President Obama's speech on counterterrorism on Thursday won rave reviews among some who seemed to see it as a return of the liberal constitutional law professor who ran for president in 2008. But while the tone might have been refreshing, maybe we should wait to see Obama's follow-through?
The Code Pink protester got herself inside the National Defense University in Washington on Thursday for Obama's big drone speech, even though she's been a famous heckler in Washington for a decade. So how does she do it? By using her old name — plus maybe a little help from middle-aged woman invisibility syndrome.
When justifying his use of drone strikes — in countries we're not at war with, in a war against "networks" with a not-yet-clear end, in a major speech on a limitless war — it helps for President Obama to use the rhetoric of George W. Bush as a foil. At least he's not as bad as that guy, right?
President Obama will say he sees a day when the War on Terror comes to an end in a much anticipated speech Thursday afternoon. But when-ish will the War on Terror really end? It's going to be a while — maybe long after Obama has left office.
For two days John McCain and Ted Cruz have been fighting on the Senate floor over the rules for negotiating a budget, but, like so many fights, it's also about so much more. Cruz is being annoying about the budget, but worse, he just doesn't get the Senate.
The U.S. government admitted for the first time Wednesday that it intentionally droned American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, and that it unintentionally droned three other Americans, including al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son. Attorney General Eric Holder admitted it in a letter to Congress, ahead of President Obama's long awaited speech on Thursday, which could finally lay bare the truth about the administration's targeting killing program.
Paul Ryan is writing a campaign book, and though it's not officially a campaign book, it seems to be exactly the kind of campaign book that exists merely to preview a presidential candidacy.
The New York Times' Bill Keller suggests we should "Bring Back Ken Starr" to get to the bottom of the IRS scandal, because "the scandal circus on Capitol Hill is a terrible distraction."
How did the CIA become the hero in the Benghazi talking point controversy? And if the CIA is part of Team Obama, why hasn't it enjoyed as much scrutiny as everyone else involved? One reason is the political skills of David Petraeus, as behind-the-scenes emails continue to reveal.
Mitch McConnell said he wouldn't block the bipartisan immigration overhaul on Tuesday, and Patrik Leahy said he will hold off — "with a heavy heart" — on a controversial amendment to green cards to spouses of gay couples. But the path to passage is surprisingly clear, even amidst the Obama administration's scandals.
Lois Lerner will plead the Fifth on Wednesday before a congressional committee investigating the IRS's targeting of conservative groups. Lerner broke the news of the scandal — even to President Obama! — by planting a question at a tax lawyers' conference. In hindsight, that strategy for releasing the news does not look like it was a great idea.
Michele Bachmann was the muse for a new romance novel called Fires of Siberia, to be published June 1, about a fiery presidential candidate who tries to bone up on her foreign policy credentials only to get stuck in the wilderness with a sexy stranger.
Anthony Weiner will announce he's running for New York City mayor sometime this week, but he won't get the Clintons' official support or endorsement, Politico's Maggie Haberman reports.
A majority Americans approve of the job President Obama's doing and think he's focused on issues that are important to them, even though a majority also thinks the IRS intentionally singled out conservative groups for harassment, according to a new Washington Post/ ABC News poll. Why is Obama doing so well in scandal season?
Billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch are quite entrepreneurial in their attempts to influence public policy in their favor.
So far the facts of the three scandals facing the Obama administration do not tie President Obama himself to the scandalous acts. Since Republicans can't yet indict President Obama, they're shifting to indicting all of liberalism.
Now that Hillary Clinton no longer has a nonpartisan badass day job, the universe is reverting back to its natural state in which Clinton is a controversial figure with a complicated past and more than a few enemies as well as the symbol of some people's anxieties about women in power.
The IRS official who revealed the IRS had inappropriately targeted conservative groups on Friday did so on purpose -- by asking a tax lawyer to ask her about it at American Bar Association tax section’s annual meeting.
ABC News' Jonathan Karl's revelation of the White House's role in 12 revisions to the Benghazi talking points propelled the story, long percolating in conservative media, into a bona fide scandal. But then CNN's Jake Tapper's revelation of what the emails actually said revealed that to be a fake scandal. So who lied to Karl?
The scandal surrounding New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez has evolved from a sex scandal to a donor scandal to a weird mystery about who set him up, with the FBI talking to sugar baron brothers and an ex-CIA operative.
Huma Abedin remained Hillary Clinton's deputy chief of staff when she came back from maternity leave in June 2012, even though she worked part-time from her home in New York and was allowed to start a side gig as a consultant.
Now that everyone is paying attention to the scandal stories Republicans have been pushing for months against President Obama, they have a bit of stage fright.
The U.S. military has now had three men in charge of programs to limit harassment or violence against women accused of similar crimes revolving around harassment and violence against women in the same month. It's only May 16th.
Anthony Weiner was spotted on Thursday filming pretty much exactly the kind of ad you'd expect him to air if he runs for mayor of New York: sitting on the stoop of his childhood home in Brooklyn with his loving wife at his side.
A long time ago (last week, basically) if you were a political person, it was definitely a bad thing to get in a fight with the IRS. But the scandal over the IRS targeting Tea Party groups — another official just took the fall, as Obama hired a new replacement — has had an interesting side-effect in the last seven days: turning on the IRS can now win you major political points.
The main thrust of all of President Obama's press conferences for the last two years has been to tell Congress to do its job, and that held true on Thursday, when he answered questions about a trio of scandals by repeatedly saying he was looking forward to "fixing a problem" by working with Congress to pass laws he's wanted all along.
Prominent figures on the right are calling for harsh consequences for the IRS's inappropriate targeting of Tea Party groups — Michele Bachmann floated impeachment of President Obama on Thursday — but it's worth remembering that prominent figures on the right, like Erick Erickson just five weeks ago, wer insisting that some of these Tea Party groups get some extra scrutiny.
Everyone's laughing at Newt Gingrich because he made a video saying he and his staff had puzzled for weeks that we don't have a new word for cell phones that do the Internet.
After admitting that his 2012 Republican "fever" theory was wrong, President Obama told donors like Jessica Biel, Justin Timberlake (who was wearing hipster glasses), and Tommy Hilfiger that Washington gridlock is pretty much Rush Limbaugh's fault on Monday evening at a fundraiser at Harvey Weinstein's house in New York's Greenwich Village.
President Obama answered a question about Benghazi during a press conference on Monday, and hi-def photos reveal that some moisture traveled from the president's eye area to his cheekbone in a thin stream. Was it a tear? It certainly looks like a tear. These images revealing Obama's epiphora raise new and troubling questions.
On Monday, after Obama called the ongoing theories a "sideshow," Rush Limbaugh floated a different theory that would make Obama's actions much worse, if not quite so treasonous. Rush was not alone in his floating; so long as there is an attack's aftermath with which to create more aftermath, he never will be.
Jason Richwine might have written that "No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites," but he is not some kind of bigot, he says in his first interview since cutting ties with the Heritage Foundation.
The Obama administration was tediously, depressingly scandal-free for years. But the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups — which President Obama called "outrageous" on Monday — is enough for the various players in the capital's political-media complex to resume their usual roles for a performance of Wartergate-in-miniature.
White House press secretary Jay Carney reaffirmed his previous statement that the only edits the White House made to the Benghazi talking points was "a matter of non-substantive factual correction."
Truth has been the watchword of the Benghazi controversy. "The goal here is to get to the truth," said House Speaker John Boehner says. And the truth may indeed be out there, but where it lies depends on who you ask.
The revelation that Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan and White House chief of staff Dennis McDonough had a successful secret beer date might be cause to fundamentally rethink skepticism that dinner diplomacy could end Washington gridlock caused by Republicans and Democrats holding diametrically opposed positions.
A co-author of the already controversial new Heritage Foundation study — the one that claims to show immigration reform will cost the U.S. $6.3 trillion dollars — wrote in 2009 that the government should grant immigrants visas based on IQ. And of course his idea that Latinos won't assimilate because they're doomed to low IQs for generations is offensive. But more importantly, his idea is wrong.
The combination of Sanford's sex scandal and his opponent's relationship to a funny person wan't enough to overcome the fact that South Carolina's first congressional district is very Republican. The lesson, maybe even for Anthony Weiner: Don't have a sex scandal in a swing district. Just look at the math.
Delaware legalized gay marriage Tuesday afternoon, making it the 11th state to do so, and only days after Rhode Island did the same. Here's our updated GIF map showing that the pro-gay marriage wave has a long way to go to undo two anti-gay marriage waves ushered in by Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
There were 3,374 rapes in the military last year, a 6 percent increase, and an estimated 26,000 sexual assaults — news that comes from a Pentagon report released Tuesday, the day after news arrived from the Air Force that its officer in charge of sexual assault prevention office was charged with sexual assault. But there are really two problems here: rapists, and bringing rapists to justice.
One conservative pundit's case — there are no hungry kids in Los Angeles, because of webMD — would be more compelling if he applied it to the legions of business travelers at the continental trough at hotel chains across the country. But first, let's look at why Dennis Prager's case against breakfast doesn't work for poor school kids.
He's already lost 40 pounds after no-longer-secret lap-band stomach surgery, and it's perfectly timed for a presidential run. There will be the inevitable grand tale of the Incredible Shrinking Chris Christie — the humanizing interviews, the many side-by-side photos — and it will play into one of his recently acquired political strengths: women have started to like him.
The officer in charge of the Air Force's sexual assault prevention office has been charged... with sexual assault, for allegedly grabbing a woman's breasts and butt in a parking lot. According to police, the woman fought him. And judging by the photo of his face, well, she beat him up.
One important fight in this week's dizzying array of amendments to the bill is simply about extending current laws to gay people. "Guns, gays and immigration — it's too much," one senator reportedly told the White House. "I can be with you on one or two of them, but not all three." What about two in one bill? Does that have a better chance? Or a better chance to kill the whole thing?
People are so mean when Republicans try to highlight there are actual young people who like the GOP.
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