Dave, James, and Alex all did an excellent job this morning of laying out the various problems with America’s current strategy in Afghanistan. I don’t have much to add to their points, but I do think its worth taking note of a new Rasmussen poll that shows that public support for the Afghan War is [...]

Honestly, I don’t know what to add to Dave’s and James’ takes on the current situation in Afghanistan. Like James, I supported the initial invasion of Afghanistan and was also surprised at how quickly the Taliban fell and al-Qaeda dispersed. But now, eight and a half years later, I too have to question the wisdom [...]

Yesterday President Obama addressed the graduating cadets at West Point. The full transcript is here. As was proper and should have been expected, Afghanistan occupied a prominent place in the speech: This is the ninth consecutive commencement that has taken place at West Point with our nation at war. This time of war began in [...]

It may turn out to be little more than a throw-away line, but this comment from the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement is certain to raise eyebrows: Echoing comments by President Barack Obama and others in the administration, Morton said that Arizona’s new law targeting illegal immigration is not “good government.” The law makes [...]

According to The Politico, President Obama plans to counter the rising Republican tide by campaigning against a man who hasn’t held elective office for nearly a year and a half: President Barack Obama is trying to ride the wave of anti-incumbency by taking on an unpopular politician steeped in the partisan ways of Washington. It [...]

Speaking in Japan, Secretary of State Clinton joined the small chorus of voices condemning North Korea for sinking a South Korean warship: TOKYO — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton harshly condemned North Korea on Friday for a deadly torpedo attack on a South Korean Navy warship last March, and promised to marshal an international [...]

A Birmingham, Alabama area geometry teacher used the unfortunate example of shooting the president to illustrate the issue of angles, prompting a Secret Service investigation. “We did not find a credible threat,” said Roy Sex­ton, special agent in charge of Birmingham’s Secret Service office. “As far as the Secret Service is concerned, we looked into [...]

Newt Gingrich tells The Politico that he believes President Obama will lose in 2012, and hinted that he may be running himself: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich gives President Barack Obama only a 20 percent chance of being reelected — and says he might be the one to give Obama the boot. Gingrich, who this [...]

A former nuclear submarine officer is suggesting what seems at first glance like a rather unorthodox solution to the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico: For more than 100 years, explosives have been used to break the necks of runaway oil wells, snapping the long, narrow columns and sealing them shut with tons [...]

Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Newt Gingrich became the latest politician to compare the Obama Administration to the Nazis: Wallace: You also write this on the screen: “The secular socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did.” Mr. Speaker, respectfully, isn’t that wildly over the [...]

Responding to the fact that, by nominating Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, Barack Obama has now gone two-for-two in appointing women to the High Court — and, assuming she’s confirmed, would triple the number of female Justices in a matter of months — NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez tweets, “Just wondering: are men allowed to [...]

Solicitor General Elena Kagan, considered the frontrunner to replace Justice John Paul Stevens since his retirement announcement, will be President Obama’s choice, it is being widely reported. On paper, she would appear to be a slam dunk.   She was confirmed by the Senate to her present position just last year by a 61 to 31 [...]

For a whole variety of reasons, I’m a strong believer in the adherence to the plain meaning of the U.S. Constitution and believe that it should be amended rather than circumvented when the realities of today conflict with those of 1789.   Still, there are those who make a fetish of the wisdom of the Framers [...]

The National Enquirer, the folks who gave us the John Edwards-Reille Hunter story, have a new Breaking News Exclusive OBAMA CHEATING SCANDAL. PRESIDENT OBAMA has been caught in a shocking cheating scandal after being caught in a Washington, DC Hotel with a former campaign aide, sources say. And now, a hush-hush security video that shows [...]

President Obama’s unscripted line, “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money” continues to draw scorn and derision. Here’s the video: The text: We’re not, we’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that’s fairly earned. I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money. [...]

Arizona’s ill conceived illegal alien crackdown, which is so obviously overbroad as to have drawn concern from Tom Tancredo, Marco Rubio, Karl Rove, Jeb Bush, Lindsey Graham and Joe Scarborough, has drawn one unlikely defender: George Will. It is passing strange for federal officials, including the president, to accuse Arizona of irresponsibility while the federal [...]

Stats guru Nate Silver has “compiled all polls conducted since July of last year that test Obama against a Republican opponent” using “the Real Clear Politics rule of only using one poll from each firm for each matchup (the most recent).” He then adjusts for “house effects,” the tendency of particular polls to be biased [...]

In yet another silly poll sampling attitudes toward a mythical presidential matchup two years away, Rasmassen finds that Ron Paul is in a dead heat with President Barack Obama. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of likely voters finds Obama with 42% support and Paul with 41% of the vote. Eleven percent (11%) prefer [...]

Neil Armstrong has led a pretty quiet life since becoming the first man to set foot on the moon four decades ago.  But he’s going public with his displeasure over President Obama’s rumored plan to cancel the next generation space vehicle. The first man to walk on the moon blasted President Barack Obama’s decision to [...]

Were a presidential election being held today, President Barack Obama would be former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin 55 to 42, a new CNN poll shows. President Barack Obama’s job approval may have slid — 51 percent in a new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey, 46 today in the Gallup daily track, 45 yesterday. But given a [...]

Speculating on Supreme Court appointments is a great parlor game and throwing the “pick a politician” wildcard into the game is especially fun. Ezra Klein jumps in with both feet: I’ve always been partial to the idea of seeing Hillary Clinton appointed to the Supreme Court. She’s got a law degree, of course. She’s practiced [...]

Sarah Palin, who was governor of Alaska for a few months before launching a career as a talk show host, objects to President Obama’s new nuclear policy thusly: Now, the president, with all the vast nuclear experience that he acquired as a community organizer, as a part-time senator, and as a full-time candidate, all that [...]

Via Radley Balko, it appears that former Powell aide Colonel Lawrence Wilkinson has singed what I assume to be a sworn affidavit to the effect that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were aware that innocent people had been detained at Guantanamo Bay and tried to cover it up. The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a [...]

In an interview with Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin offered up this criticism of Obama’s continuity with America’s policy of reducing its nuclear arsenal: “No administration in America’s history would, I think, ever have considered such a step that we just found out President Obama is supporting today. It’s kinda like getting out there on a [...]

It’s official: John Paul Stevens has handed in his resignation. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, the court’s oldest member and leader of its liberal bloc, is retiring. President Barack Obama now has his second high court opening to fill. Stevens said Friday he will step down when the court finishes its work for the [...]

In answer to the question, “Why has Barack Obama treated Netanyahu so ‘rudely’?”, Glenn Reynolds responds: Possibly Obama just hates Israel and hates Jews. That’s plausible — certainly nothing in his actions suggests otherwise, really. This is absolutely absurd. First of all, I wouldn’t characterize the President of the United States not completely kowtowing to [...]

So, the health care reform was passed last night owing to a bizarre compromise is which Bart Stupak persuaded President Obama to issue a meaningless executive order proclaiming that the law passed by both Houses of Congress says what Stupak has spent months pointing out it doesn’t say. The basic facts, from NYT: With the [...]

Reports that General David Petraeus is giving a speech at Saint Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics on March 24 is ginning up speculation that he’s running for president. Mark Ambinder: News that Gen. David Petraeus is venturing out of his Centcom comfort zone late this month to the state of New Hampshire is [...]

Dana Carvey debuts his Obama impression on “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno: The bit about having to explain to the audience who Jimmy Stewart and Ronald Reagan were is amusing as well. And it’s not just affect: It’s true.  Back in my teaching days, one of the things I always tried to remind myself [...]

Professional iconoclast Stanley Fish has been predicting for a while that people would come to miss George W. Bush once the heated controversies of the moment had faded and the big picture emerged. Now, he sees evidence that he was right. A perhaps more substantial sign incorporates a sign famous (or infamous) in the Bush [...]

When President Obama invited Republican Congressional leaders to join him for a televised health care summit, they reasonably feared it was “a trap” in which the contrast between the contrast between a smooth talking Commander-in-Chief and Podunk legislators would make them look small.   Clearly, Obama intended it as a PR gambit that would showcase him [...]

In an EXCLUSIVE, Politico‘s crack staff has learned that Barack Obama is running for president in 2012. President Barack Obama’s top advisers are quietly laying the groundwork for the 2012 reelection campaign, which is likely to be run out of Chicago and managed by White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina, according to Democrats [...]

In something of a reversal of recent statements, the senior leadership of the Army and Air Force warned Congress about moving too fast to end the ban on gays serving openly. Top Army and Air Force officers said Tuesday they would be reluctant to overturn a 17-year policy that prohibits gays from serving openly in [...]

So far, I’ve heard three speakers at CPAC, plus various introducers and emcees.  Let’s just say that teleprompter-related jokes are already getting old. I get the desire to make fun of Barack Obama.  Really, I do.  It’s what one does at a convention of an opposition political movement.  Especially one where the audience skews young. [...]

The AP is reporting that the Obama Administration is set to announce that it will provide loan guarantees for new American nuclear power plants. The Obama administration’s planned loan guarantee to build the first nuclear power plant in the U.S in almost three decades is part of a broad shift in energy strategy to lessen [...]

Steve Chapman runs down Obama’s record on gun control: On the list of issues for which Obama is willing to put himself on the line, gun control ranks somewhere below free trade with Uzbekistan. So he has proposed nothing in the way of new federal restrictions on firearms. Even the “assault weapons” ban signed by [...]

Professor Amy Bishop has been charged with three counts of murder. UAH professor Dr. Amy Bishop has been charged with murder in connection with a deadly shooting that killed three people and injured three more Friday afternoon. Huntsville police spokesman Sgt. Mark Roberts said Bishop was charged Saturday morning with one count of capital murder. [...]

Alabama’s Richard Shelby has placed a hold on all nominations until a 2008 earmark for Redstone Arsenal is released. The Mobile Press-Register: Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, is blocking Senate action on executive branch nominations, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said this afternoon in an e-mail. In response to a question from [...]

Matthew Yglesias reports that the Obama Administration is proposing a Discretionary Spending Freeze from 2011-2013. On an exciting phone call with progressive internet writers earlier this evening, a senior administration official outlined the Obama administration’s plan to call for a freeze in non-security discretionary spending spending starting with the Fiscal Year 2011 budget. Described as [...]

The 65 percentage-point gap between Democrats’ (88%) and Republicans’ (23%) average job approval ratings for Barack Obama is easily the largest for any president in his first year in office, greatly exceeding the prior high of 52 points for Bill Clinton. So begins Jeffrey Jones‘ introduction of a new Gallup poll.  Here’s the graphic illustration: [...]

In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court today ruled that the right of corporations to engage in political speech, including campaign and issue advertising,  is protected by the First Amendment. AP, “Justices Block Key Part of Campaign Law” The Supreme Court threw out a 63-year-old law designed to restrain the influence of big business and [...]

Various sources are reporting that after vociferous labor reaction against taxing “Cadillac health plans”, the White House and labor groups have apparently reached a deal whereby members of labor unions who would be affected by the tax will have a temporary exemption. Under the terms of the proposed deal, the threshold for families would be [...]

Barack Obama’s approval ratings are now firmly below 50 percent, with the CBS poll as the latest data point: President Obama’s job approval rating has fallen to 46 percent, according to a new CBS News poll. That rating is Mr. Obama’s lowest yet in CBS News polling, and the poll marks the first time his [...]

A curious piece by Politico’s Ben Smith, “Game over: The Clintons stand alone,” begins: A new book is out with a highly critical but unsourced portrait of Hillary Clinton. This familiar occurrence — it’s happened too many times to count over the years — has usually been greeted with an equally familiar response: A fast [...]

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is in trouble. Among the juicy revelations in the highly touted 2008 tell-all by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin is that Reid made some borderline racist comments about then-candidate and Senate colleague Barack Obama. He was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace [...]

The president and his key national security advisors were warned about a possible terrorist attack just three days before the failed Detroit plot, Mark Hosenball reports for Newsweek. President Barack Obama received a high-level briefing only three days before Christmas about possible holiday-period terrorist threats against the US, Newsweek has learned. The briefing was centered [...]

Two days after a Nigerian al Qaeda operative tried to blow up Northwest Flight 253 as it landed in Detroit, we had an eerie repeat.  Another Nigerian on the exact same flight locked himself in the lavatory and refused to come out.  Thankfully, it was a case of the trots, not a terrorist plot. The [...]

George W. Bush left office as one of the most despised presidents in American history.  Could Barack Obama actually be less popular? Rasmussen says so: “The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 25% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. [...]

The Washington Post has been having one of those silly polls the last several days, asking “Which of these nominees had the greatest influence in shaping the past decade, either by changing how we live or by making the greatest impact on our culture?” Kevin Drum can’t believe they didn’t include Alan Greenspan, which is [...]

I agree with Josh Marshall that the parallels between 1994, when the Republicans shocked the world by taking over both Houses of Congress two years into the presidency of a charismatic Democrat, and next year are “significantly overstated.”   He’s right, I think, that “The main cause of the Dems 1994 rout was structural.” He argues, [...]