At the beginning of January, Representative Tom DeLay (R-TX) announced that he would not attempt to return to his post as House majority leader. After being indicted by a Texas grand jury on money-laundering charges, DeLay had initially said he was stepping down only temporarily. Apparently his simultaneous involvement in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal […]

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In a 1977 interview with David Frost, Richard Nixon made a comment that became seared in the American psyche as a perfect example of how a president must not treat the office. Frost asked Nixon if he believed a president is entitled to act illegally if he believes it is in the best interest of the nation. […]

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With this issue of the Washington Spectator, we bid farewell to our longtime friend and colleague Ben A. Franklin, who died after a long illness on November 19. Ben was only the second editor in the Washington Spectator‘s history, following Tristram Coffin, the veteran Washington reporter who started this newsletter as Washington Watch back in 1971. Ben was a Timesman, […]

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One of the older conventional wisdoms in our nation’s capital is that any president who tries to plug leaks in the ship of state is engaged in a futile, self-defeating exercise. The leaker(s) can never be definitively identified, and any attempt to do so involves tactics more familiar to a police state and likely to […]

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The commission that investigated the events of 9/11 has been highly praised and sharply criticized, but one aspect of its task has virtually escaped notice: its responsibility to leave behind a complete, lasting, and easily accessible public record of its investigation. For all the good work that the panel did, some of its decisions have […]

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