Posts by Aaron Wiener

The White House sent out a press release last night cataloging statements of praise by leaders in various fields for President Obama’s decision, announced yesterday, to go to Copenhagen for the international climate talks next month. These leaders include politicians — Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) calls the move “one hell of a global game changer [...]

Would the death penalty turn terror suspects into martyrs?
There’s “unrest” in the Dem caucus over Afghanistan.
Dobbs polls at six percent in the 2012 presidential race — so maybe he’ll run for Senate instead.
Jindal gives mixed messages on Landrieu’s “Louisiana Purchase.”
Obama’s headed to Copenhagen — for a day.
A majority — albeit a slim one — of [...]

President Obama will travel to Copenhagen next month to attend part of the international climate conference, The Washington Post reports.
The decision follows months of speculation over whether the president would make the trip. Obama has said for the past few weeks that he would only attend if his presence could be the impetus for a [...]

Public option supporters who have looked at TWI’s Senate Public Option Scoreboard in the past few hours are probably dismayed to see that the math simply doesn’t add up for passage of health reform legislation with a government-run health insurance plan. That’s the result of comments today by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who basically nixed [...]

As national climate legislation slowly simmers on the back burner of the Senate and expectations are lowered for the international climate conference in Copenhagen, environmentalists can take solace in the efforts of California, which this afternoon issued the country’s first broad-based cap-and-trade blueprint to reduce greenhouse emissions.
The Los Angeles Times reports:

The office of Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, just issued a press release announcing the launch of an investigation into “Climategate,” the quasi-scandal involving the release of more than a thousand hacked emails that reveal agenda-driven behavior on the part of climate scientists. To no [...]

Yesterday, I picked apart the “Climategate” scandal, arguing that climate change skeptics’ position — that the leaked emails proved the science behind global warming was fraudulent — didn’t hold water, simply because the emails just weren’t that incriminating. Well, there’s another, far more important reason why their argument is flawed, and that’s the overwhelming evidence [...]

On Friday, the news broke that hackers had obtained and released thousands of email exchanges between climate scientists at England’s University of East Anglia. Climate change skeptics pounced on the leak, dubbing it “Climategate” and proclaiming that the questionable communications between the scientists proved that global warming was based on cooked data.
“Climategate: the final nail [...]

What drives Obama’s approval ratings? It’s the economy, stupid.
Reid makes concessions to Landrieu and Nelson to win their support for Saturday’s health reform procedural vote.
These Senate centrists, in turn, make no secret of their jockeying for leverage.
Saturday’s vote could foreshadow the prospects for health reform’s eventual passage.
Latino leaders blame Rahm for anti-immigrant provisions in health [...]

TPM compiles the many untruths in “Going Rogue.”
Palin has some trouble keeping her Middle East nations straight.
More Americans consider the Fort Hood massacre “murder” than “terrorism.”
Palin, of course, disagrees, and she’ll pay a visit next month.
Three-quarters of Americans like Obama as a person, but fewer than half like his policies.
What’s Doug Hoffman thinking by challenging [...]