Worse Than Nixon—George W. Bush’s approval ratings plunged into the 20s recently. Only three states—Idaho, Utah and Wyoming—now have a positive view of the president. Only four other chief executives—Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Richard Nixon—have fallen as far during a presidency since the advent of modern polling. A recent photo strip […]

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To the Dismay of Ney—If Tom DeLay was the first casualty of Jack Abramoff’s guilty plea, Representative Bob Ney (R-OH), a fast-rising protégé of DeLay’s, is almost certain to be the second. As chairman of the House Administration Committee, which oversees everything from the lawmakers’ mail to parking spots to—gasp!—lobbying rules, Ney became known as […]

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Recessitation—Members of the House of Representatives quickly got out of town on December 19. And they aren’t coming back until January 31. Why the month and a half paid vacation? Two words: Tom DeLay. After “The Hammer” stepped down as House majority leader last September upon his indictment in Texas, House leaders named only a […]

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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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Trick or Treat?—It’s fitting that it was Halloween when Senate Democrats held a secret meeting and hatched their plan to temporarily shut down the Senate so that the decision to go to war in Iraq could be fully examined, as promised. The invocation of the arcane “Rule 21” on November 1 surprised virtually everyone, not […]

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