I know…it sounds like the start of a joke, but obviously it’s no laughing matter. Reporter Jeff Stein has been asking US officials if they know what the two groups stand for and what they want. The answers he’s been getting are not encouraging. From the NY Times: FOR the past several months, I’ve been [...]

It’s all but official. James Baker’s “Iraq Study Group” is going to undermine Bush’s strategy… While it weighs alternatives, the 10-member commission headed by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III has agreed on one principle. “It’s not going to be ‘stay the course,’ ” one participant said. “The bottom line is, [current U.S. [...]

This is truly horrific stuff, but sadly commonplace among dictatorships: The North Korean regime’s obsession with racial purity has led to the killing of disabled infants and forced abortions for women suspected of conceiving their babies by Chinese fathers, according to a growing body of testimony from defectors. The latest description of Kim Jong-il’s policy [...]

They’re focusing on the really important races and abandoning the rest. From the NY Times: Republicans are now pinning their hopes of holding the Senate on three states â€â€? Missouri, Tennessee and, with Ohio off the table, probably Virginia â€â€? while trying to hold on to the House by pouring money into districts where Republicans [...]

An editorial in the Christian Science Monitor puts the problem with the Democrats in clear and concise words. The party has yet to earn our trust. America is not a country of intellectual voters. We do not calculate our ballots on the basis of financial or class interests. Sure, advocacy groups back candidates by virtue [...]

Financial, not moral. Think Progress reported it a month ago, but nothing came of it. But they clearly were on to something. Air America said it only recently decided to file after negotiations with a key financial backer fell through, but it’s been obvious they were having money troubles for a long time. They’re going [...]

I’m not that interested in the “who’s to blame” question over North Korea. It’s a fair topic, but as with many such questions it’s very difficult to compare the actions of different presidents, who faced differing circumstances at differing times. It often comes down to dreaming up alternate history — asserting that the world would [...]

I guess we didn’t learn from history, so we’re doomed to repeat it. From ABC: The allegations come from a Marine Corps sergeant, 23-year-old Heather Cerveny, who spent a week at the base in late September as a legal aide to a military lawyer representing detainees. [...] “One sailor specifically said, ‘I took the detainee [...]

I’ve heard a few people suggest that Warner is lying when he said he wanted to basically spend more time with his family instead of try to win the Presidency. Time has a few thoughts on this cynical POV: Perhaps there’s a hidden truth that belies Warner’s simple explanation a skeleton in a closet that [...]

That’s what John B. Judis, writing in The New Republic, thinks John McCain is. His political philosophy places him closer to Theodore Roosevelt than to his other idols, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan: more noblesse oblige than libertarian populism or business conservatism. He says he favors “a minimum of government regulation in our lives,” but [...]

Looks like Britain has at least one General that thinks Iraq is going downhill too. The difference between him and the U.S. Generals who vocally concur though is he’s not retired and he’s now in charge of the entire British army. From the BBC: General seeks UK Iraq withdrawal General Sir Richard Dannatt the head [...]

Yeah, right. Either that’s standard chintzy cover for an under-the-table deal with Hillary (a deal cozy?), or it’s true and therefore he’s the man we would have wanted for president: the man sane enough not to want to run for president. The Great American Catch-22. I have never shared other centrists’ enthusiasm for Warner. He [...]

First this: Then some explanation from Gallup: The Democrats made gains across all groups in the October poll compared to the averages in previous months. But the Democratic gain (or Republican loss depending on how one looks at it) is more significant among religious whites than among the other two groups. Religious whites went from [...]

A new book, “Tempting Faithâ€Â? by David Kuo, is about to come out…and it’s bad news for Bush. Really bad news. Why? Well, this has the potential to be the most damning of all political portraits about the administration to the bookstores this campaign season because it paints Bush and his staff as mere opportunists [...]

For now it seems to be coming in the form of Joe Lieberman, who’s pulling away from left-wing blogosphere favorite Ned Lamont. The NY Times has more: Since the primary, Mr. Lieberman has focused on a message of bipartisanship, often invoking the name of Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican popular across party lines. He [...]

And I certainly don’t blame him, especially since he’s not willing to make the necessary sacrifices that anybody who’s going to run for President need to make. From National Journal: This past weekend, my family and I went to Connecticut to celebrate my Dad’s 81st birthday, and then we took my oldest daughter Madison to [...]

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We may have a prospective new Democratic candidate for my Hall of Shame. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid collected a $1.1 million windfall on a Las Vegas land sale even though he hadn’t personally owned the property for three years, property deeds show. In the process, Reid did not disclose to Congress an earlier sale [...]

NPR had an interesting take on the evolving cashless society this morning, telling the story of a small cafe in Washington, D.C. that has stopped taking cash (you’ll have to click on their audio link to hear the story). The downside? Occasionally upset customers. The upside? No need to make change, no need to worry [...]

Apparently it was the plane of Yankee’s pitcher, Corey Lidle. From NY Times: Corey Lidle, a pitcher for the New York Yankees, was killed today when his small private plane crashed into a residential high-rise building on New York City’s Upper East Side, igniting several apartments before pieces of the aircraft crashed to the ground, [...]