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Archive for May, 2009

Obama Appears To Be Close On SCOTUS Pick

by Doug Mataconis @ Thursday, May 14th, 2009. Filed under Barack Obama, Politics, Supreme Court

If today’s reports are to be believed, we could have the name of President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee by this time next week:
President Obama told senators at a White House meeting yesterday that he would review names of potential Supreme Court nominees over the weekend, leading participants to believe an announcement could come within days, [...]

Ron Paul On Torture And The War On Terror

by Doug Mataconis @ Thursday, May 14th, 2009. Filed under Politics, Ron Paul, War On Terror

The Matthew Alexander that Paul mentions is a former USAF officer who served in Iraq until 2006 and who was involved in many high-level interrogations. He wrote this interesting Op-Ed back in November:

Torture and abuse are against my moral fabric. The cliche still bears repeating: Such outrages are inconsistent with American principles. And then there’s [...]

Republicans, RINOs, And The 1994 Election

by Doug Mataconis @ Thursday, May 14th, 2009. Filed under Politics, Republicans

Patrick Edaburn makes these interesting observations about the Republican “revolution” of 1994:
For purposes of this discussion I will again look just at the states of the Northeast, consisting of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
In 1994 those nine states sent nine Republicans to the US Senate. Of [...]

Carrie Prejean Is Wrong About Her Rights

by Doug Mataconis @ Wednesday, May 13th, 2009. Filed under Celebrities, Freedom of Speech, Individual Liberty

During the press conference yesterday where Donald Trump announced that Carrie Prejean would not lose her title as Miss California, the new heroine of social conservatives everywhere had this to say:
“I exercised my freedom of speech and I was punished for doing so,” an emotional Prejean said at a news conference. “This should not happen [...]

Yet More Evidence That Republicans Have Run Out Of Ideas

by Doug Mataconis @ Wednesday, May 13th, 2009. Filed under Politics, Republicans

Their response to the Obama Administration ?
Stop it, or we’re going to call you names:
A member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”
When I asked if such a resolution [...]

Well, It Would Certainly Be A Good Start

by Doug Mataconis @ Wednesday, May 13th, 2009. Filed under Politics, Republicans

Stephen Gordon comes up with a suggested mea culpa for Republicans:
I come before you today to ask — no, to beg — for your forgiveness.
For years, I’ve disregarded my priorities and placed being in power ahead of my duty to you and to the Constitution of the United States.
For years, I’ve been voting [...]

Barack Obama’s Sea Of Red Ink

by Doug Mataconis @ Monday, May 11th, 2009. Filed under Barack Obama, Economics, Politics

The news just keeps getting worse when it comes to the utter fiscal irresponsibility of the Obama Administration:
WASHINGTON (AP) — With the economy performing worse than hoped, revised White House figures point to deepening budget deficits, with the government borrowing almost 50 cents for every dollar it spends this year.
The deficit for the current budget [...]

Ashton Lundeby Update: Less Than Meets The Eye

by Doug Mataconis @ Friday, May 8th, 2009. Filed under Legal, Politics

Earlier this week, I wrote about the story of Ashton Lundeby — a 16 year-old kid being held in Indiana in connection with an alleged bomb threat — and his mother’s allegations that he son was being detained pursuant to the PATRIOT Act.
Well, it seems that there is much less to this story than there [...]

Obama’s Phony Budget Cuts

by Doug Mataconis @ Thursday, May 7th, 2009. Filed under Barack Obama, Economics, Politics

Today, the Obama Administration released the results of a its weeks-long search for areas where the Federal Budget can be cut.
To say the very least, the results were barely even symbolic:
The Obama administration today unveiled program details of a $3.4 trillion federal budget for the fiscal year beginning in October, a proposal that includes [...]

Breaking: Ridge Says He’s Not Running For Senate

by Doug Mataconis @ Thursday, May 7th, 2009. Filed under Politics

Just as I was hitting publish on this post, bulletins starting flying across Twitter that made that post rather moot:
Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge (R) said Thursday that he will not run for the Senate next year, denying Republicans of a high profile and popular candidate to take on Sen. Arlen Specter since he switched [...]

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