Online Journal of Politics and Foreign Affairs
The Hill newspaper has put the list together which consists almost exclusively of Capitol Hill staffers you’ve never heard of. It does include, however, a couple of more well-known people such as, er, Majority Leader John Boehner and the more fitting choice of FOX News’ Megyn Kendall. UPDATE (James Joyner): Not having my years of [...]
Dana Milbank has something of a blind item in his Washington Sketch column today in which he describes a meeting with a nameless Republican candidate “in one of the most competitive Senate races in the country” that is trying to distance himself from the Bush administration and his Republicans colleagues in Congress: On the Iraq [...]
Allah Pundit has taken the time to put one together in response to the recent Glenn Greenwald-sock puppetry scandal. UPDATE (James Joyner): It’s an interesting roundup and does a good job of putting things into perspective. I think, though, that this is mostly a case of “one of these things is not like the other.” [...]
Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., Dan Gillerman, was on O’Reilly tonight to talk about Israel’s operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Most of the discussion focused on the world’s opinion of Israel’s “disproportionate” assault and the resulting civilian casualties. Check it out. What’s worth repeating here though, is Gillerman’s contrast between the tactics of Israel and [...]
Crikey, boys and girls! We’ve got us some live ones! Watch ‘em pounce on Barbara Boxer during her stop today in Connecticut to campaign for Joe “Beelzebub” Lieberman. BONUS NUTROOT VIDEO: The Joe Lieberman sucks video (featuring Avril Lavigne) UPDATE (James Joyner): Jane Hamsher, who is in CT working on the Lamont campaign, has background [...]
“If I was president, this wouldn’t have happened because _______________.” (hat tip: Charles Austin for the inspiration)
Is it just me, or do the Democrats get spanked every time they promise a tough confirmation battle? Anyway, here’s the story via The Washington Times: Senate Democrats have promised a “bruising fight” over the administration’s nomination of John R. Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Mr. Bolton’s nomination was sent out of [...]
Dean Barnett argues that the diaries and comments on the current conflict in the Middle East at The Daily Kos foreshadow a major problem for the Democratic party: The Conflagration in Lebanon has provided an example of the people-powered movement’s potential to be a liability for the politicians who have tried to curry favor with [...]
Keith Olbermann is fatally attracted to Bill O’Reilly because _______________. UPDATE (James Joyner): Bob Cox has much more at Olbermann Watch.
After “massing” on the Israel-Lebanon border yesterday, the IDF has commenced a campaign of “limited” ground operations with the purpose of destroying Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon. Here’s the latest: Israeli tanks and hundreds of troops moved in and out of Lebanon on Saturday, taking over a village, entering a U.N. observation post and engaging [...]
I’ve been hearing about Bill O’Reilly’s “Talking Points Memo” from last night’s show all over the place today, so I decided to check it out. Now I see why. O’Reilly perfectly summarizes why a cease-fire is a raw deal for the Israelis in terms that the average American can understand. That is, minus the disertation [...]
I pose this question to you, dear readers, because John Podhoretz and Glenn Reynolds are charging that he is and site this column in which he calls Israel’s action against Hezbollah and Lebanon “un-Christian” as proof. Here’s the quotation in its context, plus a little more from the column that I think goes to the [...]
A little gossip for your Friday: Is CBS trying to wipe out all traces of Dan Rather’s history at the network? In a glowing story about Katie Couric’s “Eye on America” tour’s going to the Twin Cities, the CBS News Web site crows that the perky newsgal, who takes over Rather’s seat in September, “will [...]
Michael Berlin, a former U.N. correspondent for the New York Post and The Washington Post, has an interesting piece in today’s Washington Post on the media and–obviously–a secret they kept. The story itself [of six American officials who managed to escape being captured by Iranian militants during the seizure of the U.S. embassy in November [...]
Take your mind off the Middle East for a moment, and check this out: This is an actual billboard in New York on 54th and Broadway. And it’s priceless. But just when you thought it couldn’t get any better… Wait for it… Wait for it… The woman who had this billboard erected has a blog! [...]
…against Hezbollah: One of Saudi Arabia’s leading Wahhabi sheiks, Abdullah bin Jabreen has issued a strongly worded religious edict, or fatwa, declaring it unlawful to support, join or pray for Hezbollah, the Shiite militias lobbing missiles into northern Israel. The day after Hezbollah abducted two Israeli soldiers on July 12, Sheik Hamid al-Ali issued an [...]
Ambassador Bolton was on tonight’s H&C to, obviously, talk about the current crisis in the Middle East. Any clip of JB is worth posting, but this one is particularly informative. Bolton weighs in on Syrian and Iranian involvement and also addresses the report today, from the “occasionally accurate” British press, which alleges that the United [...]
Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres was on Hardball tonight to discuss the current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. It was an excellent interview because Peres really put this conflict into its proper perspective. For example, here’s a taste of Peres on Hezbollah: They’re fanatics. They serve the Iranians. They destroy Lebanon. And the Prime Minister [...]
Something had to replace Plamegate right? But seriously, watch the video. President Bush probably touched Chancellor Merkel’s shoulders for a second, more or less, and there is certainly not enough context in any video that I’ve seen to accurately measure her reaction. Yet liberals are acting like the President placed, um, something other than his [...]
Although that’s the quotable moment of this exchange between Tony Snow and Helen Thomas, the entire thing is worth watching simply for its entertainment value alone. It’s old school Helen Thomas, trying to “Scott McClellan” Tony Snow. And somehow Tony has already mastered the art of dealing with the queen of combativeness and irrationality. It’s [...]
As a follow-up to my post on the liberal blogosphere, Greenwald, and MSM attention, I’d like to note a little hypocrisy on Greenwald’s part. In my previous post, I pointed out Greenwald’s argument that conservative bloggers are responsible for “extremist rhetoric” and “hate-mongering” which are, as Greenwald implies, worse than anything found in the liberal [...]
His column is not all that surprising since Will made a similar argument on last Sunday’s “This Week.” What is surprising, however, is the utter disdain with which Will dispatches his criticism: The administration, justly criticized for its Iraq premises and their execution, is suddenly receiving some criticism so untethered from reality as to defy [...]
Glenn Greenwald is wondering why the liberal blogosphere gets a lot of negative attention from the MSM while the right-wing blogosphere is largely ignored. He points to “a long list” (8 examples) compiled by Media Matters that allegedly is indicative of the “violence-inciting rhetoric and hate-mongering which has become a staple of the right-wing blogosphere.” [...]
Via Breitbart/AP: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday the fighting in Lebanon would end when the two soldiers captured by Hezbollah guerrillas are freed, rocket attacks on Israel have stopped, and the Lebanese army is deployed along the border. Delivering an impassioned speech to parliament after six-days of fighting with guerrillas in Lebanon, Olmert [...]
I completely missed this over the weekend, but on Saturday LGF spotted the above photo by Joao Silva in The New York Times that ran with the caption, “A sniper loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr fires towards U.S. positions in the cemetery in Najaf, Iraq.” The caption also includes a comment by Michele [...]
That’s Bill Kristol’s take on what’s going on in Middle East right now. Why? Because unlike past conflicts, this isn’t an Arab-Israeli war but rather an Islamist-Israeli war and, therefore, one which the United States has an obligation to fight. It’s a persuasive argument, if not a completely accurate one: Why is this Arab-Israeli war [...]
Here’s video of John Bolton’s remarks today at the U.N. during a Special Public Session on Lebanon. Needless to say, Ambassador Bolton’s statement is well worth watching in full. Especially pleasing was Bolton’s unequivocal stance that the current situation in the Middle East is being fueled by Iran and Syria: “No reckoning with Hizballah will [...]
Well, it certainly isn’t a slow news day: The CIA officer whose identity was leaked to reporters sued Vice President Dick Cheney, his former top aide and presidential adviser Karl Rove on Thursday, accusing them and other White House officials of conspiring to destroy her career. In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court, Valerie [...]
Allah Pundit has all the details. UPDATE (James Joyner): AP has details: The White House has conditionally agreed to a court review of its controversial eavesdropping program, Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter said Thursday. Specter said President Bush has agreed to sign legislation that would authorize the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to review the [...]
In less than seven minutes, here’s a video summary of Larry King’s interview last night with Dan Rather. Rather talks about CBS, Memogate, and, well, Rather. Lots of Rather. But hey, I took one for the team and watched the whole thing so you didn’t have to. Enjoy… And by the way, I swear I [...]
“Disclosing classified programs that help protect us against terrorism is just dandy. But publishing cartoons that would be ‘perceived as a particularly deliberate insult’ by Muslims is beyond the pale. Coddling tender sensitivities is more important [to the New York Times] than protecting national security.” – Michael Barone, on The New York Times‘ disclosure of [...]
It’s not such a wonderful place: At a minimum, the Bush Administration should have thought carefully about Hamdan and interpreted it as narrowly as possible. Instead, Mr. England’s memo interprets the ruling in the broadest way possible, applying the standards of Common Article 3 to all “DoD orders, policies, directives, execute orders and doctrine.” As [...]
Via The Washington Post/AP: A bomb dropped by an Israeli warplane destroyed the Palestinian Foreign Ministry building in Gaza City early Thursday, witnesses said. The bomb collapsed the building and caused widespread destruction in the area. The Palestinian foreign minister is Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar. The Israeli military had no immediate comment. At least three [...]
The best laid plans… A group of political strategists who have spent years firing heavy artillery at each other came together at the Hay-Adams Hotel yesterday, put aside their weapons, decried the polarized state of debate in America and vowed a new approach to peaceful coexistence. Toward that end, they are launching a Web site [...]
Yesterday, Andrew Sullivan declared Fourth Circuit nominee Jim Haynes a “war criminal” that “was instrumental in the endorsement and enabling of torture” when he was “general counsel for president Bush.” Today, Scott Johnson has posted a rebuttal to Sullivan’s now typical hyperbole, with the aid of John Yoo, at Power Line. “Money quote” from Yoo: [...]
Fallen from grace. Photo credit: AP/Damian Dovarganes “…independent journalism.” In other words, no more darned interference from the pesky corporate brass that insists on fact-based reporting: Former CBS newsman Dan Rather says he’ll have complete editorial control over the content of the weekly newsmagazine he will kick off for Mark Cuban’s HDNet in October. “News [...]
Bob Novak–who unintentionally kicked off the political melodrama called Plamegate in a now infamous column–is set to reveal the double super secret extent of his involvement in the affair tomorrow in both his column and in interviews on FOX News on both Special Report with Brit Hume and Hannity & Colmes. Here’s what we know [...]
Devastation. Photo credit: AFP/Indranil Mukherjee At least 147 are dead in the attack which is said to emulate the modus operandi of Kashmiri “militants”: Eight bombs hit Bombay’s commuter rail network during rush hour Tuesday evening, killing at least 147 people and wounding more than 400 in what authorities called a well-coordinated terrorist attack. There [...]
Via Breitbart/AP: The Bush administration said Tuesday that all detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in U.S. military custody everywhere are entitled to protections under the Geneva Conventions. White House spokesman Tony Snow said the policy, outlined in a new Defense Department memo, reflects the recent 5-3 Supreme Court decision blocking military tribunals set [...]
I would say so: He may deny it, but Dan Rather is still hotter than a Laredo parking lot about CBS. Sharp-eyed viewers may have noticed that Rather was not identified on screen with his network of 44 years when he appeared on Anderson Cooper’s 360 Wednesday to discuss his recent trip to North Korea. [...]
