House Speaker Nancy Pelosi argued at a press conference Thursday that Republicans are focusing on how much she knew about CIA enhanced interrogation techniques in 2002 and 2003 as a "diversionary tactic to take the spotlight off those who conceived, developed and implemented these policies, which all of us long opposed."
In what has become a daily deluge of policy shifts, high-level pronouncements, and mindless personality cult trifles, it is understandable how such a small thing gets overlooked. So, for those who missed it, the Associated Press reported on Monday that the Obama Administration plans on spending another king’s ransom to prod officials to close failing schools and reopen them with new teachers, principals and facilities.
Even when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals does the right thing -- as it did Monday in denying convicted killer Kevin Cooper a hearing on yet another of his dubious appeals -- there is always a judge, or in this case five, on the court with an overly active imagination. And those judges don't help the court's results-oriented reputation.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is now claiming that intelligence officials misled her about the use of waterboarding when she was briefed in 2002. Previously, it was reported that she, as the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee at the time, had been told about waterboarding as an interrogation technique and had raised no objections to it -- a claim that obviously called into question the speaker's support for a "truth commission" to find out who (else) took that position.
Does anybody really believe that adding 50 million people to the public health-care rolls will not cost the government more money? About $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion more? At least.
We are barely into the two-year term for the current House of Representatives, but you can be sure that the 2010 contests have already begun. That is especially true for members of the House who are in two-party competitive districts. For them, it is a permanent campaign.
While the recession has rattled every rung of economic ladder, it has ravaged the bottom bars. Unemployment stands at just over 4 percent for college graduates but at nearly 15 percent for those lacking high-school diplomas. In poor black neighborhoods, it's around 30 percent and approaching Great Depression levels.
Uplifting as it was to see insurance executives, pharmaceutical manufacturers, hospital officials and doctors gather at the White House on May 11, pledging cooperation toward health care reform, nothing they said or did was inconsistent with precisely the opposite objective. According to the famed pollster who is helping Republicans in Congress to block reform, in fact, the first critical step toward stopping real change is pretending to support it.
Republicans and conservatives are trying to grapple with the Obama administration's $3,600,000,000,000 federal budget -- let's include the zeroes rather than use the trivializing abbreviation $3.6 trillion -- and the larger-than-previously-projected $1,841,000,000,000 budget deficit.
The president was funny at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Wanda Sykes, the host, was not.
Last Sunday, the British newspaper The Times published an interview with Jordan's King Abdullah II, in which the maturing king demonstrated a deft touch in putting pressure both on the new prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and on President Barack Obama.
Lost in last week’s barrage of Barack Obama “spending reform” coverage was a USA Today story that should send chills down the spine of any state official – or taxpaying citizen, for that matter.
It pains me to take Elizabeth Edwards to task for anything. She is suffering from terminal cancer and from assertions that her cheating husband fathered a child with a party girl. So my first instinct is to totally lay off. The only rap against her, it seems, is that she knew of an affair after John Edwards announced his presidential run and that she kept it secret.
Elizabeth Edwards always seemed like the yin -- a genuine human being -- to her smarmy husband's too-slick yang. No more. With the release of her memoir "Resilience" and self-flagellation book tour about her life with her cheating hubby, Mrs. E now seems about as believable as her husband. That is: Add the prefix "un."
Many years ago, political scientists came up with a theory that elites lead public opinion. And on some issues, they clearly do. But on some issues, they don't.
Doublespeak is alive as Democrats pull the strings in the White House and Congress 24 years after 1984. What do they mean when they engage in Democrat-speak?
"You have so much responsibility. It's just hard work all the time," said Bristol Palin, the new spokeswoman for the Candie's Foundation to prevent teen pregnancy, at an "Event to Prevent" town hall on Wednesday.
A camel, the old saying goes, is a horse made by committee. We don't want camel health reform. We don't want Washington lawmakers debating whether it should have one hump or two. We want a horse -- a sleek machine that performs with efficiency.
When Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act in 1986, proponents boasted that stiff mandatory minimum sentences would be bad news for major drug traffickers. Ha. Over time, drug kingpins learned that they had little to fear from the law -- especially if they were dealing crack cocaine.
We at the Crystal Ball must beg your forgiveness. With fewer than 1,300 days left until the next general election for President, we have failed to offer a single analysis of this historic upcoming battle. With humility, and hoping for mercy, we submit this first update on 2012.
