MSNBC talk-show host Keith Olbermann unexpectedly announced the end of his show Countdown today. The eight-year-long show was the highest-rated on MSNBC. Olbermann, who gained fame as a host of Sports Center on ESPN, started the show as a humorous look at the news, but morphed into a vocal liberal critic in the later half of the Bush presidency. (Hat… Read more »
Two years to the day before America either inaugurates a new president or re-inaugurates the current one (or, you know, fails to inaugurate anybody due to the declaration of martial law amid the post-apocalyptic nightmare following the End of the World in 2012), Larry Sabato offers some political junkie porn in the form of 19 — count ’em, 19 —… Read more »
Andrew Sullivan: I backed Obama because he promised to resist the easy political calculus and do the right thing to grapple with our serious problems. If he ducks the debt test in his SOTU, if he fails to offer substantive measures to bring the debt and deficit and spending down now, then, to my mind, he fails a core test… Read more »
Joe Lieberman will announce Wednesday whether he intends to seek re-election as Connecticut’s senior U.S. Senator in 2012, and reports say he has decided not to run. [UPDATE: It’s official.] As long-time readers know, this blog and its predecessors have a long and complicated history with Senator Joementum. I am, of course, a Nutmegger by birth, and thus have followed… Read more »
As you may have heard, former Republican vice-presidential nominee and future presidential candidate Sarah Palin today decided it would be a good idea, on the very day of the memorial service for the victims of a deranged, ideologically incoherent lunatic’s murderous rampage in Arizona, to respond to her critics by accusing them of “manufacturing a blood libel” against her. In… Read more »
Okay, I’ll be quick here. I have no interest in engaging anyone about the science of global warming, if it is a danger, and/or if we caused it. I have my ideas on this and I am sure you have yours. And for this moment, that’s all well and good. Right now, all I want is a little sanity. A… Read more »
I’m pretty cynical and jaded, but this is truly f***ing outrageous: This afternoon, as momentum began to build for repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) threatened that if Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) brings up a vote to repeal the ban, Republicans would not support ratification of the New START treaty. … Other Republican Senators — including… Read more »
The House of Representatives has joined the Senate in passing the tax cut compromise deal that extends all the Bush tax cuts for two years, extends unemployment benefits for 13 months, cuts the payroll tax by two percent next year as a temporary stimulus, and gives every American three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pair… Read more »
Look: either the individual mandate is constitutional, or it’s not. And I, like many ObamaCare supporters, was admittedly too sanguine about this issue when it first came up. There are, I’ve come to realize, certainly some very legitimate arguments that it’s unconstitutional. (The Volokh Conspiracy is all over this.) It’s unknowable how the Supreme Court will eventually resolve the issue,… Read more »
Or perhaps we do: Everything you need to know about the new political group No Labels is contained in its slogan: “Not Left. Not Right. Forward.” It’s smug. It sounds like an Obama campaign catchphrase. And it ignores the whole reason politics exists, which is that not everyone agrees on what “Forward” is. … The group’s mission statement is filled… Read more »