The deficit explosion under the Obama administration is a common complaint by fiscal conservatives, and is often represented with a graph such as this one, courtesy of the libertarian think-tank, Cato.org: However, as Cato points out, the fiscal year starts in October of each year, and the budget for 2009 was signed into law by [...]

Greg Craig, White House Counsel, has tendered his resignation (PDF file), in what The Washington Post calls the administration’s highest level shake up: The departure comes after months of dissatisfaction over Craig’s management of Guantanamo policy and other matters and less than a month after officials said Craig was no longer guiding the effort to [...]

The Obama administration is reacting to recent events: Item 1: The public feud with Fox News ended with the premature departure of Communications Director Anita Dunn and the follow-up announcement that President Obama will grant an interview with Fox News White House correspondent Major Garrett. Evidently he is now considered a “real journalist”. As the [...]

News Headlines for Independent Voters 10/29/09 As we head to Election Day 2009, everyone is talking about the Yankees and the Phillies. And a few people are talking about the Mayoral race in NYC, where independent candidate Mike Bloomberg is poised to become the first independent mayor of New York, running on the Independence Party [...]

Independent voters are at the center (though not necessarily centr-IST!) of the current firestorm going on in the country over healthcare, socialism, war, and nearly every other issue around. I was reading Jonathan Weisman’s article in the WSJ yesterday (see below) and was struck by some of the questions that the NBC/WSJ poll asked voters. [...]

INDEPENDENT VOTERS Coverage of independent voters and health care reform from a more progressive viewpoint: Wisconsin: Health Care Vital Issue (By Cecily Wu, CQ Politics) Thus, enactment of health care legislation that can draw solid public support could enable Kagen to maintain the backing of independent voters, who Scattergood said comprise upwards of 20 percent [...]

INDEPENDENT VOTERS More from Quinnipiac and Field polls on independent voters’ views Deficit a Growing Concern for Public — and White House (By GERALD F. SEIB, Wall Street Journal) When Mr. Hart, the Democratic pollster, conducted a focus-group discussion with a dozen independent voters in Maryland a few days ago, he drew this conclusion: “These [...]

INDEPENDENT VOTERS Wherever independents fall on the supposed political “spectrum”, if they ARE on the political “spectrum”, (i.e. they do exist!) Many MSM publishers seek increasing irrelevance if they don’t see the direction that the American people are headed…. While it’s clear that independents are “all over the map” on social issues, they increasingly come [...]

INDEPENDENT VOTERS If you want to call it “fickle” to leave the two-party system behind in favor creating a new political culture, call me fickle! 2010: Fight for fickle kids (By: Eamon Javers, Politico) Stanford University political science professor Morris Fiorina is convinced that both political parties haven’t yet grasped the scale of the change [...]

INDEPENDENT VOTERS Continued look at who independent voters are/are not and Obama’s poll numbers… A reminder: Most ‘independent’ voters aren’t (LA Times/Top of the Ticket) Sick and Tired of Republicans and Democrats? New Parties Say They Offer Alternatives (By James King, Phoenix News Times) Pa.’s Sestak plans Tuesday announcement (USA Today) Poll: Pennsylvania ranks 20th [...]

Not a whole lot of good has come the way to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) these days. The only organization I can think of that gets more right wing scorn has been ACORN, who I think mostly get picked on because they don’t fight back. Another ally, Health Care for America Now (HCAN), [...]

In my last post I detailed some of the roadblocks that have kept the Democratic leadership in Washington from finding a way to pass a major health care reform bill with a public option. They’ve whittled the cost of the bill down a few hundred billion dollars by negotiating concessions from drug companies and hospitals, [...]

The Obama administration has managed to collect some concessions from hospital groups and drug companies, to the tune of over $200 billion in savings over ten years. This is nothing to sneeze at, but it still leaves the lion’s share of the proposed legislation searching for funding. Setting a requirement for employers to pay a [...]

Thanks to Justin and company for welcoming me on here as a regular contributor. I will be posting on a number of issues, but one area you can expect that I will regularly be tracking is technology related developments and how they interact with the political world and policy. I also live less than ten [...]

2008 Senator Lindsey Graham seems to disagree with 2009 Lindsey Graham. This is Mike Fritz and David Murdock from ANP. Senator Lindsey Graham was a passionate critic of the Bush Justice attorneys during this past summer’s Armed Services Committee hearings on interrogation. Lately, however, Graham seems to have had second thoughts on the matter. At [...]

Thanks to John, I am pointed to these two rather strange arguments in favor of the Drug War and against libertarian use of statistics on race against the Drug War from Jonah Goldberg. John does a pretty good job explaining why Goldberg’s arguments are so strange. The only thing I’d really add is that the [...]

At the center of President Obama’s overhaul strategy for Wall Street are the “stress tests” which will be applied to all financial institutions. But how accurate will the test results be? That will depend on whether the treasury takes off-balance-sheet assets into account, experts say. This is Danielle Ivory, reporting from the American News Project [...]

In the wake of the Justice Department’s decision to drop charges against former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, Alaska’s Governor is joining those making a rather absurd call: Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) called on Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska ) Thursday to step down from his seat and run in a special election in the wake of [...]

Since Nick raised the issue of the Constitutionality of Congresses efforts to recoup the bonuses paid to AIG executives, I figured it would be worthwhile to share this post I wrote yesterday on my personal blog: The hyperbolic rage against the AIG bonuses has finally transformed itself into legislation: While American International Group Inc.’s chief [...]

John Derbyshire has a great article in the current issue of The American Conservative discussing the impact of conservative talk radio on conservatism as a whole: [A]re there some downsides to conservative talk radio? Taking the conservative project as a whole—limited government, fiscal prudence, equality under law, personal liberty, patriotism, realism abroad—has talk radio helped [...]