D’ACQUA IS AN ITALIAN RESTAURANT located halfway between the White House and the Capitol on Pennsylvania Avenue, in the space once occupied by Signatures, the celebrated Washington dining spot owned by disgraced—and incarcerated—lobbyist Jack Abramoff. (We’re staying with Abramoff for one more issue of the Spectator, because although he’s in a maximum security prison, he remains […]

Read more

Feingold on FISA—Speaking at the New American Foundation the last week in June, Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) argued that Senate Democrats, including Barack Obama, are wrong on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) compromise the House and Senate reached with the Bush administration. Feingold said the immunity provision for telephone companies that engaged in warrantless […]

Read more

Torture on Trial—A year after his story appeared in these pages (see the Washington Spectator, July 1, 2007), German-born Turk Murat Kurnaz spoke to the U.S. Congress. By video link from Germany, Kurnaz testified before a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee. He was arrested in Pakistan a month after the 9/11 attacks. Like all but 5 percent […]

Read more

FOUR YEARS AGO A LOBBYIST for one of the Indian tribes Jack Abramoff defrauded of almost $100 million told me that Abramoff bragged about regular meetings with President Bush’s senior adviser Karl Rove—often held outside of the White House to avoid creating a paper trail. The White House didn’t respond to questions about Rove’s relationship […]

Read more

Death and Taxes—UBS stock has fallen from $52 a share, to $23 a share, over the past six months. And now UBS executive Phil Gramm’s political stock is also tanking. Gramm has been doing much of the economic thinking for John McCain, after stepping in and reorganizing the McCain campaign when it appeared to be […]

Read more