Online Journal of Politics and Foreign Affairs
This map resulting from a Gallup poll on party identification is making the rounds: The lede from Jeffrey Jone’s write-up: An analysis of Gallup Poll Daily tracking data from the first six months of 2009 finds Massachusetts to be the most Democratic state in the nation, along with the District of Columbia. Utah and Wyoming [...]
Ezra Klein and Steve Benen are recirculating this somewhat interesting chart on political polarization in America by political scientists Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal. Ezra argues that “this level of polarization makes it virtually impossible to govern in a system that is designed to foil majorities and require a constant three-fifths consensus. [...]
Glenn Greenwald rebuts those who think his strident attacks on Presidents Bush and Obama for abusing their power make his blog “an ideological wind tunnel” and that he is “oblivious to the practical considerations policymakers must contend with.” By the design of the Founders, most American political issues are driven by the vicissitudes of political realities, [...]
An amusing headline from NYT: “Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project.” I mean, obviously, Cheney is going to be linked. He’s everyone’s favorite evil mastermind. The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, [...]
Robert Farley cites testimony by SECDEF Bob Gates and JCS Chair Mike Mullen wherein they don’t dismiss entirely the idea that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter might be the last manned fighter the U.S. military ever builds. He thinks this a logical evolution: [T]here are currently jobs that manned warplanes can do that drones can’t [...]
The CIA has been lying to Congress about somethingoranother for years now, sources tell NYT. The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta, has told the House Intelligence Committee in closed-door testimony that the C.I.A. concealed “significant actions” from Congress from 2001 until late last month, seven Democratic committee members said. In a [...]
NYT wants you to know that Team Obama is sacrificing mightily for you. A feature titled “‘Family Friendly’ White House Is Less So for Aides” begins: When President Obama talks up the family-friendly vibe at the White House — the nightly family dinners, the flexibility to attend school presentations and join impromptu plunges in the [...]
The events in Honduras today have been some of the more dramatic in recent Latin American (and especially Central American) politics. The events are certainly of relevance to the democratic evolution of Honduras. Dave Schuler asked that I post a few comments given my academic focus on Latin America. If anyone is interested in the [...]
Via Twitter, James Poulos passes along an interesting piece by Conor Friedersdorf titled “Iran, Twitter, and The American Information Elite.” Basically, he noticed over the weekend that all of his blogger/journalist friends were intensely aware of what was happening in Iran whereas other well educated people he encountered hadn’t the slightest clue. I can’t help [...]
Josh Marshall has noted something peculiar in the recent media tour of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich: He seems to insist with members of the press that he still be referred to as “Speaker Gingrich.” And actually his website is speakergingrich.com. Not former Speaker Gingrich, Speaker Gingrich. And it goes beyond him. On [...]
Eugene Volokh takes on a pedantic emailer irritated at his use of “the lion’s share” in the way it has been used for the last several centuries rather than the original coinage by Aesop. Kevin Drum independently draws the same conclusions I do re: the reasonableness of networks’ complaints about Obama’s all-too-frequent prime time press [...]
Jeremy Lott’s attempted response to my response piece on “Ending the Vice Presidency” was, for some odd reason*, rejected altogether by my commenting system. Rather than pasting them into the comments of a post buried in the archives, I’ve done it below, with my original in blockquotes, followed by his retort in boldface, followed by [...]
Congress may finally close the “loophole” that allows people to avoid sales taxes by shopping online, the New York Post reports. While the issue has been bandied about since roughly the advent of the Internet as we know it 15 years ago, the dire straits state and local governments now face may force the issue. [...]
Andrew Sullivan is soliciting right-of-center comments on a report by Eric Lichtblau and James Risen that has mostly attracted left-of-center commenters thus far. Here’s the lede: The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress [...]
The editorial board at The Economist (which apparently considers itself a “newspaper” despite coming out weekly in magazine format) praises President Obama for having “already done some commendable things” in the foreign policy arena but charges that, domestically, “His performance has been weaker than those who endorsed his candidacy, including this newspaper, had hoped.” They [...]
President Obama says he’ll help GM and Chrysler but they’ll have to agree to some “pretty drastic changes.” “We will provide them some help,” Obama said. “I know that it is not popular to provide help to auto workers — or to auto companies. But my job is to measure the costs of allowing these [...]
Jack Balkin, the Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School, examines the Constitutionality of the Houseand Senate versions of the bills taxing bonuses of AIG and other companies that received government bailouts and pronounces them Constitutional. He quickly dismisses arguments under the Due Process, Takings, Ex Post Facto, and [...]
The quote of the day comes from an interview with David Kilcullen, an Australian anthropologist and advisor to Gen. Petraeus: Our biggest problem during the surge was a hostile American Congress. Couldn’t that be said of the financial crisis as well? It reminds me of Sam Clemens’s quip: It could probably be shown by facts [...]
A few weeks ago on OTB Radio, Dave Schuler predicted that Timothy Geithner would be out as Treasury Secretary by the end of the year. At the rate he’s going, he might not last to summer. It’s bad enough his every public appearance causes the Dow to plummet. Now, he’s been openly contradicted by his [...]
Members of Congress are flooding YouTube with scads of amateurish, unwatchable videos, The Telegraph‘s Mark Coleman reports. Two months ago, the website added an official Congress channel, inviting Democrats and Republicans to share quirky political messages with voters. But analysts say the move has been hampered by politicians’ inability to adapt to an online audience. [...]
A front page story in today’s WaPo by Michael Shear and Paul Kane, “Anger Over Firm Depletes Obama’s Political Capital,” proclaims, “President Obama’s apparent inability to block executive bonuses at insurance giant AIG has dealt a sharp blow to his young administration and is threatening to derail both public and congressional support for his ambitious [...]
Inspired by an OTB comment thread, Steven Taylor has written two essays questioning the use of the phrase “A Republic, Not a Democracy.” In Part I: Looking at Terms, he cites the political science literature to show that the terms are interchangable. Part II: Madison, Republican Government and Federalism, he argues that even the founders [...]
Eugene Volokh‘s readers wonder whether Senator Teddy Kennedy needs permission from Congress to accept a knighthood from England pursuant to article I, § 9 of the Constitution’s pronouncement that “no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, [...]
In “Upper-Income Taxpayers Look for Ways to Sidestep Obama Tax-Hike Plan,” ABC’s Emily Friedman reports on a disturbing trend: President Barack Obama’s tax proposal — which promises to increase taxes for those families with incomes of $250,000 or more — has some Americans brainstorming ways to decrease their pay, even if it’s just by a [...]
In a post Robert Prather dubs “A good primer on why I oppose DC statehood,” Matt Yglesias expresses his surprise that Democrats, who would demonstrably benefit from adding two more of their own to the Senate and another to the House, aren’t more wildly enthusiastic. But the striking thing is not how strong Republican opposition [...]
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 [...]
Now, this is rich: Timothy Geithner and the rest of the G7 ministers this morning warned against the pernicious effects of protectionism and pledged not to engage in that destructive practice. This, barely hours after the United States Congress passed a stimulus bill with a protectionist “Buy America” clause that President Obama is sure to [...]
Nate Silver has a reasonable post excoriating the lunatic fringe for their rabid opposition to various parts of the stimulus package despite the fact that virtually none of them have any clue what they’re talking about. His conclusion, too, sounds reasonable: What I’m asking you to do is to clear the playing field. This is [...]
Nate Silver argues that we are seeing “The Republican Death Spiral,” as House Republicans vote against issues ranging from the stimulus package to delaying digital TV to a bill encouraging more gender equity lawsuits. As I have opined before, the Democratic message will essentially be one of two things in 2010: Obama’s accomplished X, Y [...]
Timothy Geithner may be our new Treasury Secretary but that doesn’t mean bloggers can’t still make fun of him. Pejman Yousefzadeh, writing at something called The New Ledger, toasts “The Indispensable Mr. Geithner.” In urging Geithner’s confirmation, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid offered his entirely nonpartisan opinion that “This powerful economic storm demands strong, decisive [...]
The Supreme Court has ruled that kids should be able to access pornographic images on the Internet. Or, rather, the fact that a lot of parents don’t supervise their kids does not supersede the rights of adults to access said content. A long legal drive to shield children from sexually explicit material on the Web [...]
It’s official: Roland Burris is a United States Senator. Roland Burris took his place as Barack Obama’s successor in the Senate on Thursday, ending a standoff that embarrassed the president-elect and fellow Democrats who initially resisted the appointment by scandal-scarred Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. “I do,” Burris said with a grin as Vice President Dick [...]
The opening of the 111th Congress is, as always, accompanied by the typical minutiae of opening a new session of Congress. Most of these events aren’t too terribly interesting to the public, although the events surrounding the Minnesota and Illinois seats have raised the profile of the opening of the Senate. By contrast the opening [...]
While it may be galling for Rod Blagojevich to get to appoint someone to fill Barack Obama’s Senate seat while he’s under federal indictment for trying to sell said seat, Jane Hamsher argues that he’s perfectly entitled to do so. Then fifty members of the Democratic Caucus signed a letter saying they would oppose any [...]
Norm Coleman is likely out of a job, despite his election contest not being settled. Coleman’s first term officially expires at noon on Saturday, and he is locked in one of the closest Senate races in history, with Democrat Al Franken clinging to a 49-vote lead out of nearly 3 million votes cast. Since he [...]
Republicans may be in the midst of a losing at the polls but they continue to pick up seats in the House and Electoral College thanks to the decennial census. Texas will lose some influence in Washington when President George W. Bush leaves the White House, but a new study finds that the Lone Star [...]
George Will has a column in today’s WaPo, “Making Congress Moot,” making a point that I’ve been making about the Bush administration’s dubious use of TARP funds to bail out the auto companies. Congress’s marginalization was brutally underscored when, after lawmakers did not authorize $14 billion for General Motors and Chrysler, the executive branch said, [...]
The public opposes bailing out the Big 3 automakers by a wide margin because they believe the companies are responsible for their own failure and doubt that their going bankrupt will hurt the economy, a new WaPo-ABC poll finds. Overall, 55 percent of those polled oppose the latest plan that Chrysler, Ford and General Motors [...]
President Bush may ignore Congress and give the Big 3 the money they want, anyway. Worried about the weakening economy, the Bush administration said it was ready to step in and prevent the U.S. auto industry from collapsing after the Senate refused to pass a rescue bill endorsed by President George W. Bush and congressional [...]
Senate Republicans killed the bailout deal worked out between President Bush and congressional leaders that had previously passed the House. NYT: The failure to reach agreement on Capitol Hill raised a specter of financial collapse for General Motors and Chrysler, which say they may not be able to survive through this month. After Senate Republicans [...]
William “The Freezer” Jefferson, who has been under federal indictment for three years, narrowly lost a hurricane-delayed election yesterday to Republican Anh “Joseph” Cao. Nine-term Democratic Rep. William Jefferson, who has been battling scandals and a federal indictment for the past three years, lost his bid for re-election on Saturday. Republican challenger Anh “Joseph” Cao, [...]
Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss easily won his runoff against Democrat Jim Martin, 57.4 to 42.6 according to the current uncertified totals. NYT notes, The margin was far greater than the three percentage points that separated the two men in the Nov. 4 election, when neither won the required 50 percent. Many of the Democrats who [...]
A long profile in today’s WaPo extolling Bobby Jindal as the Republican Party’s best hope to regain the White House may constitute the unofficial start of Campaign 2012. It’s about time. Last weekend, 18 days after Barack Obama decisively defeated their candidate for president, a mostly Republican crowd of self-described conservatives received their first introduction [...]
Aside from the issue of the wisdom of appointing Hillary Clinton Secretary of State, which I’ve discussed previously, there’s also the issue of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which states, “No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the [...]
Congress has passed the bailout now that the three page bill has expanded in size a hundredfold and it has been larded with some good old pork: With the economy on the brink and elections looming, Congress approved an unprecedented $700 billion government bailout of the battered financial industry on Friday and sent it to [...]
Nate Silver compares the list of Representatives voting No on yesterday’s bailout bill with the list of swing districts — that is, those where the re-election of the incumbent is seriously in doubt — and finds a surprisingly strong correlation. VULNERABLE GOP = 3 YEAS, 17 NAYS (15%) OTHER GOP = 62 YEAS, 116 NAYS [...]
President Bush’s address to the nation last night on the financial crisis, which reminded me of a hostage tape because the delivery was so stiff, and its announcement that he’s bringing presidential contenders John McCain and Barack Obama to the White House along with Congressional leadership to hammer out an agreement, seems to have buoyed [...]
Nate Silver has outlined the scenarios by which “the country’s worst nightmare” — but political pundits’ dream — of an Electoral College tie could take place. He notes that, as we get closer to the election without either candidate pulling away, the odds get greater. The far most likely 269-269 scenario: “Barack Obama wins the [...]
The Outrage of the Day comes to us from Josh Marshall, a pretty even keeled fellow. John McCain said this to reporters. “I believe that either today or tomorrow — and I’m not privy to his schedule — Sen. Obama will be landing in Iraq with some other senators” who make up a congressional delegation, [...]