bill clinton

Before Bill Clinton secured the release of Euna Lee and Laura Ling, I made the longshot prediction that the noontime State Department press briefing would be dominated by questions about the former president’s North Korea trip. Well, just now I got the transcript, and here’s my favorite exchange between deputy spokesman Robert Wood and a [...]

As you may have seen by now, the North Korean state news agency has announced that psychotic dictator Kim Jong-il will pardon captured American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling, hours after granting a surprise audience to former President Bill Clinton. I can’t wait to hear how Clinton’s ability to secure the release of two [...]

In a surprise move first reported by South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper, former President Bill Clinton has secretly traveled to the North Korean capital of Pyongyang to plead for the release of Euna Lee and Laura Ling, the two American journalists captured by North Korean authorities and sentenced to hard labor for “spying.” No guarantees, [...]

Rep. Bill Posey’s (R-Fla.) bill that would change campaign law to demand proof of citizenship from presidential candidates is up to nine co-sponsors. Since June, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-Texas), and Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) have added their names to the list.
Burton is an ironic recruit to the [...]

By a 22-9 vote, the South Carolina Republican executive committee has voted to censure Gov. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.). Only 10 members of the committee demanded his resignation. It’s reminiscent of what happened after the 1998 elections, when Republicans lost seats in the House of Representatives and temporarily considered not voting to impeach President Bill Clinton. [...]

Chris Cilllizza was so impressed by the performance of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he asks whether the senator might be a “new Republican leader.” I’m skeptical about the chances of someone who has truly enraged the base of his party over immigration, and who ran only 42,000 votes ahead [...]

Byron York, the Washington Examiner’s political correspondent, is coming off a few slow weeks by relentlessly hammering the White House over the firing of Americorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin, who had been looking into Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson. Today, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) asked for more details on the firing (which no one argues was [...]

I’m looking back through the transcripts of the April 22 floor speeches that Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) and a number of Republican colleagues gave about the Department of Homeland Security’s assessment on “right-wing extremism.” Carter demanded the resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, comparing the report to the Clinton administration’s worries about right-wing terror, [...]

The far-right site Newsmax.com has quietly launched a blog by stalwart Bill and Hillary Clinton ally Lanny Davis, and it’s as entertainingly scattered and apologetic as, well, everything else Davis does. The title of his May 17 post:
Indict Cheney
The title of his very next post from 11 days later:
On Second Thought, Pardon Cheney

One of the Bush administration’s many efforts to hobble the nation’s environmental protections occurred in 2005, when President George W. Bush lifted a Clinton-era ban on new road-building on nearly 58 million acres of isolated forest and grassland.
Today, the Obama administration reinstated for one year the so-called “roadless rule” for roughly 50 million of those [...]