Marty Kaplan is right: This suspense may giving me the heebie-jeebies, but it’s really killing the media. No one knows who’ll be indicted by Patrick Fitzgerald, but you have to think there’s more than smoke there. Though the Harriet Miers story could play out in any of a dozen ways, all of them are delicious. Frist, Delay, Blunt, Ney and … Read More
Another Poll Low
For the first time in the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, President Bush’s approval rating "has sunk below 40 percent, while the percentage believing the country is heading in the right direction has dipped below 30 percent. In addition, a sizable plurality prefers a Democratic-controlled Congress, and just 29 percent think Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers is qualified to serve … Read More
Sekulow’s Hypocrisy
White House ally and chief counsel to the American Center for Law and Justice, Jay Sekulow (described as one of the “four horseman” who helped Bush select Miers), has been publicly holding up Miers’s faith as a reason she should be confirmed: [The Miers nomination is] a big opportunity for those of us who have a conviction, that share an … Read More
We Think This Is A Good Name For A Blog
"P.S. No more public scatology" — actual handwriting of Bush in note to Harriet Miers. Wonkette speculates about its meaning.
Harriet Miers Update
(1) GOP AIDES COMING OUT AGAINST MIERS "As the White House seeks to rally senators behind the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet E. Miers, lawyers for the Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee are expressing dissatisfaction with the choice and pushing back against her, aides to 6 of the 10 Republican committee members" told the New York Times. Said one … Read More
Frist Stock Problem Worse
Things are getting worse for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, currently under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for an insider trading and stock dumping scandal involving shares of his family’s company, HCA. Frist has defended himself by pointing out that his stocks are in a blind trust, eliminating any conflicts of interest. However, … Read More
Plamegate Update
Looks like Fitzgerald is casting a pretty wide net. That’s the rumors anyway. And in the wake of it all, there seems to be a power play in the White House — Andrew Card angling to fill Rove’s shoes. Josh Marshall sums it up: There are certainly a lot of hints, allegations and murmurs out there tonight, particularly on the … Read More
Cheney Days
Sure, the value of Cheney’s Halliburton stock options have increased 3281% in the past year (from $241,498 to over $8,000,000), but it won’t do him much good if this is true: The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg are working on stories that point to Vice President Dick Cheney as the target of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into the leaking … Read More
Democratic Ideas – No. 2
Targeting the Terrorists More Effectively. Keeping America secure means stepping up the fight against the radical Islamic fundamentalism. Democrats will work to increase our Special Operations forces by 2,000 to attack the terrorists where they are and to protect our freedoms here at home. We will further enhance our efforts against enemies by targeting the institutions that spawn new terrorists. … Read More
Democratic Ideas – No. 1
The meme emerging from the right nowadays is "Well, yeah. Okay. Bush kinda sucks, but the Democrats don’t have any ideas, so why are they any better?" I am tired of hearing this, so . . . for the next several days, I will present Democratic ideas. Agree with them or disagree with them, but don’t say they don’t exist. … Read More
Pass The Barf Bag
This is ookey: AUSTIN, Texas – (KRT) – Harriet Miers, President Bush’s nominee for the Supreme Court, quickly developed a deep and almost gushing admiration for her boss from her earliest days in Texas government. "You are the best governor ever – deserving of great respect!" she wrote in 1997, in a belated birthday note that was typical of the … Read More
“A Conservative Civil War”
Boy, I like the sound of that term. I’ve had a fairly busy weekend, but I sort of thought that by Monday, the whole Miers kerfuffle would have simmered down somewhat. Apparently, I was wrong: How Harriet Unleashed a Storm on the Right Well, he’s finally done it. By nominating White House lawyer Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, George … Read More
Rove Lied To The President?
Murray Waas: White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove personally assured President Bush in the early fall of 2003 that he had not disclosed to anyone in the press that Valerie Plame, the wife of an administration critic, was a CIA employee, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the accounts that both Rove and Bush independently provided … Read More
Congress Channels English Parliament
Oh, I like this: A controversial bill that offered abandoned U.S. military bases to private industry for the construction of oil refineries and granted federal insurance to refiners ensnared in litigation passed by a razor-thin margin in the House Friday afternoon 212-210 as Democrats chanted "shame, shame, shame." "Harumph, harumph" Now if we can only get Congress and the President … Read More
Election 2006 Outlook
This is encouraging: Republican politicians in multiple states have recently decided not to run for Senate next year, stirring anxiety among Washington operatives about the effectiveness of the party’s recruiting efforts and whether this signals a broader decline in GOP congressional prospects. Prominent Republicans have passed up races in North Dakota and West Virginia, both GOP-leaning states with potentially vulnerable … Read More