Politics

Conservative Calls for Bush to Name Himself 'President for Life'

On Aug. 3, a writer for Family Security Matters, a national security group associated with a conservative think tank, argued that President Bush should appoint himself "president for life" and "empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans." He wasn't kidding. I fished out the full commentary from the Google cache for Watching the Watchers. Before you dismiss the piece as a rant of a fringe group, Family Security Matters has a board that includes a former CIA director, talk show ... (read more)

2007/08/20

Jerome Armstrong Settles SEC Stock-Tout Suit

I filed a story this morning on Watching the Watchers about blogger Jerome Armstrong settling his stock-tout suit with the SEC: Influential liberal blogger Jerome Armstrong, the founder of MyDD and an originator of the netroots movement, has agreed to pay $29,000 in fines and penalties to settle a 2003 SEC suit accusing him of touting a stock on Internet message boards without disclosing his financial interest in the company. Some of my fellow liberals threw me under the bus for digging into ... (read more)

2007/08/09

Blogger Files FEC Complaint Calling Daily Kos a PAC

I wrote a story for Watching the Watchers this afternoon about an FEC complaint that's been filed against Daily Kos -- a conservative blogger alleges that the liberal site functions as a political action committee and therefore should disclose its sources of income and expenditures. Conservative blogger John Bambenek's complaint doesn't seem like it will get far, given a 2005 FEC advisory opinion that supports the "media exemption" for political activist blogs. Daily Kos functions like a media ... (read more)

2007/07/24

Business Up Front, Democratic Party in the Back

I love politics. I spend hours a day wallowing in it on the Drudge Retort. I also hate politics, and I'm going to pick on a couple of frequent contributors to Workbench to show why. Chad Irby: You put in a couple of words he DIDN'T say, to try and create One More Bush Screwup, and screwed up yourself. Admit it, instead of trying to contend that black is white. It just shows your bias to be nearly impossible to overcome, and contaminates any other arguments you might make on something he really ... (read more)

2007/07/18

President Bush: My Constituents are The Enemy

Political Fretwork, a liberal blog on Buzzword.Com's free WordPress hosting service, noticed something funny about President Bush's press conference yesterday that has escaped the attention of the media -- the president called the insurgents in Iraq his constituents: ... there's a lot of constituencies in this fight -- clearly the American people, who are paying for this, is the major constituency. ... A second constituency is the military. ... A third constituency that matters to me a lot is ... (read more)

2007/07/13

Constitutional Glitch: Presidents Don't Fear Impeachment

Even with my low opinion of President Bush, I did not expect him to give Lewis Libby a get-out-of-jail free card. The constitutional implications of the president freeing a White House official from the sentence doled out in a criminal case, when the crime involves the vice president and possibly even the president himself, couldn't be more clear. When the Senate failed to remove President Clinton from office after his impeachment in 1999, falling 22 votes short of the 67 needed, I thought it ... (read more)

2007/07/09

My Guess: Opie and Anthony are Screwed

The media's covering a tasteless sexual rant by a guest on Opie and Anthony's radio show Wednesday that was targeted at Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and First Lady Laura Bush, but no one's explaining what the guy said. I put the transcript and audio up on Watching the Watchers, so people can judge for themselves. I don't listen to the show, so I can't judge the comments in the context of what they do every day. I have trouble imagining a context in which the sentiments aren't ugly as ... (read more)

2007/05/11

Down Syndrome Parents Wrestle with Extinction

There's an interesting hot-button issue on the Drudge Retort this morning: Parents of children with Down syndrome are concerned about a new trend some liken to eugenics -- 9-in-10 prospective parents, equipped with safe tests that detect the condition in the womb, choose to abort rather than raise such a child. "We want people who make this decision to know our kids," said Lucy Talbot, the president of a support group. "We want them to talk to us." From what I've learned through limited ... (read more)

2007/05/09

Free the Presidential Debates

Barack Obama and John Edwards have both written letters this week calling on presidential debates to be released under a Creative Commons license. Edwards' take: The Creative Commons license terms offer an easy way to ensure that the networks' rights are protected. Much of the content on my own campaign web site is available under just such a license. Commercial constraints are severe enough in their effect in diluting the substance of our campaigns. Limiting access to long-form televised ... (read more)

2007/05/04

Politics Is Not a Team Sport

The novelist Andrew Klavan has written a completely insufferable ode to himself for being conservative that's getting a lot of praise. The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don't have to lie. ... This is leftism's great strength: it's all white lies. I wrote a response for Watching the Watchers that addresses the need of too many Americans to treat politics like a sport in which your team rox and the other team sux. ... (read more)

2007/04/25

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