The 87-Year-Old's Case for Gay Marriage
A heterosexual Republican veteran's pro-gay-marriage speech goes viral More »
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Has the U.S. Passed Peak Car?
A heterosexual Republican veteran's pro-gay-marriage speech goes viral More »
Sen. Lamar Alexander compares Obama to Nixon when it comes to Fox More »
With more opinion-driven news outlets, the Fox problem won't go away for Obama or his successors More »
If the White House can talk to Iran and North Korea, surely it can talk to Fox More »
It's wrong to put too much stock in any poll of the moment or to get caught up in Washington's kerfuffle du jour. But the new Washington Post/ABC poll really is worth noting for the way it would seem to stand conventional wisdom on its head. 57 percent of respondents support a public option. More than half--51 percent to be precise--want it passed and don't care if it gets a single Republican vote. Only 20 percent of respondents identified themselves as Republicans… More »
If you haven't been reading David Rohde's account of being held by the Taliban, you really should. It comes highly recommended by my colleagues Jeffrey Goldberg and James "Editor of the Year" Bennet, who found it particularly uplifting after the balloon boy fiasco. I must say I began to read it more out of duty than desire. I've read accounts of hostages before--FARC in Columbia, Hezbollah in Iran, crazy lone kidnappers--and I didn't really expect this to be more… More »
Nevada Senator John Ensign's fundraising has collapsed. After more details emerged in The New York Times about how he tried to bury an affair with a staffer and find work for her husband, he's seen his campaign fundraising fall to just $33,000 last quarter, down from almost 10 times that during the previous period, according to new campaign finance reports that Politico examined. So just to keep track of the sexually troubled: Mark Sanford is still governor of… More »
My colleague, James Fallows, made an excellent point about The Washington Post's op-ed lamenting that the Nobel peace prize didn't go to the martyred Iranian protestor. He noted that the award can't be given posthumously and thus never went to Gandhi and others who have been overlooked--a point that could have been checked rather easily. More Post weirdness today.A different standard should probably apply to the opinion pieces. Authors should be given more latitude… More »
The Baucus health care plan could stand to get leaner, according to fiscal hawks More »
I've laughed at the jokes this morning: This is what he gets for bombing the moon? Is he going to give the money to ACORN? Next year, Physics Nobel. And I was pretty stunned that he won. But I stick with original assessment that this is good for the president and that the right will look stupid if they keep slamming him. The ungracious condemnation from RNC Chairman Michael Steele contrasted with the gracious remarks of Tim Pawlenty and other Republicans. The… More »
Will it matter at home? The stunning news that Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize is bound to enhance his global reputation, but will it give him more juice domestically? I don't claim to know the answer but a few thoughts:It Can't Hurt. By the end of the day, I'm sure Limbaugh and Hannity and the right chorus will have made fun of Obama for the win, cited it as proof of his European Socialist tendencies. But are many Americans going to feel offended that he's… More »
I've written in the past about the idiocy of our embargo with Cuba. This isn't a novel or brave position, but it is, unfortunately, still American policy even if Barack Obama hinted at a thaw during the presidential campaign. His proposals would only have taken us back to the still-draconian restrictions of the 1990s, but that was better than nothing. Over at The Washington Note, Steve Clemons reminds us today that Ronald Reagan's Secretary of State George Shultz… More »
I love my former boss and current colleague, Andrew Sullivan. But I think he makes a mistake today in his otherwise thoughtful account of his publishing Betsy McCaughey's 1994 piece on the Clinton health plan. He concludes the piece by saying: "There's one reason the Clinton healthcare bill failed and it isn't Betsy McCaughey. It's Hillary Clinton." But this is reductionist in the extreme. Clinton made mistakes as she's admitted. But the difficulty that President… More »
The Congressional Budget Office is supposed to come out with its scoring today of the Senate Finance Committee's health care measure. If it doesn't say the bill is deficit neutral, then the chairman, Max Baucus, and the White House have a big problem. Some conservative Dems could be all aflutter and this morning on Fox News, Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the committee, talked about starting all over again. I doubt that, but this is one of those… More »
When will Obama get around to Don't Ask, Don't Tell and NAFTA? More »
Anthony Cordesman, the acclaimed military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has a new book out on Iranian weapons of mass destruction. Needless to say, this is not a happy picture, and a lot of the book's conclusions are what you'd expect. The prospect of Iran having nukes would likely set off a nuclear race in surrounding countries. The prospect of Iran putting nukes in the hands of terrorists is a possibility, although we've heard this… More »
I saw U2 last night at FedEx field near Washington, D.C. You had to be awed by the spectacle of the show, the 360 degree video screen and stage set, dubbed the claw, the 90,000 fans singing along but it was a reminder again, too, that Bono may be as good a politiician as we've ever seen. Politics for rock bands is either predictible or treacherous. When Michael Stipe of R.E.M. wears an Obama button at a concert, it's all appreciated by his fans. When the Dixie… More »
