Murtha Earmark Scandal

A major earmark scandal, with Jack Murtha at its center, is brewing. Jonathan Allen and Alex Knott for CQ: More than 100 House members secured earmarks in a major spending bill for clients of a single lobbying firm — The PMA Group — known for its close ties to John P. Murtha , the congressman in charge of Pentagon ...

Poll: Reverend Wright Not a Factor

Chuck Todd and Domenico Montanaro take a look at the results of a new NBC/WSJ poll and find some surprises. Most notably, about half the people had never heard of Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Pollster Peter Hart calls the NBC/WSJ poll a “myth buster” survey; it really breaks down a lot of the myths we've been hearing over the last week ...

Murtha: Surge is Working

While many war supporters have been pointing to security improvements in Iraq as evidence that the Surge is working for weeks, the meme got a significant boost yesterday from an unlikely source: Congressman Jack Murtha. U.S. Rep. John Murtha today said he saw signs of military progress during a brief trip to Iraq last week, but he warned that ...

John Murtha King of Pork

John Murtha gets more pork for his district than any other Representative. If John Murtha were a businessman, he'd be the biggest employer in this town. The powerful U.S. congressman has used his clout on Capitol Hill to create thousands of jobs and steer billions of dollars in federal spending to help his hometown in western Pennsylvania recover from devastating floods ...

Rush Limbaugh’s ‘Phony Soldiers’

Media Matters has again successfully embroiled the blogosphere in a controversy with a press release. The latest, entitled "Limbaugh: Service members who support U.S. withdrawal are 'phony soldiers,'" has gained wide circulation on the left. The lede: During the September 26 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh called service members who advocate U.S. withdrawal from ...

Domestic Politics Hamstrings Iraq Policy

Public opinion polls showing Americans overwhelmingly frustrated with the war in Iraq and ready to begin withdrawal. Paradoxically, domestic political considerations are making it impossible to move off the status quo. John Murtha blames the Republican primaries: Rep. John Murtha predicted Monday that Democrats will not be able to pass any meaningful legislation to end the Iraq war until presidential primary ...

Civility, Hypocrisy, and the Rules of Political Debate

Glenn Greenwald argues that many of those now condemning MoveOn.org and/or demanding that Democrats condemn MoveOn.org for suggesting General David Petraeus would "betray us" are hypocrites, since many have used inflammatory rhetoric themselves. He's surely right in many particulars. Those on the Ann Coulter wing of the Right, who routinely throw around words like "traitors" and "treason" to describe mainstream ...

Haditha Charges Dropped Against Two Marines

Charges have been dropped against a Marine captain and lance corporal who had been accused of criminal wrongdoing in the killing of three brothers in a 2005 incident in Haditha. The Marine Corps has dropped all charges against a captain accused of failing to investigate the deaths of 24 civilians and another Marine accused in some of the killings, the ...

House Democrats Push Another Iraq Withdrawal Bill

Another day, another Iraq withdrawal proposal. House Democrats have drafted new Iraq legislation they hope will appeal to Republicans fed up with the war: Start withdrawing troops in two months but leave it up to President Bush to decide when to complete the pullout. The vote will come next week, as members take up a $460 billion bill covering military spending for ...

Restoring the Draft No Panacea

Bringing back the military draft would make it easier to meet recruiting goals but the negatives would outweigh the positives, a new Congressional Budget Office study found. The report, requested by Rep. John Murtha, D-Penn., chairman of the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, says that drafting people could make it easier for the Army to reach its 2012 goal ...

Reporter Wants Out of Afghanistan, Blames Congressional Democrats

The Hill's Roxana Tiron reports that there's a growing number of congressional Democrats who want to pull American troops out of Afghanistan. When one reads the story, however, it's pretty clear that this still represents a tiny constituency. When they won control of Congress in November, Democrats pressed their case to withdraw troops from Iraq and refocus on Afghanistan, but ...

Do Democrats Want to Lose the War on Terror?

Retired fighter Jock Robert "Buzz" Patterson has made a name for himself by churning out books about how Democrats hate America and want us to be weak. His first two efforts, Dereliction of Duty: How Bill Clinton Compromised America's National Security and Reckless Disregard: How Liberal Democrats Undercut Our Military, Endanger Our Soldiers, and Jeopardize Our Security were New ...

More Directions on Iraq

Back in December of last year I hosted something I referred to as a “blog colloquium”, “Directions on Iraq”. At that time I attempted to recruit contributors who could present practical alternatives other than slogging through for dealing with the situation in Iraq. I received several dozen polite refusals (and a good number of tacit refusals as well), ...

Branding The Candidates

Patrick Ottenhoff reports that "NationalJournal.com recently emailed wordsmiths Frank Luntz, a Republican, and Andrei Cherny, a Democrat, a series of short questions on messaging." The results are behind a subscription wall, but here's a preview: I'm not sure the "best describes" list tells us much about the candidates as much as how Luntz and Cherny see them. Still, it's ...

Did General Petraeus Snub Congressional Democrats?

Redstate's "RS Insider" notes a kerfuffle brewing among the Netroots: Think Progress, the Booman Tribune, the Carpetbagger Report and a herd of Democratic bloggers are criticizing General Petraeus for allegedly having a partisan meeting for Republicans. One blogger even suggests General Petraeus should be “relieved of his command”. He asserts, linking to an old post of his own, that Democrats ...