Partisanship.

Nothing surprising here, but after Democrats spent the entirety of Bush’s second term loudly despairing over civil liberties and freedom of the press being trod upon in the name of counterterrorism, polls like this will remain forever blogworthy. HA readers already know all about their well-timed reversals on drone strikes and Guanatanamo, but the DOJ’s [...]

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Endgame?

This was written, I believe, before the news broke this morning about the DOJ quasi-indicting James Rosen for the crime of practicing journalism. So if Dems in the know were whispering before, they’re downright murmuring now. If Holder goes, who becomes conservatives’ new least favorite cabinet member? Kerry or Hagel? Nevertheless, the controversies are undermining [...]

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Damage control.

More than 50 major media organizations on Tuesday sent a letter to the Department of Justice protesting the seizure of two months of The Associated Press’ phone records and calling for the department to “mitigate the damage it has caused.” In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and Deputy Attorney James M. Cole, the [...]

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Wha...?

On the Senate floor earlier today, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) took a moment to try her darndest to throw the still-unfolding Benghazi saga back in the oh-so-hyper-partisan Republicans’ faces: Now, there’s a lot of talk going on about, “How could this happen?” and e-mails and all the rest. Let me focus on something very important: [...]

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All in the family.

Not just any execs and not just any advisors, either. Watch as Ric Grenell floats a possible explanation for some of the Benghazi coverage, especially vis-a-vis rumors that CBS is unhappy with Sharyl Attkisson’s dogged reporting. Would the media reaction really be different without the sibling/spouse conflicts of interest, though? Half of me thinks the [...]

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Subterfuge?

On MSNBC Saturday morning, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said that she, too, wants to find out what happened in Benghazi, but that Republicans are taking political advantage of the investigation to distract from other, more important issues. “The obsession that some of my Republican colleagues have in the House doesn’t look like it’s on [...]

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So... that happened

This is one of those fairly short hits which I’m forced to leave for the readers to evaluate. Sometimes there doesn’t seem to be much to say the face of staggering… I don’t even have the words. Congresswoman Janice Hahn weighed in during Thursday’s Small Business subcommittee hearing on Health and Technology in Washington with [...]

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Uhm...?

I have every suspicion that the Obama administration’s continued dilly-dallying has pretty much nothing to do with those stubbornly lingering and entirely ginned-up environmental concerns and everything to do with the symbolic importance wrongly placed upon the pipeline’s construction by certain deep-pocketed and powerful eco-radical groups. The green lobby has managed to turn an otherwise [...]

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Oh, snap.

Remember the, “it’s 3 A.M. and your children are safe and asleep. But, there’s a phone in the White House, and it’s ringing. Something’s happening in the world. … Who do you want answering the phone?”-themed campaign ad from Hillary Clinton’s campaign during the 2008 Democratic primary? The Republic National Committee prepped a new ad [...]

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"Get out of the fringe lane!"

On Thursday, Republican senators put the brakes on the confirmation of President Obama’s nominee for EPA chief, Gina McCarthy, saying that they were “completely unsatisfied” with the answers she was providing to their lines of questioning. Via Reuters: The dispute over McCarthy stems from more than 1,000 written questions Republican senators asked her after her [...]

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Climbdown?

A week ago, he noted on his Facebook page that his poll numbers after voting no on Toomey/Manchin put him somewhere south of “pond scum.” Today, this. He won’t face the voters again for five and a half years, but he shares a home state with Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly. They can hurt him [...]

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"I wasn't aware we are in the schoolyard..."

Yes, because goodness knows Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has never thrown a political punch below the belt in the course of his career. Via The Hill: The two senators bickered as Cruz rose to object to Reid’s motion to appoint conferees to a House-Senate budget committee. … He said Cruz’s request to eliminate all [...]

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Wherever the hell she came from...

As you’ve no doubt heard by now, the chair of South Carolina’s Democrat party, Dick Harpootlian, raised some eyebrows on Friday when he urged supporters to help send GOP Governor Nikki Haley, “back to wherever the hell she came from.” Given that the governor is of Indian descent, this was widely reported on and seemed [...]

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Er...?

Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, for one, is not giving up on the quest for more gun control measures, and is convinced that further gun legislation “will pass eventually” — but she drew a few rather dubious conclusions in the process. As it stands right now, Tamerlan, as we know now, was on the terrorist watch [...]

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Defeat.

[Q]uestions of why the Democratic leadership pushed a bill to the floor that ultimately fell five votes short had some whispering about poor planning. “There is going to be a lot of hindsighting,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who represents Newtown. He didn’t count himself among the critics, though. “We had to have a vote [...]

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Womp.

Labor unions largely came out swinging in favor of ObamaCare’s passage in 2010, but many have been growing increasingly wary of ObamaCare’s incoming provisions, fearing that the law’s requirements will raise the costs of health plans for unions members and make them less competitive compared to non-unionized workers. On Tuesday, one such labor union that [...]

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Show him the money!

At this point it’s feels as if we’ve been debating and fighting and waiting for some sort of resolution to the Keystone XL pipeline question since roughly around the beginning of Eisenhower’s third State of the Union address. Are we at least close to the point where President Obama is going to finally make a [...]

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"It's probably possible for a political group to be worse at accomplishing its core mission than Progress Kentucky is, but it's difficult to imagine how."

On one hand, Progress Kentucky has succeeded in ways most political-action committees rarely do.  In only four or five months of existence, they have driven the national news cycle not once but twice.  Unfortunately for Progress KY and Democrats in the state, they’ve been the scandal both times.  Their operatives turned out to be behind the [...]

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Finally.

Ah, the Renewable Fuel Standard. What can I say about the Renewable Fuel Standard, which requires fuel producers to blend a certain amount of biofuels into their product? That its existence inflates an artificial market for a product consumers don’t really want to buy? That its corn-based components drive up food prices at home and [...]

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Showdown.

Ed called the bill “weak tea” compared to what Democrats wanted initially, but evidently it’s not weak enough: “Expanding background checks at gun shows will not prevent the next shooting, will not solve violent crime and will not keep our kids safe in schools,” the NRA said. “While the overwhelming rejection of President Obama and [...]

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Pressure.

The Senate will hold the first key procedural vote on a bill to curb gun violence Thursday as more than a half-dozen Republicans announced that they will join with Democrats to stop any attempt to block popular legislation drafted in response to a deadly shooting at a Connecticut elementary school… Senate procedural rules require Reid [...]

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Oh my.

Run away, red-state Democratic incumbents. Run away. Actually, he’s been underwater on guns since January, when another CNN poll showed him at 46/49. Today? 45/52. Despite three months of increasingly shrill messaging about how people who disagree with him on this issue are basically pro-murder, he’s lost a little ground. The key number in any [...]

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No kidding.

Obama’s “you’re on your own”-attitude toward the DCCC and the DSCC during the 2012 campaign cycle was not particularly appreciated by his very vexed fellow Democrats, but he’s already starting to make good on his Lone-Ranger-no-more promise to help them with the 2014 midterms — he is going to need a fully Democratic Congress to [...]

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"Undocumented Democrats" abounding.

Obligatory, really, after the exceedingly silly public statement from the wire service yesterday. Newsbusters has the grab from last night’s Tonight Show with Jay Leno, in which Leno manages shots at the Associated Press, Democrats, and the rush for an immigration-reform bill in less than 30 seconds, including the applause: “And in a groundbreaking move, [...]

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