Terry Lakin, the army lieutenant colonel who refuses to deploy to Afghanistan on account of President Obama not really being an American and thus not authorized to make him will instead be deployed to Fort Leavenworth as a private. U.S. military officials tell NBC News that the U.S. Army will court martial a lieutenant colonel [...]

Eric Robinson, a Yale IR grad student and veteran of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, doesn’t give a hoot about what Sarah Palin had written on her hand at her Tea Party Convention speech. He is, however, concerned about what was on her wrist. I hadn’t noticed it until I watched MSNBC’s “Hardball” on [...]

In last night’s State of the Union speech, President Obama called out the Supreme Court’s decision overturning corporate and union spending limits, saying it “reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections.” Associate Justice Samuel Alito shook his head [...]

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 [...]

Former football star and ESPN analyst Craig James is strongly considering a bid for Kay Bailey Hutchison’s Senate seat. News 8 talked to James who confirmed he is interested in getting involved in Republican Party politics, and he’s not ruling out a run for office. James said in addition to his role as a college [...]

The controversy over the hacked climate change emails continues to gain steam, forcing the East Anglia team to reverse course and promise to release their raw data. The U-turn by the university follows a week of controversy after the emergence of hundreds of leaked emails, “stolen” by hackers and published online, triggered claims that the [...]

Google looked like a monkey after its algorithms had an unfortunate result for searches for photos of the First Lady. For most of the past week, when someone typed “Michelle Obama” in the popular search engine Google, one of the first images that came up was a picture of the American first lady altered to [...]

Newsweek‘s choice of cover art for its Sarah Palin issue has managed to generate controversy for three days now, finally prompting a response from the editors.  The salient passage: To note that choosing that particular photograph has ruffled a few feathers is perhaps an understatement. Palin denounced it—and us—to her million-strong Facebook following last night. [...]

Missouri native Rush Limbaugh has been dropped from membership in a group seeking to buy the St. Louis Rams and keep them in the city.  This speeds up the inevitable conclusion fo the NFL’s owners refusing to let the controversial pundit join their ranks. Limbaugh was to be a limited partner in a group headed [...]

A bipartisan NBC News poll shows that only 36 percent of Americans think “Barack Obama’s health care plan” is a “good idea” even though 51 percent approve of the job he is doing as president.  In the same survey, 43 percent favor “creating a public health care plan administered by the federal government that would [...]

Steve Benen heaps praise on ABC News‘ new Fact Check segment for “actually informing the public about a controversy in a fair and accurate way.” Kate Snow tackled the vile right-wing demagoguery on end-of-life care, and while she refrained from calling Palin and her ilk “liars,” she made it very clear that the accusations about [...]

I’ve refrained from rapid reaction to the controversy over Bill Clinton’s trip to North Korea to secure the release of two American journalists because I’ve been torn between competing maxims.  I agree with the critics who say rewarding despots who have seized American citizens is bad precedent, incentivizing illegal behavior.  Yet, Bob Manning is right, [...]

Huffington Post is catching some grief over a post by Anya Strzemien titled “Sarah Palin’s Toenails: What’s Painted On Them? (PHOTOS, POLL).”  Apparently, the Alaska governor and former Republican vice presidential nominee had some manner of decorative adornment on her nails which were in display in some orange strappy sandals: While some are taking HuffPo [...]

Ross Douthat, examining the controversy over late-term abortions that was brought back into the public spotlight with the murder of Dr. George Tiller, observes: The argument for unregulated abortion rests on the idea that where there are exceptions, there cannot be a rule. Because rape and incest can lead to pregnancy, because abortion can save [...]

Gays looking to get the Supreme Court’s help in being allowed to openly serve in the military have been rebuffed. The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a challenge to the Pentagon policy forbidding gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military, granting a request by the Obama administration.  The court said it will [...]

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 [...]

Commenter Bithead alerts me to a cross-blog debate that I somehow missed between Patrick Frey and Jeff Goldstein over Rush Limbaugh’s “I hope Obama fails” line at CPAC and the ensuing media frenzy.  Essentially, Patrick argues that conservatives should be more careful about what they say so as to avoid being distorted in the media [...]

The Old Gray Lady has another of the epic scoops that made them the Newspaper of Record. Ace correspondent Helene Cooper breaks the news in a piece of journalism titled “For Young President, Flecks of Gray.” Well, that didn’t take long. Just 44 days into the job, and President Obama is going gray. It happens [...]

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, [...]

The political financial crisis came to a head yesterday in Europe, with Hungary begging for help from its fellow EU members under the peril of a new “iron curtain” dividing the Continent and getting matter-of-factly rejected.  My New Atlanticist piece on the controversy, “Economic ‘Iron Curtain’ Dividing Europe?” concludes: The present crisis has had the [...]

Via memeorandum, I see that the Washington Post issued a preemptive apology for this cartoon accompanying Gene Weingarten‘s humor piece, “Monkey Business – The good news for men: Women love apes” in the Sunday supplement: The apology: The headline, illustration and text of “Below the Beltway,” a column in The Washington Post Magazine today, may [...]

The reality of Washington politics continues to clash with President Obama’s stated goal of a clean administration without ties to lobbyists.   Would-be CIA Director Leon Panetta is the latest example, WSJ’s Glenn Simspon reports. The White House’s nominee for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon Panetta, has earned more than $700,000 in speaking and [...]

A second Obama cabinet nominee is having tax troubles, Jake Tapper and Jonathan Karl report. ABC News has learned that the nomination of former Senator Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., to be President Obama’s secretary of health and human services has hit a traffic snarl on its way through the Senate Finance Committee.  The controversy [...]

Both Spencer Ackerman and  Matthew Yglesias, males both, are highly offended by the cover of the current The National Interest depicting the foreign policy triumvirate of Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, and Janet Napolitano as “Obama’s Angels,” claiming the implication that these accomplished women are somehow analogous to sexy female crimefighters is insulting to women. In [...]

President Obama hauled Chief Justice Roberts in to readminister the presidential oath to compensate for having screwed it up the first time. Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the oath to Obama on Wednesday night at the White House — a rare do-over. The surprise moment came in response to Tuesday’s much-noticed stumble, when Roberts got [...]

Mary Beth Buchanan, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, has announced that she will forgo the customary courtesy of handing in her resignation when President Obama takes offices, saying “It doesn’t serve justice for all the U.S. Attorneys to submit their resignations at one time.” A mild blogospheric uproar has ensued at [...]

The Alaska Personnel Board released a report last night clearing Sarah Palin of charges of wrongdoing in the so-called Troopergate matter. A new report just released — hours before the polls open on Election Day — exonerates Gov. Sarah Palin in the Troopergate controversy. The state Personnel Board-sanctioned investigation is the second into whether Palin [...]

Matt Yglesias observes, There’s I guess a convention in America that it’s impolite to talk about politics. That’s a convention that, I think, ultimately grows the level of ignorance in the country and advantages those who would take advantage of the public’s ignorance. People who are well-informed ought to discuss the issues with friends, family, [...]

I didn’t watch  the Olympic opening ceremonies because I tend to find them boring.  But there’s a little bit of controversy in that the big, giant phosphorescent footprints in the sky were (gasp) faked: As the ceremony got under way with a dramatic, drummed countdown, viewers watching at home and on giant screens inside the [...]

John Aravois is outraged that CNN is defending Glenn Beck’s use of the word “faggot” on its airwaves and urging a letter writing campaigns to the network’s major sponsors. I’d somehow missed the controversy. It turns out that Beck only used the word in the context of discussing the controversy over Grey’s Anatomy co-star Isaiah [...]