[ Posted Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 – 16:26 UTC ]
It seems these days, Republicans just can't attempt to do anything right without landing themselves in hot water as a result. As a result, they now face a no-win situation politically and racially. The forces of moderation (drastically diminished in the party though they may be) are up against the hardline conservatives. Add racial politics to this mix, and it's easy to see how Republicans have wound up between a rock and a hard place. And although it may sound like it, I'm not talking about Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court.
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[ Posted Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 – 16:07 UTC ]
Which, in the roundest of possible ways, brings us to President Obama's first nominee for the Supreme Court. But before we actually get there, we must detour 400 years to William Shakespeare, for the original quote. Macbeth, just after hearing his wife is dead (and just before his world's foundations crumble by being told that Birnam wood was indeed coming to Dunsinane), utters the following:
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[ Posted Friday, May 22nd, 2009 – 17:38 UTC ]
President Obama and the congressional Democrats just had their first spat. While others have more-than-adequately delved into the fracas of Obama's national security speech and Harry Reid stripping out funding to close Guantanamo, what I was struck by this week was how Obama is better defining his character as president. This is going to be important later this year, when energy plans and health care reform legislation become protracted fights in Congress.
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[ Posted Thursday, May 21st, 2009 – 16:27 UTC ]
While President Obama's speech on national security today is getting most of the attention, another important foreign policy issue awaits, which Obama has so far been untested on as president. On the campaign trail, Obama's statements on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were inconsistent, to say the least. He spoke against it in battleground states like Ohio, but he also reportedly sent an aide to reassure the Canadians that when Obama said he would "renegotiate NAFTA," he really didn't mean it. So it's always been somewhat of an open question what Obama would do on free trade issues as president. We may be about to find out.
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[ Posted Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 – 17:18 UTC ]
When I wrote yesterday's column ("What, Exactly, Was Pelosi Supposed To Do?") I expected a certain amount of debate, but I had no idea what direction it would take (which is the whole fun of the blogosphere). To be perfectly honest, I thought some Pelosi defenders would take me to task for being too hard on her.
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[ Posted Monday, May 18th, 2009 – 16:37 UTC ]
Listening to the news over the past week, it would be easy to come to the conclusion that Nancy Pelosi was personally responsible for torturing prisoners. Because that's how the storyline seemed, if you had just beamed in from Mars and didn't know anything else about the debate on prisoner interrogation. The problem is, we have not just arrived on this planet, and Nancy Pelosi will ultimately wind up in the history books with a footnote (if that) in the description of what took place under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. But her critics in the past few days have remarkably failed to answer a very basic question (not that the media is really asking, but maybe they'll get around to it) -- what, exactly, was Nancy Pelosi supposed to do?
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[ Posted Friday, May 15th, 2009 – 17:44 UTC ]
I have to start by saying that in all honesty, President Obama and the Democrats didn't have a great week.
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[ Posted Friday, May 8th, 2009 – 17:04 UTC ]
Frank Luntz is one of those Republicans that is both respected and feared by Democrats. And rightly so. Because Luntz is a master at the business of teaching Republicans how to speak. He gets paid a bundle of money for doing this sort of thing, unlike amateurs such as myself on the web. [Note to Democratic Party: I will cheerfully accept bundles of money for writing this column, just to let you know....]
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[ Posted Thursday, May 7th, 2009 – 17:46 UTC ]
The intraparty struggle within the Democratic Party over what exactly to do with Arlen Specter now seems to have been worked out. For the time being, at least, Specter will not get to keep his overall seniority (which was apparently promised him by Majority Leader Harry Reid), but as a consolation prize will chair the Crime and Drugs Subcommittee, part of the Judiciary Committee he used to chair as a Republican. This struggle may wind up being re-fought after the 2010 election, but for the next year and a half the dust appears to have settled on the issue.
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[ Posted Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 – 16:13 UTC ]
President Barack Obama made an announcement last week just after Supreme Court Justice David Souter announced his impending retirement. In it, the president spoke of the qualities he is looking for in his first nominee to the highest bench in the land. He used the word "empathy" which, strangely enough, Republicans pounced on. They lost no time in denouncing "empathy" as a "code word" meaning Obama was about to appoint Michael Moore to the court. Or something. Their logic, at times, gets a wee bit confusing, I have to admit. But seriously, conservatives are gearing up for a confirmation battle (which they will lose), and this was the first pre-emptive strike in that battle. But in my own opinion, if Obama was speaking in "code" (which is debatable in the first place), I think everyone missed his point. Because by speaking of "empathy," I think Obama was doing nothing more than signaling he's about to put a woman on the Supreme Court.
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