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 […]

Read more

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 […]

Read more

Banana Republic—Forget John Kerry; it’s House Republicans who are perfecting the art of the flip-flop—especially when it comes to holding open crucial floor votes for indefinite periods so they can twist arms and get their wavering soldiers to switch votes. The Medicare reform vote in 2003 lasted three hours in the dead of night, instead […]

Read more

Meet Madam Justice—Does Bush know something his conservative base doesn’t about Harriet Miers? He must, considering the outcry that has accompanied his pick to replace outgoing Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Following the announcement, Bush’s choice was met with a firestorm of disapproval, this time from his supporters. They wanted another Scalia or Thomas. […]

Read more

Filibusters Are Busted—In our June 1 FYI we said they weren’t. But then, under a bipartisan agreement, Senate Democrats voluntarily backed down on the decision to filibuster the confirmation of several appellate court judges. The Senate confirmed the judgeships of two conservative women, Janice Rogers Brown, an African-American Justice on the California Supreme Court, and Priscilla R. Owen of […]

Read more