IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO WATCH the November 14 meeting of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform without feeling some sympathy for the State Department’s Inspector General, Howard “Cookie” Krongard. A report prepared by the committee staff was the playbill for a Capitol Hill drama that would unfold in three acts, with intermissions for […]

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THE HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE INVESTIGATION into the political prosecution and conviction of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman, briefly discussed in the November 1 issue, leads inevitably to former senior White House aide Karl Rove. Although Rove has left the White House and is living in Texas, and would probably try to assert executive privilege were his […]

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Thompson v. Roe—Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson is packaged as the safe choice for secular conservatives who place economics above the “God, guns and gays” campaigns that animate the Christian right. But a careful reading of Thompson on reproductive rights suggests otherwise. On Meet the Press on November 4, Tim Russert quoted from the 2004 Republican Party […]

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Editor’s note: On October 4 Fred Smith of the Competitive Enterprise Institute addressed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Smith drew on all the anathemas of the far right to attack a treaty the committee was considering. “Did anyone expect the Endangered Species Act to become a national land use planning act? Did anyone expect Superfund […]

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Mayberry GOP—The 2002 Alabama gubernatorial election included the plot elements of a bad Southern Gothic: a Klan rally in the backwoods; a political operative stealing the opposition’s signs and planting them at the rally; a lawyer stalking and photographing the operative; incriminating photos used to extort a political candidate; and a cabal of lawyers maneuvering […]

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