her commitment to her family, and her example” during the ongoing crisis in her family." As part of the campaign, the Council sent a message to Mrs. Sanford: Your willingness to seek reconciliation while refusing to sacrifice your dignity or compromise the truth is an example for us all. Your steadfast focus on Marshall, Landon, Bolton and Blake throughout this crisis in your family is an inspiration, especially for...

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Serious questions remain for Mark Sanford

A few days ago, when South Carolina governor Mark Sanford was missing in action and thought to be hiking the Appalachian Trail, I emailed a well-connected political type in the state to ask what was going on. "All sorts of rumors are flying, from a Susan Boyle sort of meltdown to domestic issues," came the response. "Mostly the latter, or maybe a combination. Much talk of a girlfriend in the mix." Sanford's news conference Wednesday afternoon proved the rumors right. But even after the governor's revealing and unscripted confession, several important questions remain. The most serious is whether Sanford’s frame of mind will allow him to carry out his duties...

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AmeriCorps feared bad press if IG investigation continued

One of the mysteries surrounding President Obama's firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin is what prompted the White House, supported by the board of directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees AmeriCorps, to try to get rid of Walpin so quickly and quietly? On the evening of Wednesday, June 10, an official of the White House counsel's office called Walpin to tell him he had one hour to resign or be fired. The action flew in the face of a law (sponsored by Barack Obama when he was a senator) that requires the president to give Congress 30 days' notice, plus cause, when he intends to fire an IG. In this case, the White House apparently...

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Getting to the bottom of the AmeriCorps IG firing

The board of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees the AmeriCorps program, is made up of Democrats and Republicans, no matter who is in the White House. Having members from both parties is a congressionally mandated requirement for the national service agency.

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How Republicans can crack the AmeriCorps scandal

What's next in the budding scandal over President Obama's abrupt firing of Gerald Walpin, the inspector general of AmeriCorps? Republican investigators on Capitol Hill know one thing very well. As minorities in both House and Senate, they have no power to compel the White House to disclose anything. And majority Democrats, at least for now, are not inclined to help the opposition uncover embarrassing facts about one of President Obama's favorite federal programs. So Republicans are brainstorming things they can do by themselves to shake loose information from an administration that has no obligation to cooperate with them. And indeed, there are a few ways. The first is to enlarge the...

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White House: Firing AmeriCorps IG an act of "political courage"

A top White House lawyer called the firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin an act of "political courage," according to House Republican aides who were in a meeting with the lawyer Wednesday. Norman Eisen, who is the White House Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform, met with staffers for Rep. Darrell Issa, the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Wednesday. Eisen, along with another White House staffer who accompanied him, "wanted to talk broadly about inspectors general," says a GOP aide familiar with what went on at the meeting. "When we pressed them on specific questions and...

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White House refuses to answer Senate questions on AmeriCorps IG firing

Norman Eisen, the White House Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform, met with investigators on the staff of Republican Sen. Charles Grassley at Grassley's offices Wednesday morning. The investigators wanted to learn more about the circumstances surrounding the abrupt firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin. According to Grassley, Eisen revealed very, very little, refusing to answer many questions of fact put to him. And now Grassley has written a letter to the White House counsel asking for answers. The questions relate to a letter Eisen sent to some senators Tuesday night attributing Walpin's dismissal, in significant part, to Walpin's...

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Fired AmeriCorps IG responds: White House charges are false

See UPDATE below with eyewitness account of disputed meeting ALSO: McCaskill says decision to fire IG "appears well founded" Fired AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin strongly denies the White House's claim that he was "confused, disoriented [and] unable to answer questions" at a May 20, 2009 board meeting of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the organization that oversees AmeriCorps. In a letter to several members of Congress Tuesday night, Norman Eisen, who is the White House Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform, wrote that at the May 20 meeting, "Mr. Walpin was confused, disoriented, unable to answer...

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Breaking: First Democrat questions Obama over AmeriCorps IG firing

Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill has become the first Democrat to question the White House over the firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin. McCaskill, who, like Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, is a champion of inspectors general, co-wrote the 2008 legislation requiring the president to give 30 days' notice, and cause, before firing an inspector general. In a statement released this afternoon, McCaskill says that the reason the president gave for firing Walpin -- that the president no longer has "the fullest confidence" in Walpin -- is, in McCaskill's words, "not sufficient." And McCaskill is calling on the White House to offer a fuller explanation as...

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AmeriCorps responds to Grassley

Note: I'm told that I have misread this response. The acting inspector general, Kenneth Bach, was apparently responding to a second letter sent by Sen. Grassley on June 12 -- one that asked for only two categories of information. So therefore Bach did fully respond to Grassley. So far, AmeriCorps has not responded to the Grassley inquiry detailed below, the one that asked for eight categories of information. The Corporation for National and Community Service, the organization that oversees AmeriCorps, has responded to Sen. Charles Grassley's request for information about the firing of inspector general Gerald Walpin. And the answer is: We'll give you a little bit, but nothing that...

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NEW: House Republicans raise questions about Walpin firing

SEE ALSO: First Democrat questions Obama over AmeriCorps IG firing Rep. Darrell Issa, ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has sent a letter to White House counsel Gregory Craig asking for information regarding the firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin. Issa writes that "the immediate effective termination of Mr. Walpin and the vague explanation offered by the President as the reason for his decision" do not meet the standards required by the law covering inspectors general. The Walpin firing, Issa continues, raises the "same concerns" as those surrounding President Bush's decision to fire several U.S. attorneys....

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Will Democrats cover up the AmeriCorps mess?

Can Republicans in Congress get to the bottom of President Obama's sudden -- and suspicious -- decision to fire AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin? The answer is no -- unless some. Democrats show interest in what could possibly be the first scandal, or at least mini-scandal, of the Obama administration.

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Gerald Walpin speaks: The inside story of the AmeriCorps firing

Dispute that resulted in firing involved stimulus money ALSO: See UPDATE below; Grassley protests, demands information, including any role of First Lady NEW: House Republicans raise questions about Walpin firing AND: Will Democrats cover up the AmeriCorps Mess? AND: First Democrat questions Obama over AmeriCorps IG firing The White House's decision to fire AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin came amid politically-charged tensions inside the Corporation for National and Community Service, the organization that runs AmeriCorps. Top executives at the Corporation, Walpin explained in an hour-long interview Saturday, were unhappy with his investigation into the misuse of...

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Worried about Sotomayor? Consider Andre Davis

We've heard a lot about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. But you probably haven't heard of Andre Davis. Yet Davis, as much as Sotomayor, is a telling indicator of the direction in which President Obama seeks to steer the federal judiciary.

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GOP hits "number of apparent omissions" in Sotomayor questionnaire

All seven Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have just sent a letter to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor noting "a number of apparent omissions" in the 172-page questionnaire Sotomayor recently submitted to the committee. The letter asks Sotomayor for more details about her employment history; law journal articles she may have worked on while at Yale Law School; reports she may have worked on on behalf of activist groups; any so-far-unreported activities on behalf of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund; legal opinions in which she was later reversed by a higher court; her time as a prosecutor in Manhattan; and her time as a private...

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McConnell: Dem rush on Sotomayor will have "consequences"

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is warning Democrats that there will be "consequences" if Democrats go forward with their accelerated confirmation schedule for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. In a floor speech this morning, McConnell said that Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy's decision to begin the Sotomayor hearings on July 13 -- a faster pace than followed in the Roberts, Alito, and Breyer nominations -- is "puzzling." And then came McConnell's warning: [Sen. Leahy's decision] risks resulting in a less-informed hearing, and it breaks with years of tradition in which bipartisan agreements were reached and honored over the scheduling of...

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Misleading news about Limbaugh, Gingrich and Cheney

There's a new poll from Gallup getting a lot of attention today. The headline on the Gallup website is "Limbaugh, Gingrich, Cheney Seen as Speaking for GOP." Gallup's Frank Newport writes, "Asked to name the 'main person who speaks for the Republican Party today,' Republicans across the country are most likely to name three men: Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and Dick Cheney. Democrats are most likely to say Limbaugh speaks for the GOP, followed by Cheney." This is the perfect case of a story being accurate and at the same time fundamentally misleading. Fortunately, Gallup provides the numbers that cast doubt on its own assertions. According to the new survey 10...

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Republicans cite troubling gaps in Sotomayor's questionnaire

Senate Republicans involved in the Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination say there are significant gaps in the 172-page questionnaire Sotomayor sent recently to the Senate Judiciary...

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Slate scoops Newsweek

Today's featured story: The Professional Lady's Guide to Finding Your Own Barack: You'll miss a keeper if you only look for guys who are hot and...

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Digging in for Obama’s health-care offensive

It's hard to tell whether this meeting, at a La Madeleine restaurant in a sprawling shopping-center complex just outside Washington, is the start of a historic movement or just a strangely wonkish group-therapy session. About 20 people from Northern Virginia have come to this faux-rustic French café on a Saturday morning to discuss health care reform. That alone makes them unusual; after all, there are a lot of other things one could be doing to begin the weekend. But they have answered the call from Organizing for America (OFA), which is basically the 2008 Obama campaign operating under a new name. "This is the political issue I care about most, apart from the war,"...

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"A federal government takeover of our healthcare system"

As the health-care fights gets underway for real in Washington this week, the entire Republican side of the Senate Finance Committee has sent a letter to the president expressing opposition to the centerpiece of the Obama plan: the so-called "public option" that would create a new government health insurance system that will supposedly compete with the existing private system. "One of the more divisive issues in the health care reform debate is the creation of a brand new public health insurance option," the letter says: At a time when major government programs like Medicare and Medicaid are already on a path to fiscal insolvency, creating a brand new government...

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Mitch Daniels: "Slim pickings" in GOP, "outright meanness" on left

A number of conservative commentators are touting Indiana governor Mitch Daniels as a possible 2012 presidential contender. Daniels has been mentioned in a bunch of columns, is on the cover of National Review, and was selected by the GOP to give a recent Saturday radio address. Daniels came to Washington Wednesday for a panel discussion, "Making Conservatism Credible Again," sponsored by the Hudson Institute and the Bradley Foundation. After the talk, I asked him what accounts for all the talk about a 2012 candidacy. "It shows how slim the pickings are," Daniels said. A moment later, apparently not wanting to appear too dismissive of the Republican field, he added,...

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Can Mitch Daniels save the GOP?

There's been a Mitch Daniels boomlet in Republican political circles lately....

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Was the White House tipped off about Souter retirement?

The news that Supreme Court Justice David Souter would retire, first reported by NPR's Nina Totenberg and NBC's Pete Williams, hit Washington hard on the evening of Thursday, April 30. White House officials made no comment until the next day, after Souter sent a letter to the president outlining his plans. The news was a surprise to most observers, many of whom had expected some other member of the Court to leave before Souter. But now it looks like the White House got a heads-up at least a few days before the world found out. In her 172-page questionnaire submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee this afternoon, Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor said she was contacted by the White...

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New poll results are devastating for Obama's Gitmo plan

I've gotten a look inside the Gallup poll numbers showing that a majority of Americans oppose shutting down the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay. The numbers are stunning. They show a strong and virtually across-the-board rejection of President Obama's proposal to close the prison. Overall, 65 percent of those surveyed oppose shutting Gitmo, versus 32 percent who say it should be closed. According to the poll's internal numbers, large majorities of men oppose closing the prison, large majorities of women oppose it, large majorities of white people oppose it, large majorities of non-white people oppose it, people with graduate degrees oppose it, and people who didn't finish...

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Will the GM bailout be Obama's tipping point?

Observers across the political spectrum have marveled at Barack Obama's ability to maintain a high job approval rating even as the public grows skeptical about some of his key policy initiatives. There's a feeling, among Republicans at least, that sooner or later he’s going to reach a tipping point between his personal popularity and the unpopularity of his proposals, and that his job approval rating will suffer. That moment will come when Obama has to actually stand behind specific proposals -- when he has to put his name on a health care plan that will lead to the rationing of medical treatment, or an energy plan that will lead to significantly higher electrical bills. We might...

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Obama: When it matters most, government will run GM, Pt. II

Last night, during a telephone briefing for reporters, a "senior administration official" gave a few more details on what role the government will play in running GM. The official stressed that the government "will not interfere with or exert control over day-to-day company operations." But the official continued: "As a shareholder, the government will limit what it votes on to core governance issues, particularly the selection of the company's board of directors; major corporate events or...

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Obama: When it matters most, government will run GM, Pt. I

At the White House event on the GM bankruptcy this morning, President Obama repeated his claim that the U.S. government has no interest in running General Motors. But in the same paragraph, he conceded that the government will use its power as the majority owner of GM to shape the most important decisions made by the giant automaker: What we are not doing -- what I have no interest in doing -- is running GM. GM will be run by a private board of directors and management team with a track record in American manufacturing that reflects a commitment to innovation and quality. They -- and not the government -- will call the shots and make the decisions about how to turn this company around....

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Sen. Byrd remains hospitalized

West Virginia Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd's office has just released a statement about the 91 year-old senator's health: According to his doctors, Senator Byrd developed a staph infection during his initial hospitalization for treatment for a minor infection. This, in turn, has delayed his departure from the hospital at this time. Doctors have been treating him with antibiotics for the infection and he has been responding well. There has been no additional indication as to when he will be released from the...

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Jeff Sessions: When a name is more than a name

You might think of the junior senator from Alabama as Jeff Sessions, but these days, critics on the left prefer to call him something else: Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. That is indeed the senator’s full name, although he’s always been known as Jeff. At various times in the past, some of Sessions’ Democratic adversaries, eager to cast a shadow of racism on a conservative Southern Republican, have referred to Sessions by his full name, stressing the middle moniker — after Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard — to give it the full Confederate flavor. Now, we’re hearing it again. “Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III,” reported NPR on May 6....

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The Vindication of Jeff Sessions

Few politicians — few people, really — get to do what Jeff Sessions has done. Back in 1986, when he was a rising star in his home state of Alabama, Sessions was nominated for a seat on the federal courts. A conservative Republican, Sessions was attacked by Sens. Edward Kennedy and Patrick Leahy, and other powerful Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee who accused him of racial insensitivity and argued he was not qualified for the bench. They voted down the nomination and sent Sessions home to Alabama in defeat. But that wasn’t the end of the story. Ten years later, after serving as attorney general of his state, Sessions ran for the Senate and won. Returning to...

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White House pushback on detainee photos

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs has just sent a note to the press corps (headlined "Important -- Please Read") addressing the controversy over whether those still-secret detention photos show rape and other acts of extreme abuse. "A number of you have asked about or reported on a recent article in the Telegraph that inaccurately described photos which are the subject of an ongoing lawsuit," Gibbs began: Both the Department of Defense and the White House have said the article was wrong, and now the individual who was purported to be the source of the article has said it’s inaccurate. Given that this false report has been repeated around the world, and...

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Political posturing? Here?

Some amused -- OK, irritated and amused -- Republicans on Capitol Hill are sending around a line from the President's radio address today. "What I hope is that we can avoid the political posturing and ideological brinksmanship that has bogged down this process, and Congress, in the past," Obama said. Political posturing and ideological brinksmanship? "Anyone know to whom this line was referring?" asks a GOP aide. "Maybe someone involved in the debate on the last Supreme Court nomination? Maybe this?" The "this" that followed was a quote from Sen. Barack Obama on the Samuel Alito nomination. "I will be supporting the filibuster because I...

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When Democrats derailed a GOP Latino nominee

Unless something entirely unforeseen happens, confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor will be a lovefest for the Democrats who run the Senate Judiciary Committee. There will be much talk about Sotomayor's historic opportunity to become the first Hispanic on the Court, about her inspiring background, and about the sterling qualifications she would bring to the job. Sotomayor will have the majority party strongly on her side, and odds are things will end happily for her. For some Republicans, however, it will be hard to avoid thinking back a few years, to a confirmation hearing that didn't end happily at all. In 2001, President George W. Bush nominated former...

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Ted Olson goes to court on behalf of gay marriage

Former Bush administration solicitor general Theodore Olson is part of a team that has filed suit in federal court in California seeking to overturn Proposition 8 and re-establish the right of same-sex couples to marry. The suit argues that the state's marriage ban, upheld Tuesday by the California Supreme Court, violates the federal constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry. The complaint was filed Friday, and Olson and co-counsel David Boies -- who argued against Olson in the Bush v. Gore case -- will hold a news conference in Los Angeles Wednesday to explain the case. The conference will feature the two same-sex couples on whose behalf Olson filed suit. The suit also asks...

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Why did George H.W. Bush pick Sotomayor for the courts?

In his announcement of Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his first Supreme Court nominee, President Barack Obama emphasized that she was first placed on the federal bench by a Republican, President George H.W. Bush. “It’s a measure of her qualities and her qualifications that Judge Sotomayor was nominated to the U.S. District Court by a Republican president, George H.W. Bush, and promoted to the Federal Court of Appeals by a Democrat, Bill Clinton,” the president said. Why did the first President Bush nominate Sotomayor to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York? Veterans of the first Bush administration say the answer is politics, with a generous helping...

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Why did George H.W. Bush pick Sotomayor for the courts?

At the Sotomayor announcement ceremony today, President Obama emphasized the fact that his new Supreme Court nominee was first chosen for the federal bench by a Republican, the first President Bush. "It's a measure of her qualities and her qualifications that Judge Sotomayor was nominated to the U.S. District Court by a Republican president, George H.W. Bush, and promoted to the Federal Court of Appeals by a Democrat, Bill Clinton," the president said. The message was clear: Sotomayor is a judicial moderate with great experience and appeal to both sides of the ideological spectrum. Which leads to a question: Just why did the first President Bush nominate Sotomayor to the U.S....

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McConnell on Sotomayor

The office of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell just released this statement: Senate Republicans will treat Judge Sotomayor fairly. But we will thoroughly examine her record to ensure she understands that the role of a jurist in our democracy is to apply the law even-handedly, despite their own feelings or personal or political preferences. Our Democratic colleagues have often remarked that the Senate is not a ‘rubber stamp.’ Accordingly, we trust they will ensure there is adequate time to prepare for this nomination, and a full and fair opportunity to question the nominee and debate her...

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The anonymous accuser of Guantanamo

Have you heard of Matthew Alexander? Unless you follow the debate over terrorist suspects and "enhanced interrogation techniques" very closely, the answer is probably no. Yet Alexander is one of the most influential voices in the deliberations over what to do with the U.S. terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "Major Matthew Alexander, who has actually interrogated al Qaeda suspects in Iraq, attributes half of the deaths of Americans in Iraq to the detention abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo," Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin said on "Meet the Press" Sunday. "Continuing Guantanamo, unfortunately, makes our troops less safe." A...

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Guantanamo and the question of terrorist recruitment

In the next few days, you're going to see an increasingly intense debate on the question of whether the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay is a major factor in terrorist recruitment. In that debate, you're going to hear a name you might not have heard, Matthew Alexander. And you're going to learn that what you've been told about Guantanamo and terrorist recruitment is not the whole story. In his speech on Thursday, President Obama gave two reasons for his decision to shut down Guantanamo. The first was that it has lowered American standing in the world, and the second was that it is a recruitment tool for terrorists. "Guantanamo became a symbol that helped al-Qaeda recruit...

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Gitmo speech exposes Obama's shallow rhetoric

On Nov. 14, 2007, presidential candidate Barack Obama met with employees of Google at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. After a discussion of the war in Iraq, he was asked to give his views on Iran, Pakistan and the U.S. terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obama spoke at length about Iran. He spoke at length about Pakistan. And then he said, “Last point, Guantanamo. That’s easy. Close down Guantanamo.” The audience broke into applause. A few days earlier, at the 2007 Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in Des Moines, Iowa, Obama said, “As president, I will end the war in Iraq. We will have our troops home in 16 months. I will...

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How the GOP beat Obama on Guantanamo

It took a while for people to notice, but in the last few months, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has made 16 -- yes, 16 -- speeches on the Senate floor questioning the wisdom of Barack Obama's decision to close the U.S. terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. McConnell started January 22, the day the president issued an executive order declaring that Gitmo will be closed within a year. McConnell is still going. "Sometimes it takes a little bit of repetition for people to get the story," one Republican Senate aide says. "People weren't asking these questions back in January." Now they are. For the moment at least, Obama has lost the Battle of...

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Why Republicans will defeat Obama on health care

Barack Obama is making an enormous mistake on the most important initiative of his presidency.

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Huntsman strategist: If Palin and Limbaugh dominate, GOP 'headed for a blowout' in 2012

The Republican strategist who helped Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman prepare for a possible presidential run says the Republican party is in for a devastating defeat if its guiding lights are Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney. "If it's 2012 and our party is defined by Palin and Limbaugh and Cheney, then we're headed for a blowout," says strategist John Weaver, who advised Huntsman and was for years a close adviser to Sen. John McCain. "That's just the truth." Huntsman, a favorite of GOP moderates, left the Republican presidential race last week after accepting President Obama's offer to become U.S. ambassador to China. Before that, Huntsman appeared to be working...

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Obama's remarks on abortion at Notre Dame

We'd been told that President Obama would address the abortion controversy in his speech at Notre Dame. Turns out he addresses it at some length. From the prepared text: As I considered the controversy surrounding my visit here, I was reminded of an encounter I had during my Senate campaign, one that I describe in a book I wrote called The Audacity of Hope. A few days after I won the Democratic nomination, I received an email from a doctor who told me that while he voted for me in the primary, he had a serious concern that might prevent him from voting for me in the general election. He described himself as a Christian who was strongly pro-life, but that’s not what was...

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Sen. Webb: No Uighurs in Virginia

On ABC's "This Week" today, Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb was asked whether the Chinese Uighurs, currently held in Guantanamo, should be released into Virginia. Webb's one-word answer: "No." The senator, whose state would likely receive the Uighurs if they were set free, argued that no one who has received terrorist training should be allowed into the United States. The Uighurs, he said, "accepted training from al Qaeda and as a result they have taken part in terrorism…I don't believe they should come to the United States." UPDATE: From ABC, the transcript of the conversation between Webb and host George Stephanopoulos on the Uighur...

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Financial disclosure: Obama doing well, Biden not so much

The White House has released President Obama's and Vice President Joe Biden's 2008 financial disclosure forms. (The release came at 4:00 p.m. on a Friday.) The news in the documents is that Obama is still making a substantial amount of money from his books, while Biden has significant debts. We don't have precise numbers, because the forms allow public officials to list assets and liabilities within broad categories, but Obama listed income between $100,000 and $1 million in royalties from his autobiography Dreams From My Father. He listed income between $1 million and $5 million from his other book, The Audacity of Hope. That was in addition to what he earned as a U.S. senator for...

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Biden's rosy report can't hide stimulus problems

This week, the White House released its first quarterly report on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the $787 billion stimulus bill. Reaction on Capitol Hill was swift: Republicans think it's a joke, while Democrats don't want to talk about it. The report was unveiled not by President Obama but by Vice President Joe Biden, who said it "shows early progress providing immediate financial relief for American families and jump-starting billions of dollars in job-creating projects." In a press release, Biden claimed the stimulus has so far "created or saved" 150,000 jobs, and that "over 3,000 transportation construction projects have been...

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Michelle Obama, doing well by doing good

In a speech to the Corporation for National and Community Service in Washington Tuesday, First Lady Michelle Obama returned to one of her favorite themes from the 2008 campaign: her decision to give up a lucrative law practice for a lower-paying but more satisfying career in public service. It's a message she has continued to stress in the White House but which sometimes appears at odds with her recent prosperity. "I went from college to law school to a big ol' fancy law firm where I was making more money than both of my parents combined," the First Lady said, describing her time at Princeton and Harvard Law. "I thought I had arrived. I was working on the 47th floor of...

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What is the nation's most important problem?

A new poll from Gallup shows a marked decline in the number of people who say the economy is the most important problem facing the country. In February, 86 percent of respondents said the economy was the most important problem. That was the highest number Gallup recorded during the current economic crisis. Now, 69 percent say the economy is the nation's most important problem. The answers were in response to an open question: "What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?" Most people answer that it is "the economy in general." The number of people who say that has fallen from 57 percent in February to 47 percent today. The people who...

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Obama’s dangerous budget leaves GOP at loss for words

Republican strategists have a problem. The scale of what President Barack Obama proposes to do to the American economy is so enormous, so far-reaching and so potentially disastrous that the opposition party is having a hard time describing it. “How do you translate the numbers into something that people can grasp to represent the broader problem?” a Republican pollster asked in a recent conversation. John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders would love to hear an answer, but the pollster didn’t have one. GOP message mavens are struggling with something that academics call “insensitivity to scope.” It affects us all; we can understand something on...

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Reid: No Gitmo detainees in U.S. “this fiscal year”

A short time ago, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that a new plan will likely keep Guantanamo detainees from being brought to the United States "during this fiscal year." Recently the Senate declined to give the Obama administration the $50 million it had requested to pay for moving the Gitmo detainees. Now, Reid says Sen. Daniel Inouye, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, has decided to withhold the money for a longer period of time. From Reid's remarks: The issue is what we do with the prisoners that are there…Senator Inouye told me that they were going to fence the money so it wouldn’t be available until the president came up with a plan and...

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"Obama could nominate Michael Moore and the Dems would confirm him"

I have a new piece up today, "Dems attack before Supreme Court fight begins." It discusses not only the Democrats' enormous advantage in the upcoming Supreme Court confirmation fight -- they have a 60-40 majority in the Senate, if Al Franken is eventually seated -- but also on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Earlier this year, the committee was made up of eleven Democrats and eight Republicans. Then Sen. Arlen Specter switched sides. Majority Democrats did not allow Republicans to replace Specter, turning an 11-8 committee into a 12-7 panel. The committee has not been that unevenly divided in decades, and it's a huge advantage for the majority party. "They could...

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Dems attack before Supreme Court fight begins

Whoever Barack Obama chooses for the Supreme Court, the president will start with the huge advantage of a 59-40 Democratic majority in the Senate. (It'll be 60-40 if Al Franken is ultimately named the winner in Minnesota.) But there's another ratio that will also be critical in the coming confirmation battle: 12-7. That's the number of Democrats to Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The figure became so lopsided when Sen. Arlen Specter switched parties. Majority Democrats did not allow Republicans to replace Specter, turning a committee with 11 Democrats and eight Republicans into a 12-7 panel. The Judiciary Committee has not been that unevenly divided in decades. The...

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White House: You think $17 billion is nothing? Just wait 'til we get health care reform!

A group of "senior administration officials" held a conference call with reporters yesterday to discuss President Obama's proposal to cut $17 billion in spending from next year's $3.5 trillion budget. Many of the cuts proposed by Obama were also proposed last year by President Bush, whose efforts failed. So a reporter asked, "Why do you think you're going to have more success this year than President Bush had in the past?" The answer: That was then, and this is now. "Clearly a key thing is congressional support for these changes," the official said. "None of this is going to be easy and no one ever pretended that it would be. But we are trying to do...

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Good news for GOP: Carville predicts Dems will rule for 40 years

It's always a good sign for an out-of-power political party when its winning rival begins to believe it will be in power not just for the next term of office but virtually forever. It's the kind of "permanent Republican majority" thinking that ultimately leads to overconfidence and failure. So now we have Democratic strategist/talking head James Carville's new book, 40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation. An email this morning from Carville's strategy group, Democracy Corps, explains: Every four years Americans hold a presidential election. Somebody wins and somebody loses. That's life. But 2008 was an anomaly. The election of President Barack Obama...

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Democrats put Specter at bottom of seniority list; Republicans are amused

There's word tonight that Senate Democrats have denied Arlen Specter seniority on the committees on which he will now serve as a Democrat. That means Specter, who has been a senator for 28 years, will now occupy the most junior position among Senate Democrats. A few minutes ago, I asked a GOP Senate source for his reaction. "I don't know if it says more about [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid's lack of commitment or Specter's naiveté," he told me. "But either way, it's going to be hard for Specter to argue that dumping him now would cost his constituents seniority and clout -- he has the same ranking on committees that his successor will have in...

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Will the White House release those Air Force One fly-by photos?

The White House is dodging questions about whether it will release photos from the $328,835 Air Force One fly-by over Manhattan -- the one that sent terrified New Yorkers into the streets fleeing what they feared might be another 9/11-style attack. The New York Post reports the photos won't be released. At today's briefing, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about it and answered…well, it's not entirely clear: QUESTION: There was a report this morning suggesting that the White House doesn’t want to release the photos from the Air Force jet fly -- over Manhattan. Why wouldn’t you release those photos? And what's the status of the President's review of...

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Specter to Minnesota courts: Elect Norm Coleman

In next Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter sits for the "Questions For" feature. In the not-yet-released article, Specter becomes the only member of the Senate Democratic caucus to pull for Republican Norm Coleman to win the disputed Senate race in Minnesota, although the way the question is phrased, it's not solely a matter of party loyalty or disloyalty: Question: With your departure from the Republican Party, there are no more Jewish Republicans in the Senate. Do you care about that? Specter: I sure do. There’s still time for the Minnesota courts to do justice and declare Norm Coleman the...

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Reagan’s real legacy is the man himself

Santa Barbara, California -- You drive up a steep, rough and winding road to reach Ronald Reagan's ranch in the Santa Ynez mountains. For eight years, from 1981 to 1989, this place north of Santa Barbara was the Western White House; Reagan spent nearly a year of his time in office here. Now, what he called Rancho del Cielo is pretty much deserted. But the ranch, tended by a lone caretaker, is still much like it was when Reagan was alive. It's not open to the public; these days, the old adobe house and 688 surrounding acres are owned and carefully maintained by the conservative Young America's Foundation. The group doesn't have the staff or resources to conduct public tours, but they...

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Senator Specter, meet your new friends

What does the future hold for Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter? A lot of uncertainty, soured relationships, and possible disaster. And that's just with his new-found friends in the Democratic Party. There's no doubt Senate Democrats wanted Specter's help with the president's agenda this year. His vote in the Democratic column could mean significantly better chances for the Obama administration's proposals on health care, energy, and education. So Specter's support will be valuable to his new party in the short run. The long run is another matter. Go behind the news conferences and photo-ops, and Specter's fellow Democrats aren't exactly welcoming him with open arms and warm...

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More on "The black-white divide in Obama's popularity"

A few commentators on the left are calling me a racist for my post, "The black-white divide in Obama's popularity." I suppose if you haven't been called a racist by the usual suspects on the left, you haven't been writing for very long. But to address their complaint: The accusations of racism seem to come from a single sentence in the piece: "But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with white Americans than with black Americans, and his sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are." I wrote my post...

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The black-white divide in Obama's popularity

On his 100th day in office, Barack Obama enjoys high job approval ratings, no matter what poll you consult. But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with white Americans than with black Americans, and his sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are. Asked whether their opinion of the president is favorable or unfavorable, 49 percent of whites in the Times poll say they have a favorable opinion of Obama. Among blacks the number is 80 percent. Twenty-one percent of whites say their view of the president is unfavorable, while...

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When will high-flying Obama fall to Earth?

"His personal can't bring up his policies, but his policies can bring down his personal." That, in the shorthand of Washington insiders -- it's from a top Republican aide in the Senate -- is the secret to understanding Barack Obama's presidency in the months ahead, at least as GOP strategists see it. What it means is this: After 100 days in the White House, Barack Obama's personal approval rating remains high. In the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, he clocked in at 69 percent job approval rating, with 26 percent disapproval. But at the same time, the public's opinion of Obama's handling of key issues is significantly lower than his personal approval. For example, in the...

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Oil falls as reports of swine flu rattle market

Oil prices dipped to around $50 a barrel Monday as a strong dollar and new reports of swine flu threatened to slow summer travel and sent jitters through global markets. Benchmark crude for June delivery fell $1.41 to settle at $50.14 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Crude prices have defied traditional market fundamentals for weeks and risen in the face of an awful economy and growing supplies of oil. Swine flu worries pushed both oil and equity markets down Monday. Oil recovered a bit from the day's bottom of $48.01, but talk of a pandemic continued to weigh on prices, said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates. "You can say connect...

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Ted Olson: “Torture” probes will never end

Perhaps more than anyone in Washington today, Theodore Olson knows the dangers of the path the Obama administration is traveling on the question of Bush-era terrorist interrogations. It's not just that Olson is one of the nation's top lawyers and a former high-ranking Justice Department official. It's not even that his wife Barbara was among those killed by terrorists on September 11, 2001. The thing that makes Olson's perspective so valuable is that his life includes not only those experiences but also a keen perspective on the way Washington investigations can run amok. In the 1980s, Olson was the subject of controversy over advice he had given, as the head of the Justice Department's...

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George Soros joins push for interrogations investigation

Some observers have suggested that pressure from the lefty Internet activist group MoveOn.org helped push the Obama White House to change its position on an investigation of Bush-era terrorist interrogations. Now, George Soros, who spent $27 million of his personal fortune in an effort to defeat George W. Bush in 2004, has gotten into the act. This afternoon a top official of the Soros organization, the Open Society Institute, sent out the following email: Dear Friends and Colleagues: This morning a coalition of human rights groups and other organizations launched an appeal to the President to establish a commission of inquiry to examine and report publicly on America's use of torture...

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Did the Times bury its story on interrogations' effectiveness?

If you go to Memeorandum, the most talked-about story on the Web today, or at least as of 11:20 this morning, is Peter Baker's New York Times piece, "Banned Techniques Yielded 'High Value Information,' Memo Says." The story begins: President Obama’s national intelligence director told colleagues in a private memo last week that the harsh interrogation techniques banned by the White House did produce significant information that helped the nation in its struggle with terrorists. “High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this...

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In time of victory, why is the left so angry?

These should be happy times for liberals and the Democratic party as a whole. They control the White House and both houses of Congress, while opposition Republicans are leaderless and lost. So why do some Democrats, particularly those farther to the left, appear so angry? If you doubt it, just watch a few minutes of MSNBC, where the recent nationwide series of "tea parties" to protest federal spending and taxes set off an angry, almost manic response. The most telling came on Keith Olbermann's program, during which the actress Janeane Garofalo, who plays an FBI computer geek on “24,” denounced the tea parties as "racism straight up." "Let's be very...

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Who's Laughing at the ‘Axis of Evil’ today?

There are undoubtedly people who have a more vivid memory of Will Farrell’s "Saturday Night Live" version of the "Axis of Evil" — the one in which Farrell, as President George W. Bush, denounced Iran, Iraq and "one of those Koreas" — than of the real thing from Bush's 2002 State of the Union address. A lot of comedians made a lot of fun of the "Axis of Evil" concept. But now, more than seven years later, it's looking pretty solid. This is what Bush said on the subject of Iran, Iraq and North Korea: States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking...

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Small-town rally shows true meaning of tea parties

If you listened to the speeches at the Tax Day tea party held in the courthouse square of this northern Virginia town, population 25,733, you might not have caught the name of the man in the White House. Among many denunciations of high taxes and out-of-control government spending, there were just a couple of mentions of Barack Obama -- one when a local activist criticized the administration's cap-and-trade energy plan, and the other when a city businessman said he prays for the president. "This is absolutely not an Obama thing," James See, a painting contractor, told me as we stood in a cold drizzle waiting for the mid-day rally to begin. "The president is under a...

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The Escalating War Between Obama and Bush

Former White House adviser Karl Rove's bare-knuckled response to recent statements by Vice President Joe Biden has brought into public view a growing resentment on the part of Bush administration veterans over what they regard as repeated and unwarranted slams from the Obama White House. The current president and his team are being "gratuitous, slightly petty, and slightly obsessive in blaming Bush for things," one former White House adviser told me. "Completely gratuitous," said another. "Unfair," said a third. The hard feelings surfaced after an April 7 interview on CNN in which Biden recounted a visit with George W. Bush. "I remember President...

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Will Senate chill House on Pay for Performance?

Now that the Pay for Performance Act has passed the House, what are its prospects in the Senate? The last time the House passed something similar -- two weeks ago, when lawmakers rushed through the 90 percent tax on many AIG bonuses -- the Senate gave their colleagues in the House the big brushoff. The tax bill, which a number of senators of both parties suspected might be unconstitutional, died a quiet death. In some ways, the new Pay for Performance Act, shepherded through the House by Democratic Rep. Barney Frank, goes even farther than the AIG measure. It would impose government controls on the salaries and bonuses of all employees -- not just top executives -- of companies that...

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Barney Frank: Republicans are like children who've lost security blanket; GOP has "psychological disorder"

During an impassioned debate on the House floor Wednesday, Democratic Rep. Barney Frank characterized Republican opposition to the Pay for Performance Act as a manifestation of "a psychological disorder" and compared GOP lawmakers to "kids who have had a toy bear or a security blanket" taken away. The Pay for Performance bill, whose details were reported Tuesday in the Examiner, would impose government controls on the salaries and bonuses of all employees -- not just top executives -- of companies that have received capital investments through the Troubled Asset Relief Program and other federal measures. The bill would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner the...

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Beyond AIG: A bill to let Big Government set your salary

It was nearly two weeks ago that the House of Representatives, acting in a near-frenzy after the disclosure of bonuses paid to executives of AIG, passed a bill that would impose a 90 percent retroactive tax on those bonuses. Despite the overwhelming 328-93 vote, support for the measure began to collapse almost immediately. Within days, the Obama White House backed away from it, as did the Senate Democratic leadership. The bill stalled, and the populist storm that spawned it seemed to pass. But now, in a little-noticed move, the House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would, in some key ways, go beyond the most draconian features of...

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On Spending and the Deficit, McCain Was Right

Barack Obama used to get very upset about federal budget deficits. Denouncing an "orgy of spending and enormous deficits," he turned to John McCain during their presidential debates last fall and said, "We have had, over the last eight years, the biggest increases in deficit spending and national debt in our history…Now we have a half-trillion deficit annually…and Sen. McCain voted for four out of five of those George Bush budgets." That was then. Now, President Obama is asking lawmakers to vote for a budget with a deficit three times the size of the one that so disturbed candidate Obama just a few months ago. And Obama foresees, for years to come,...

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Obama surrenders his agenda

At his news conference Tuesday night, President Obama stressed the four most important goals he hopes to accomplish this year: health care reform, energy legislation, education reform, and deficit reduction. But by the end of the hour-long session with the White House press corps, Obama had retreated on three of the four. On energy, he defined progress so far down that virtually any action would satisfy his request to Congress; on health care, he was vague and noncommittal; and on the deficit, he insisted against widespread skepticism that he can reduce the deficit despite a budget that projects a tripling of the national debt in the next decade. The president's biggest surrender was...

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Even with new nominations, Geithner is still virtually home alone at Treasury

Late Monday, the Obama White House announced it has finally found a candidate to become the number-two official at the Treasury Department under Secretary Timothy Geithner. Turns out he was in the White House all along. Neal Wolin, a veteran of the Clinton Treasury Department who last month left his post at the Hartford Financial Services Group to become a White House economic adviser, will now become Deputy Secretary of the Treasury -- if, that is, his various seven-figure bonuses and stock options from Hartford pass populist muster on today's Capitol Hill. Obama also found candidates for a couple of other top Treasury jobs. But they face what could be weeks of investigation and...

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It's Obama's Crisis Now

You might have missed it, but a key moment in Barack Obama's young presidency occurred Wednesday afternoon as he began his trip to California to become the first sitting president to appear on a late-night comedy show. Heading for his helicopter, Obama made a statement about the AIG bonuses, and he didn't use the word "inherited." As in "we inherited this crisis." "Ultimately, I'm responsible, I'm the president of the United States," Obama told reporters. "The buck stops with me." That makes it official: Barack Obama didn't start the financial crisis, but he owns it now. Before anyone gives the president an award for political courage,...

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It's Obama's Crisis Now

You might have missed it, but a key moment in Barack Obama's young presidency occurred Wednesday afternoon as he began his trip to California to become the first sitting president to appear on a late-night comedy show. Heading for his helicopter, Obama made a statement about the AIG bonuses, and he didn't use the word "inherited." As in "we inherited this crisis." "Ultimately, I'm responsible, I'm the president of the United States," Obama told reporters. "The buck stops with me." That makes it official: Barack Obama didn't start the financial crisis, but he owns it now. Before anyone gives the president an award for political courage,...

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Candidate Obama vs. President Obama

In September 2008, during the first debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, McCain said his Democratic opponent had “the most liberal voting record in the United States Senate — it’s hard to reach across the aisle from that far to the left.” - York: Candidate Obama vs. President Obama - Mason: Stumbling along the learning curve - Carney: AIG mess clips the wings of high-flying Obama team - Tapscott: When America becomes Obamaland - York: Obama pushes his agenda, deficits be damned - Stirewalt: Politics as hardball, not as higher calling -...

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Obama pushes his agenda, deficits be damned

Back when he was running for president, Joseph Biden Jr. often quoted his father when talk turned to the budget. “My dad always used to say, ‘Don’t tell me what you value — show me your budget,’ ” Biden would tell supporters. “Show me your budget, I’ll tell you what you value.” - York: Candidate Obama vs. President Obama - Mason: Stumbling along the learning curve - Carney: AIG mess clips the wings of high-flying Obama team - Tapscott: When America becomes Obamaland - York: Obama pushes his agenda, deficits be damned -...

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Why tax problems have plagued Team Obama

It’s been a recurring question about the young Obama administration: Why have so many of its nominees come down with tax problems? Timothy Geithner, Tom Daschle, Ron Kirk, Nancy Killefer, and a number of others who didn’t make it to the nomination stage — all have been felled, or tainted, by unpaid tax bills ranging from a few hundred dollars to more than $140,000. After the first few cases, Republican Rep. Eric Cantor quipped that “it’s easy for [Democrats] to sit here and advocate higher taxes because — you know what? — they don’t pay them.” For their part, some Democrats have suggested that the Senate Finance Committee, which...

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Geithner-Obama Economics: A Joke That's Not Funny

When they start making jokes about you, it's hard to recover. And that's what is happening now to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. It's not just "Saturday Night Live" poking fun at him -- you saw the skit depicting a Geithner so clueless that he offered a huge reward to anyone who called his hotline, 1-800-IDEAS, with a plan to get us out of the financial crisis. Beyond the TV shows, Geithner, who was confirmed despite having to pay $48,000 in back taxes and interest, is also the target of suppressed snickers on Capitol Hill whenever the subject turns to the IRS. And now, he is widely thought to be not up to the job. The fundamental problem, of course, is that Geithner...

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The Whispered Worries About Michael Steele

In the past few weeks there's been a lot of talk about Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele's controversial statements -- the latest example is his new interview with GQ -- his dustup with Rush Limbaugh, and his decision to clean out the RNC's top ranks without, so far, replacing any of the fired key officials. But there is another issue about the new chairman that is the topic not of public discussion but of worried private conversation among some of the RNC's 168 members. That topic concerns the allegations of financial irregularities in Steele's 2006 run for Senate from Maryland. While some RNC members, including the chairman himself, view those accusations as...

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Why The Founding Fathers Would Want Obama's Plans to Fail

James Madison was not specifically contemplating Barack Obama, or Nancy Pelosi, when he wrote Federalist No. 63. But reading the document — one of the seminal arguments in favor of adopting the U.S. Constitution — it’s clear Madison knew their type. And he knew they would come along again and again in American history, if Americans were lucky enough to have a long history. Obama and Pelosi, along with their most ardent supporters, are the types to see a crisis, like our current economic mess, as a “great opportunity,” as the president put it last Saturday. They are the types, after a long period out of power, to attempt to use that “great...

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NYT to Obama: Are You A Socialist? Not That There's Anything Wrong With That.

By BYRON YORK Chief Political Correspondent The New York Times has just posted the transcript of its recent interview with President Obama. Reading the transcript, it appears the Times reporters left the president struggling for an answer when they asked about the S-word: Q: The first six weeks have given people a glimpse of your spending priorities. Are you a socialist as some people have suggested? A: You know, let’s take a look at the budget – the answer would be no. Q: Is there anything wrong with saying yes? A: Let’s just take a look at what we’ve done. We’ve essentially said that, number one, we’re going to reduce non-defense discretionary...

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Limbaugh: My Ratings are Way, Way Up

One side effect of the Democratic campaign against Rush Limbaugh has been to increase -- dramatically increase -- the talk show host's ratings. This morning I asked Rush if he had any numbers he could share on just what effect the increased visibility has had on his business. This is his response: The latest numbers I have are for January, well before this kerfuffle began, and they are through the roof -- six shares in NY, for example. There are daily ratings taken now in about the top 15 markets but I have not seen them yet. All I can tell you is that as of January, we booked 80 percent of all our 2008 revenue and we'll be over 2008 by the end of this month. Given those numbers, it's...

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Anatomy of an Earmark

Who wouldn’t spend $3.8 million on a half-demolished baseball stadium? You can't be a Republican on Capitol Hill these days without talking about the 8,000 earmarks in the massive omnibus spending bill. With somewhere between $5 billion and $8 billion in special spending projects, the bill contains so much questionable spending that no outsider -- actually no insider, either -- can keep track of it all. So this week I asked the Senate's leading anti-pork crusader, Republican Tom Coburn, to single out one earmark, one lone spending provision, that best symbolized the kind of waste that Coburn and a few other lonely lawmakers are fighting. He pointed me to a halfway-demolished...

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With Limbaugh Battles Raging, Republicans Unite Behind Media Freedom

As Rush, Rahm, Michael and the White House fight it out, the GOP holds the line on freedom for broadcasters. In the midst of ongoing disputes between conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, and the Obama White House -- all focusing on Limbaugh's influence within the Republican Party -- Republicans in the Senate have united in unprecedented ways this year on the issue of protecting conservative talk radio. After three moderates joined Democrats to pass the stimulus bill in mid-February, Senate GOP leaders worried whether there would be any issue on which the party's 41 senators would be able to agree. Now, with talk radio, they've...

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The Growing Republican Unhappiness With Michael Steele

It's not just the TV appearances that have some Republicans worried. Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele's dust-up with Rush Limbaugh has brought to the fore so-far unspoken concerns about Steele's performance in his early days as head of the GOP. A number of Republican politicos around Washington, many of whom supported Steele's bid to become party chairman, are worried that key jobs at the RNC are unfilled and the party's mission is unfocused, while Steele makes appearance after appearance on television, with sometimes controversial results. The result, they say, is a party that is losing its already scant momentum at a critical time. Shortly after his January 30...

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Michelle Obama's high fashion in hard times

So what was the White House social secretary doing at the New York fashion shows? It didn't make most of the papers or the TV newscasts, but Desiree Rogers, the new White House social secretary, caused a bit of a stir recently when she appeared at New York's Fashion Week shows, sitting next to Vogue Editor Anna Wintour as she took in the latest from designers Carolina Herrera and Donna Karan. "The fashions were amazing," Rogers told Women's Wear Daily. "I particularly liked the dresses for daytime that were a classic silhouette. ..." Besides Herrera and Karan, Rogers also attended a show by Marc Jacobs where, according to the New York Daily News, "fashion's...

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In Press Coverage, Obama's Plans Are Bold, Bold, Bold

The word of the moment sounds good -- but the Obama White House should be worried. If you read the papers and watch the news these days, there's one word that is increasingly used to describe Barack Obama's agenda, from the economy to health care to energy and beyond. The word is "bold." A search of the Nexis database for articles or statements in which the words "Obama" and "bold" appear together yields 2,752 examples -- and that's just in the last 30 days. Not all of those are direct descriptions of Obama's agenda, but many are. Just look at five passages from the last few days in the news pages -- not the editorials -- of a single paper, the Washington...

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Obama's trillions dwarf Bush's 'dangerous' spending

Pelosi and Reid called Bush's budgets "dangerous" and "unpatriotic," but with Obama, they've changed their tune Back in 2006, when Democrats were hoping to win control of the House and Senate, party leaders worked themselves into a righteous outrage over the issue of out-of-control federal spending. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called the Republican budget “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic” because it increased the amount of U.S. debt held by foreign countries. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., accused Republicans of going on “an unprecedented and dangerous borrowing spree” and declared GOP leadership “the most fiscally irresponsible...

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The RAT hiding deep inside the stimulus bill

The far-reaching — and potentially dangerous — provision that no one knows about. You’ve heard a lot about the astonishing spending in the $787 billion economic stimulus bill, signed into law this week by President Barack Obama. But you probably haven’t heard about a provision in the bill that threatens to politicize the way allegations of fraud and corruption are investigated — or not investigated — throughout the federal government. The provision, which attracted virtually no attention in the debate over the 1,073-page stimulus bill, creates something called the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board — the RAT Board, as it’s...

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For Obama, it’s more about showmanship than sunlight

Back during the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised something he called “Sunlight Before Signing.” Obama complained that “too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them.” So he pledged that, as president, he would “not sign any nonemergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House Web site for five days.” “Sunlight Before Signing” faded into darkness with the first bill that came across Obama’s desk. The new president signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act two days after it was passed by Congress...

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Why Gregg Bailed

When he took the job, Republicans searched for a diplomatic way to ask: Are you crazy? After 16 years as a Republican senator from New Hampshire, Judd Gregg has a lot of friends among GOP lawmakers, and in the past two weeks, many of them -- perhaps most of them -- have been wondering why he chose to accept Barack Obama's offer to become Commerce Secretary. Their objections intensified in the last week, as Republicans grew more worried about the Obama administration's plan to move control of the politically-sensitive 2010 Census from the Commerce Department to the White House. For Gregg himself, concerns about having the Census taken away from Commerce dovetailed with more general fears...

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Who will investigate the Obama administration?

The census controversy brings the first test of accountability and oversight in the new administration Rep. Darrell Issa is not working from a position of strength. As the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Issa wants to exercise some, well, oversight when it comes to the Obama administration’s controversial decision to transfer control of the Census Bureau from professionals at the Commerce Department to political aides in the White House. But as a member of the minority party on Capitol Hill, Issa doesn’t have the power to compel the administration to do anything. So this week Issa wrote President Obama a tough-sounding letter,...

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A $2 Billion Shady Deal In the Stimulus Bill?

Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are asking questions about the lobbying activities of Craig Obey, who is the son of House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey. The elder Obey is, as much as anyone, the author of the giant stimulus bill that passed the House. Craig Obey works for an organization called the National Parks Conservation Association, which describes its mission as "to protect and enhance America's national parks for present and future generations" and to "advocate for the national parks and the National Park Service." Now, it just so happens that the National Park Service stands to get a lot -- a lot -- of money...

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STIMULUS UPDATE: The Bill Could Still Fail

Posted at 4:07 pm: Most reporting on the stimulus is based on the assumption that, since there is now a deal in the Senate, the bill will ultimately pass. That is still the most likely possibility, given the big Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. But it could still be a squeaker -- and it could still fail. Here's the situation. There are 58 Democratic senators. (There would be 59 if they had Al Franken, but they don't.) There are 41 Republicans. (There would be 42 if they had Norm Coleman, but they don't.) Sixty are needed to stop a filibuster. The current Senate bill has the support of three Republicans: Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Specter. So with the...

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The Happy Party

They took a beating in November, but now, in the stimulus fight, Republicans are smiling again. You see it all over Capitol Hill, in the hallways, the hearing rooms, the gathering spots. Republicans, coming off a devastating, across-the-board electoral defeat, are … happy. Being in opposition, after eight years of a Republican presidency and 12 years of GOP rule in Congress, suits many of them just fine. It’s not that they were glad to lose. There are a lot of indignities involved in being the minority, and a pretty small minority at that. But talk to Republican lawmakers and insiders these days, and they speak as if an enormous weight has been lifted from their shoulders....

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