The ex-senator’s bit on the side has been a prominent character in novels by Jay McInerney and Brett Easton Ellis.
DSL also brings to my attention this NY Times column pointing to the parallels between Edwards and Grover Cleveland, the “Boon Companion to Buffalo Harlots,” which sounds likely a really great Garrison Keillor program. If only [...]
I’m a native of Missouri and went to college at Washington University in St. Louis, where I was involved in the College Republicans. For a time, I was secretary of the Missouri Federation of College Republicans, too. So I know how things work in the Missouri GOP, and I know that there are some utterly [...]
Another White House staffer falls from grace. This time it’s Tim Goeglein, the administration’s liaison to the conservative movement. He’d been writing an occasional column for the Fort Worth Wayne News Sentinel for no pay and with no deadline pressure. But still he plagiarized, stealing liberally from Jeffrey Hart and other authors, as a hostile [...]
A lot of libertarians are making him out to be the victim of overzealous police, and perhaps the victim’s of society’s homophobia as well. Come on: neither is true. First, if you think this is a gay thing, try going to the nearest airport, go into the bathroom of the opposite sex, and do what [...]
Somehow I don't think Bush would have returned the William Jefferson papers even without Gonzales threatening to resign, but it's interesting that Gonzales — who, lest we forget, is pro-affirmative action and abortion — is so committed to expanding executive power that he would resign if he weren't allowed to keep the papers snatched from [...]
The separation of powers has taken quite a battering under the Bush administration: the president's "signing statements" alter or even negate the plain meaning of laws passed by Congress; Bush attempts to employ executive-branch military tribunals instead of courts whenever possible; he doesn't bother to observe laws passed by Congress requiring executive agencies to get [...]
No, not that Jerry Lewis, but the House appropriations chairman — the big-spending Republican the Wall Street Journal calls "the Minority Maker." According to the Washington Post, the Justice Department is conducting an investigation into Lewis's relationship with a lobbying firm, an investigation loosely connected to the Randy "Duke" Cunningham affair, though there are no [...]
Still a good source for the big picture on the nexus of the Republican Party and lobbyists is this 2003 article from The Washington Monthly. It's a look at the K Street strategy, the virtual extortion racket (overseen in part by Rick Santorum) designed to pressure trade associations into filling their ranks of lobbyists with [...]
The Sunday Times of London speculates on reasons for his departure:
The timing is certainly curious, coming hard on the heels of the CIA’s confirmation last week that Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, the number three in the nation’s spy centre who was hand-picked by Goss, had attended poker games at the Watergate and Westin Grand hotels in [...]
First there was Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the California Republican congressman bribed by defense contractors Brent Wilkes (allegedly) and Mitchell Wade (admittedly). Now we're beginning to see just how far this story goes — Cunningham was about as much of an isolated incident as Abu Ghraib was the result of a few "bad apples." If you've [...]