WHEN TWO of the founders of Politico, John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei sat down with TNR to talk about their insider Washington franchise, Nate Silver had plenty to say after his name came up. But, by far, my favorite part of the interview comes when the Two Presiding Geniuses decide to pick another fight [...]
Tag Archives | Barack Obama
IRS Official: No White House Involvement in Tea Party Targeting
IF THERE was an award for screwing up, Rep. Darrell Issa would be the top contender, with his latest investigation, which focuses on the IRS targeting Tea Party groups, hoping he’d ensnare the White House, going down in flames. Instead of Issa proving the Tea Party screening was concocted out of the Obama White House, [...]
NSA & PRISM Revelations as Real-Time Journalism
PAID CONTENT has the best piece yet explaining what is important evolving journalism that allows the full story to be told on the Obama administration’s use of PRISM, as well as the NSA dragnet spying efforts that includes the FISA system. Both Glenn Greenwald’s reporting on Edward Snowden’s revelations, as well as Barton Gellman’s reporting, [...]
Obama To Announce Climate Policies in July as KXL Opposition Grows
We won’t know what they’ll be until we see the climate policies Obama says will be announced next month, but at this point, there’s a bit of a “Look! Over there!” feel to the administration’s refusal to talk about KXL, TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline. That’s along with a whiff of a “trade-off,” something like, “I’m [...]
Scandal Mania Takes Bite Out of Obama
SCANDAL MANIA has torpedoed President Obama’s approval rating, which is at its lowest in the last year and one-half. It has been a rough start to President Obama’s second term, with CNN reporting the numbers today, which begin with the President’s trustworthiness taking a big hit. Obama’s down to 45% approval, with over 6 in [...]
Obama Talks with Charlie Rose Tonight
FROM THE White House blog, after promises of an impending defense of the NSA spying programs, President Obama will begin the offense with Charlie Rose tonight. Before leaving for this week’s G-8 summit in the United Kingdom, President Obama sat down with Charlie Rose in the White House Library for a 45-minute interview on topics [...]
Iran Elects “Reformer” Hassan Rouhani
THE HEADLINES are blaring after Hassan Rouhani appears to have won a decisive victory in Iran’s presidential elections. Whether he’s a moderate by American standards is hardly as important as what Iranians feel, especially the young, who were hoping Rouhani would win. When compared with outgoing President Ahmadinejad, it’s easy to consider Hassan Rouhani a [...]
Tech Giants Negotiate Snooping Transparency
IN A deal with “U.S. national security authorities,” tech giants Facebook and Microsoft have an agreement with the Obama administration that allows modest transparency. Google is still negotiating with the U.S. Government, with talks getting stuck on an agreement of “a combined figure for all requests.” It’s an ignominious development for the most powerful brands [...]
Queer Talk: Taking Pride and Pressing for ENDA (Video)
The month of Pride festivals and parades and more is well underway, and this year in addition to a focus on the soon to be released SCOTUS decisions regarding marriage equality, a big part of taking Pride is pressing for the passage of ENDA, the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, and on the executive order candidate Obama [...]
Queer Talk: Marco Rubio- Should be Legal to be Fired for Being Gay (Video)
Sen. Marco Rubio, a GOP presidential hopeful, told Think Progress that he thinks it should be legal to be fired for being gay. Non-heterosexual orientation, and I’ll bet Rubio would include non-“traditional” gender identity, is an okay reason to discriminate in the workplace. Of course, he wouldn’t call it “discrimination.” From Think Progress, Adam Peck [...]
Obama: Syria has Crossed Red Line
SENATOR MCCAIN announced on the Senate floor that Syria has indeed crossed the red line and used chemical weapons, with intelligence agencies having a “high confidence” of this fact. A memo circulating on Capitol Hill revealed that the “intelligence community assesses that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale against the [...]
American Public Disagrees with Peter King
“I’m neither traitor nor hero. I’m an American,” Snowden told the South China Post, an English-language newspaper in Hong Kong, in an interview published on Wednesday. [Reuters] CHARACTERIZATIONS of Edward Snowden are running wild across the media, which exploded when Rep. Peter King called him a traitor, then doubled his idiocy by saying Glenn Greenwald [...]
Bill Clinton: “Lame” to Watch Polls on Syria
DURING A discussion at the McCain Institute for International Leadership in New York City Tuesday night, former President Bill Clinton bluntly stated he was in agreement with Senator McCain on Syria, that action needed to be taken to aid the rebels. Former President Clinton went on to say that you can’t blame inaction on “there [...]
Al Gore Says Obama Should “Block Keystone” (Video)
Al Gore did it again, saying (during a Google+ Conversation) that President Obama should “block Keystone,” the TransCanada pipeline that will carry the very “dirty” tar sands crude from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast refineries. As Politico headlined the story, by Alex Guillen and Darren Goode, “Al Gore: Obama needs to get ‘serious’ on [...]
Orwell’s “1984″ Sales Jump, Hope Readers Don’t Expect Happy Ending
Sales of George Orwell’s 1984, published in 1949, have jumped as, apparently, people look for ways of thinking about the current story of Edward Snowden and the National Security Agency surveillance. The 1949 publishing date was three years from the beginnings of the NSA, in 1951. But NSA basically replaced the Armed Forces Security Agency, [...]
Recent Comments