Politics Daily
Inside Politics Daily
Women's Vote Will Likely Decide British Elections
Can the 'Bush Lied' Deniers Handle the Truth?
Democrats' Dilemma: Health Care Vote and the 'Enthusiasm Gap'
Pro-life Rep. Perriello Says Abortion Concerns Eased, May Back Health Bill
Chaos Theory - New Textbooks, Y'all!
Iraq War Debate: Surge Success, Intelligence Mistakes, Civilian Casualties- Huge Student Loan Overhaul Set to Be Tacked Onto Health Care Reform
Michelle Obama Takes Anti-Obesity Drive to Food Makers
Why I Don't Hate the IRS -- and Neither Should You
Excerpts From the New Texas History Textbooks
Jerry Brown and Me: A Progressive's Lament
In Defense of Sean Penn
David Corn
David Corn is the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine. Prior to that he was the Washington editor of The Nation magazine for twenty years... moreCan the 'Bush Lied' Deniers Handle the Truth?
By David Corn
Bring it on. Conservative apologists for the George W. Bush crew are swinging hard these days to defend their man -- and themselves -- from the charge that W. and his gang misled the nation into war. They must worry that they are going to end up on the wrong side of history. After all, a 2008 Gallup poll found that 53 percent of Americans believed that the Bush administration "deliberately misled the American public about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction." (This was a big change from a poll taken two months after the 2003 invasion that noted that 67 percent believed that Bush had ...
Iraq War Triumphalism Ignores a Key Matter: Dead Civilians
By David Corn
Whenever there's an election in Iraq, U.S. triumphalism follows. In a recent column, Peter Wehner, my PoliticsDaily.com colleague, touts George W. Bush's war in Iraq and joins others in the it-hasn't-turned-out-so-bad chorus. But these pronouncements serve as a reminder that it's rather easy to be a freedom fighter with somebody else's blood. Wehner, who worked in the Bush White House, argues that the "dramatic turnaround" in Iraq since 2006 shows that the war was not, as columnist Joe Klein once observed, "probably the biggest foreign policy mistake in American history." He echoes Thomas ...
Could Financial Protection Bill Be a Secret Weapon for Democrats in 2010?
By David Corn
Can one mild-mannered Harvard law professor help the Democrats avoid an electoral calamity this November? It's possible. The person I have in mind is Elizabeth Warren. She chairs the Congressional Oversight Panel, which monitors the TARP bailout. But perhaps more important is her unofficial title: mother of the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Several years ago -- before the 2008 crash -- she cooked up the idea of a federal agency that would set and enforce rules to protect consumers from the unscrupulous practices of banks, credit card companies, mortgage lenders and other ...
A Same-Old GOP Budget: Rich Pay Less, Everyone Else Pays More
By David Corn
At President Obama's White House summit on health care last month, when it was the House Republicans' turn to make an opening presentation, GOP leader John Boehner turned to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the top Republican on the House budget committee, to put forward the Republicans' case. Ryan, a sincere-sounding policy wonk, said nothing about insurance company abuses, nothing about expanding coverage and nothing about addressing the affordability of health insurance. Instead, he zeroed in on one matter: the deficit. He conceded that the Congressional Budget Office had concluded that the health ...
Whos' the Leading Man? It Ain't Rahm or Ax.
By David Corn
Did you know that mega-film director James Cameron has infiltrated the White House? Yes, he lent Rahm Emanuel one of the "link" machines from "Avatar" that allows the White House chief of staff to "drive" another being -- and that being happens to be President Obama. OK, not quite. But for some that has seemed to be the driving Washington narrative: the all-powerful White House chief of staff hijacking the presidency of the progressive-minded Obama. It's a popular explanation among liberals for their disappointment with Obama -- and for the president's failure to enact sweeping change ...
Karl Rove Book Exposes Lies of the Bush White House
By David CornI doubt this was Karl Rove's intention, but with his new book, he demonstrates how the Bush White House got away with lying. Here's the back story. In September 2003, a furor erupted when the news emerged that the Justice Department had begun an investigation of the leak that outed undercover CIA case officer Valerie Plame Wilson. Several months earlier -- while her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, was slamming the Bush administration for having misled the nation into the Iraq war with a phony WMD argument -- two administration sources had told conservative columnist Robert Novak ...
What's Sexier: Obama's Smoking or His Nuclear Weapons Policy?
By David Corn
On Monday, as I walked to the White House for the daily press briefing, I bumped into a Canadian journalist who was heading there as well, and we engaged in a common practice: guessing what topic would dominate the questions for press secretary Robert Gibbs. Health care, I said, explaining that this was still the main narrative of Washington's political theater: Would President Obama resolve to use the reconciliation procedure to push his health care overhaul over the finish line? "Not the new Nuclear Posture Review?" she asked, almost incredulously. I chuckled and politely shook my head. "But ...
Are Democratic Presidents Smarter Than Republican Presidents?
By David Corn
Watching President Barack Obama at the White House health care summit last week, it was hard not to have an obvious thought: Could George W. Bush have done this? It is tough to imagine Bush leading a seven-hour gabfest on a complex policy matter, being able to master the specifics and nuances, and field questions about in-the-weeds details as Obama did. Which brings me to another idea: Are Democratic presidents smarter than Republican presidents? Before proceeding, let me stipulate that there are different sorts of intelligence, and conventional (or book) smarts does not guarantee a president ...
Health Care Summit Shows Time for Talking Is Done
By David Corn
Now that all that rigamarole is over, let's move on to the inevitable. I'm referring, of course, to the seven-hour shindig at Blair House on Thursday. The White House health care summit yielded few surprises. There was no bipartisan breakthrough -- or any sign of progress on that front. The meeting marked not the start of a process, but the end. It buried any notion that President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans can reach an accommodation on comprehensive health care reform. But that's not to say the gabfest had no value. It clarified the situation. Though much of the conversation ...
Obama's Health Care Summit: The Sham Before the Storm?
By David Corn
Enough of this bipartisan shilly-shally; it's time to crash the health care reform bill over the finish line -- by any means possible -- and move the heck on . . . . Oh, sorry, that was supposed to be the lead for Friday's column, the one coming out after Thursday's White House health care summit. Yet there's no reason not to get an early start. It's pretty darn tough not to approach this big hoe-down with mucho skepticism. After all, there's a fundamental reality at play in the battle over health care reform. The Democrats in the White House and Congress have a plan they mostly agree on, ...
Most Active Topics
- Abortion (210)
- Afghanistan (205)
- Arms Control (7)
- Budget (199)
- Campaign Finance (13)
- Climate Change (1)
- Crime (164)
- Culture (320)
- Deficit (45)
- Economy (993)
- Education (126)
- Energy (138)
- Environment (225)
- Ethics (52)
- Foreign Policy (360)
- Gay Rights (264)
- Guns (87)
- Haiti (37)
- Hate Crimes (4)
- Health Care (798)
- Immigration (104)
- Iran (137)
- Iraq (362)
- Jobs (51)
- Law (23)
- Lobbying (10)
- National Security (244)
- News Media (52)
- Nuclear Proliferation (13)
- Public Option (19)
- Race (252)
- Religion (427)
- Social Security (18)
- Taxes (175)
- Terror (457)
- Trade (40)
- Transportation (30)
- Unemployment (34)
- Wall Street (39)
- Yemen (6)
Now Commenting
- JOE on:
Former Wrestling Exec McMahon Takes Lead in Race for GOP Senate Nod in Connecticut - DaddyMoe on:
Hawaii Considers Bill to Ignore Repeated Requests for Obama's Birth Certificate - pete on:
Can the 'Bush Lied' Deniers Handle the Truth? - rkthompson1329 on:
Memo to the Left: The Public Health Insurance Option Is Dead, Get Over It - abucsraeb on:
Can the 'Bush Lied' Deniers Handle the Truth? - Melissa on:
Obama Tells Congress to Have 'Courage,' Leans on Kucinich to Vote Yes
Submit Your Favorite Links
Props
- 64
- 46
- 34
- 34
- 30
- 27
Diggs
- 179
- 255
- 627
- 558
- 508
- 398
Politics Daily More Links