-
Obama Likely to Pick Woman to Replace Souter
By John Nichols
Supreme Court Justice David Souter, who has reportedly informed the White House that he plans to retire, is a relative youngster in high court terms.
Five of the current justices are older than the appointee of former President George Bush who turned out to be more liberal on a number of issues than the appointees of former President Bill Clinton. So, at 69, Souter could easily be looking forward to another two decades on the bench. (After all, Justice John Paul Stevens, another Republican appointee gone liberal, is 89 and going strong; most court watchers think Stevens is aiming to surpass the record of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who retired -- just shy of age 91 -- as the oldest justice in the high court's history.)
But Souter has been quietly telling his circle of friends and legal compatriots – the former attorneys general who he got to know when he served as New Hampshire's chief law enforcement officer – that he wants to retire. Though fit and energetic, Souter has never made any secret of his distaste for Washington and his long-term desire to return to his native New England.
(47) CommentsApril 30, 2009
-
Obama Stands Firm on Torture, Goes Weak on Accountability
By John Nichols
Returning again and again to the theme that allowing torture would "undermine who we are," President Obama used an otherwise tepid press conference marking the 100th day of his presidency to aggressively reject the argument that waterboarding or other "enhanced interrogation techniques" should be used by the United States.
But he avoided questions about holding members of the Bush-Cheney administration to account for sanctioning the use of those techniques.
The dialogue about torture came early in an otherwise easygoing press conference that saw Obama express concern about the swine flu outbreak but reject closing the border with Mexico, celebrate the decision of Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter to switch parties while dismissing the notion that he now has absolute power, espress hope for the renewal of the domestic auto industry and muse on the challenges of managing two wars, a broken economy and all the other demands of the presidency.
(132) CommentsApril 29, 2009
-
A Liberal Democrat Returns to the Fold
By John Nichols
Arlen Specter started his political life as a liberal Democrat.
And now the senior senator from Pennsylvania is returning to the fold.
Specter, who has served five terms in the Senate as the last of the old-school Rockefeller Republicans, has finally given up on his long, fruitless quest to revive the spirit of east-coast liberalism within what has become a hard-right party.
(65) CommentsApril 28, 2009
-
House Members Arrested in Darfur Protest Say Obama Must Act
By John Nichols
One of the initiatives of the anti-apartheid struggle of the 1980s was the decision by members of Congress and other prominent figures to be arrested in protests organized by TransAfrica at the South African Embassy in Washington.
The arrests focused public attention on the movement to free Nelson Mandela and other members of the African National Congress, and on the need to change U.S. policies that propped up the white-minority government of South Africa.
Now, in an effort to focus attention on concerns about the decision of the Sudanese government to expel 16 aid agencies from Darfur, five progressive members of the House, including veteran civil rights campaigner John Edwards, have been arrested on civil disobedience charges outside the Sudanese embassy in Washington.
(26) CommentsApril 27, 2009
-
Cheney's Right: Release Everything
By John Nichols
Dick Cheney and I have had our differences.
I wrote a book suggesting that he was perhaps not the worthiest vice president in our nation's history. I wrote another book suggesting that he was perhaps the worthiest of targets for an impeachment inquiry.
I do not frequently suggest that the former vice president is right. But he is right to call for further disclosure of documents regarding interrogation policy under the Bush administration.
(298) CommentsApril 22, 2009
-
Obama Goes to Summit, Gets a Galeano Book... and Detente
By John Nichols
It turns out that Barack Obama was right when he said during last year's presidential debates that talking to foreign leaders might actually ease international tensions.
After Obama used an address at the Summit of the Americas to reject U.S. "heavy-handedness" toward Latin America and exchanged greetings with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Chavez has responded by voicing hopes for a "new era" in relations and moved to immediately renew diplomatic relations between his country and the U.S.
Venezuela withdrew its ambassador to the U.S. in solidarity with Bolivia, which had expelled a U.S. ambassador appointed by former President Bush, Patrick Duddy, who stood accused of meddling in local affairs. The U.S. responded by expelling the ambassadors from Venezuela and Bolivia.
(125) CommentsApril 19, 2009
-
Judiciary Committee "Alarmed" At Systematic Spying
By John Nichols
The hasty decision of the Obama administration to organize high-profile release of memos on the use of torture diverted the attention of most of official Washington and the chattering class from the story that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been spying on Americans in what the New York Times describes as a "significant and systemic" manner -- and that intercepting of emails and phone calls continues despite the change of administrations.
From a public-relations standpoint, a day that could have been a tough one for the president and his aides turned out better than could have been expected.
Attention is focused on the wrongs of the Bush administration -- and the question of whether something should be done to address them -- rather than the fact that the Constitutionally-defined privacy rights of Americans have been and continue to be abused.
(23) CommentsApril 17, 2009
-
Minnesota to Norm Coleman: Concede!
By John Nichols
A new poll of Minnesota voters reveals that, by a 2-1 margin, they want former Senator Norm Coleman to quit contesting last fall's election.
Coleman lost the election by more than 300 votes, according to the count after a three-judge panel reviewed the ballots and the recount.
The panel ruled that Franken had won a fair, essentially well-run election.
(116) CommentsApril 15, 2009
-
Minnesota Judges: Franken Received Highest Number of Votes
By John Nichols
The three-judge panel charged with reviewing the votes cast in the tightly-contested Minnesota Senate race between Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party challenger Al Franken has declared a winner in the race.
"Franken received the highest number of lawfully cast ballots in the Nov. 4, 2008 general election," concluded the judges, who determined that the challenger was entitled to a certificate of election that will clear the way for him to be seated in the Senate.
The ruling came after a review of disputed ballots, which the Coleman camp had demanded be counted, turned out to favor Franken by a margin of nearly 2-1.
(92) CommentsApril 13, 2009
-
Michael Steele's Nutty ACORN Obsession
By John Nichols
Michael Steele is still the chairman of the Republican National Committee.
He's just being picking fights with people who don't have microphones.
Instead of stirring it up with the real boss of the Grand Old Party, Rush Limbaugh, or with Arlen Specter and the handful of congressional Republicans who might actually want to extend their party's platform beyond the word "no," Steele has returned to the obsessive focus that made him a favorite of the party's neanderthal wing: picking on poor people, working families and the organizations that advocate for people who do not have closets full of pinstripe suits.
(63) CommentsApril 11, 2009
- Atrios
- Arts and Letters Daily
- The Caucus
- Campus Progress
- Crooks and Liars
- The Daily Gotham
- Daily Kos
- Echidne of the Snakes
- Ezra Klein
- FAIR
- Feministe
- Feministing
- Firedoglake
- Glenn Greenwald
- Gothamist
- In these Times
- Hendrik Hertzberg
- Huffington Post
- Hullabaloo
- Matthew Yglesias
- Media Matters
- Mother Jones
- My DD
- New York Review of Books
- Openleft
- Pam's House Blend
- Pandagon
- Political Wire
- The Progressive
- RaceWire
- Real Clear Politics
- Roberto Lovato
- Romenesko
- Swing State Project
- Talking Points Memo
- Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Tapped
- Tech President
- Tompaine
- The Washington Note
- Utne Reader
- Wonkette
- ZNet
RSS