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Bachmann isn't even an effective lawmaker

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Aug. 15 (Opinion) - When making the case against Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann, her critics tend to focus on her policy positions and agenda: she’s an oft-confused extremist on so many issues, Bachmann has few rivals in Washington. But what sometimes goes overlooked is the fact that Bachmann, after six years as a state legislator and five years as a congresswoman, just isn’t good at her job.

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The public wants and expects new revenue

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Jul. 19 (Opinion) - The new CBS News poll includes two interesting results, one more encouraging than the other. The first is the top-line question of whether the public wants to see the debt ceiling increased or not. Unfortunately, public confusion is proving to be a tough

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Putting defense spending on the table

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Jun. 27 (News Analysis) - One of the many problems with the debt-reduction talks is the narrow scope of what Republicans consider acceptable. They are, or at least claim to be, desperate to cut spending and reduce the deficit in a hurry, but they’re also quick to reject all kinds of credible ideas that would achieve this goal.

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The 'most consistently misinformed media viewers'

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Jun. 19 (Opinion) - “In polls,” Stewart said, in a surprisingly angry tone, “who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers? The most consistently misinformed? Fox. Fox viewers. Consistently. Every poll.”

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What the media establishment refuses to understand

Mon, 30 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - May. 30 (Opinion) - It was quite a roundtable on “Meet the Press” yesterday. Viewers got to see a Republican strategist, a conservative pundit, a conservative Democrat, and an ostensibly center-left columnist who thinks that Democrats are big meanies when it comes to Medicare.

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House GOP to Democrats: Stop Telling the Public About Our Unpopular Agenda

Thu, 12 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Steve Benen - May. 12 (News Report) - A wide variety of House Republicans, especially freshmen in competitive districts, heard from their constituents over the recent two-week break, and discovered that voters aren’t impressed with the GOP plan to end Medicare. Yesterday, they gathered to deliver a message to Democrats: Stop making us look bad by telling the public about our agenda.

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Bush Gave Up on Bin Laden by 2006, Despite Eric Cantor's Trying to Give Him Credit

Fri, 06 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - May. 06 (Opinion) - In March 2002, just a year and a half after 9/11, Bush said of bin Laden, "I truly am not that concerned about him.... You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, to be honest with you." In July 2006, we learned that the Bush administration closed its unit that had been hunting bin Laden. In September 2006, Bush told Fred Barnes, one of his most sycophantic media allies, that an "emphasis on bin Laden doesn't fit with the administration's strategy for combating terrorism." And don't even get me started on Bush's failed strategy that allowed bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora. I'm happy to extend plenty of credit to all kinds of officials throughout the government, but crediting Bush's "vigilance" on bin Laden is deeply silly.

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How We Train Our Cops to Fear Islam

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Meg Stalcup, Joshua Craze - Mar. 01 (Advocacy) - In recent years, the United States has become more and more committed to the idea of bringing local police forces into the business of sniffing out terrorists. In 2002, the National Joint Terrorism Task Force was set up to coordinate existing collaborative efforts among federal, state, and local law enforcement. And since 2006, the Department of Justice has been developing a program called the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative, through which local cops are meant to act as intelligence gatherers on the ground, feeding reports of suspicious activity to a network of data “fusion centers” spread out across the country. The system is scheduled to be up and running in all seventy-two of the nation’s fusion centers by the end of this year. But in order for the cops to play a role in counterterrorism, the thinking goes, they need to be trained.

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The prospects of a 'grand bargain'

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Feb. 15 (Opinion) - Rumors occasionally make the rounds about a "grand bargain" between Democrats and Republicans. The idea is based on the notion of an all-inclusive compromise that would encompass deficit reduction, tax reform, the debt ceiling, and giving entitlements some sort of haircut.

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None dare call it sabotage

Sat, 20 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Nov. 20 (Opinion) - Consider a thought experiment. Imagine you actively disliked the United States, and wanted to deliberately undermine its economy. What kind of positions would you take to do the most damage?

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White House ponders, What now?

Sun, 14 Nov 2010 16:30:49 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Nov. 14 - WHITE HOUSE PONDERS, WHAT NOW?.... Governing hasn't exactly been easy for the Obama administration over the last two years. The White House benefited from a like-minded U.S. House, but Senate obstructionism reached a point unseen in American history.

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Serving up a hot cup of sanity

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Oct. 31 (Opinion) - I didn't get a chance to watch all of yesterday's rally, but from what I could tell, the Stewart/Colbert event had very little to do with politics, literally nothing to do with the elections (none of the speakers even mentioned voting), and everything to do with the sense that the basics of our civil discourse are badly off track.

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No way to run a government

Sat, 11 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Sep. 11 (Opinion) - At yesterday's White House press conference, Bloomberg reporter Hans Nichols asked President Obama about the likelihood of appointing Elizabeth Warren to the new consumer financial protection bureau. The president certainly seemed to be leaning in that direction. Nichols followed up, asking if Obama's concerned about the Senate confirmation process. "I'm concerned about all Senate confirmations these days," the president responded. When the reporter chuckled, Obama added, "Hans, I wasn't trying to be funny. I am concerned about all Senate nominations these days." With that in mind, the New York Times reported today that "an array of top jobs" in the administration, all related to the economy, "remain unfilled."

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Does Boehner really want to debate Iraq and the right side of history?

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 10:51:23 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Aug. 27 - DOES BOEHNER REALLY WANT TO DEBATE IRAQ AND THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY?.... As the next phase of the U.S. presence in Iraq begins, and Operation Iraqi Freedom comes to a formal end, it's fair to give some credit to...

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This Week in God

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 13:50:48 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Aug. 14 - Bryan Fischer, the American Family Association's unofficial spokesman and the group's director of issues analysis, writes some rather incendiary stuff. Like most of the people AFA employs, his main area of expertise (and some might legitimately argue,

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The inadequacy of political reporters' fantasies

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 14:01:03 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Aug. 13 - THE INADEQUACY OF POLITICAL REPORTERS' FANTASIES.... Politico's Mike Allen chatted with far-right media personality Hugh Hewitt this week, and the two speculated about the midterm elections. It led to an exchange I can't quite wrap my head around. (via

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Does Jindal know what he's doing?

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 12:44:29 -0700

Washington Monthly - Jun. 26 - DOES JINDAL KNOW WHAT HE'S DOING?.... We learned something important and unexpected on Thursday night, when CBS News reported that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), for all his rhetoric about an insufficiently aggressive response to the BP oil spill,

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Who Broke America’s Jobs Machine?

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Barry C. Lynn, Phillip Longman - Mar. 04 (Special Report) - If any single number captures the state of the American economy over the last decade, it is zero. That was the net gain in jobs between 1999 and 2009—nada, nil, zip. By painful contrast, from the 1940s through the 1990s, recessions came and went, but no decade ended without at least a 20 percent increase in the number of jobs. Many people blame the great real estate bubble of recent years. The idea here is that once a bubble pops it can destroy more real-world business activity—and jobs—than it creates as it expands. There is some truth to this. But it doesn’t explain why, even when the real estate bubble was at its most inflated, so few jobs were created compared to the tech-stock bubble of the late ’90s. Between 2000 and 2007 American businesses created only seven million jobs, before the great recession destroyed more than that. In the ’90s prior to the dot-com bust, they created more than twenty-two million jobs.

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Religious right livid over transgender appointee

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Jan. 05 (Opinion) - In something of a milestone, President Obama has named Amanda Simpson to be a senior technical advisor to the Commerce Department. That wouldn't be especially noteworthy were it not for the fact that Simpson is one of the first-ever transgender presidential appointees to the federal government, and is a member of the National Center for Transgender Equality's board of directors.

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The fight over the fight

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Dec. 15 (News Analysis) - For the last several months, there's been a relatively quiet debate among progressive supporters of health care reform. While the participants tend to agree on nearly all of the relevant policy details, there's been an important point of division: whether a bill that lacks key liberal goals should be passed anyway, or whether such a bill should be scrapped altogether. In light of recent events, this fight is getting significantly louder. As Greg Sargent noted, the dividing line seems fairly clear: "[O]ne thing that's interesting is how cleanly it breaks down as a disagreement between operatives and wonks. The bloggers who are focused on political organizing and pulling Dems to the left mostly seem to want to kill the bill, while the wonkier types want to salvage it because they think it contains real reform and can act as a foundation for further achievements."

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Best job numbers since the recession began

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Dec. 04 (Opinion) - Waiting for the monthly job numbers to be released this morning, I saw the New York Times homepage run a headline that said the "economy shed 11,000 jobs in November." I assumed, in all sincerity, it was a typo. After all, there were plenty of estimates on what to expect. The most optimistic number I saw was 130,000 job losses; the most pessimistic was 169,000 job losses. A total of 11,000 losses just didn't seem realistic.

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How Stimulating

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Nov. 21 (Comment) - Republican critics of the economic recovery efforts, when they're not taking credit for the money that's benefiting their state/district, take it as a given that the stimulus "failed." For the right, it's a foregone conclusion, hardly worth discussing anymore. The New York Times reminds us today that "dispassionate analysts" agree that a fair look at the stimulus package shows that it may be "messy" but it's also "working."

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Whatever it is, they're against it

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Oct. 08 (Opinion) - In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. She was detained in a shipping container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed, and "warned her that if she left Iraq for

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College for $99 a Month

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Kevin Carey - Oct. 05 (Special Report) - Colleges are caught in the same kind of debt-fueled price spiral that just blew up the real estate market. They’re also in the information business in a time when technology is driving down the cost of selling information to record, destabilizing lows.

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BAUCUS COMES UP EMPTY ON GOP VOTES

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Sep. 16 (Opinion) - So, does this mean Dems will have no choice but to go it alone, probably through reconciliation? That's probably premature -- Snowe isn't going for Baucus' plan, but Baucus' plan isn't the final bill. It's about to be amended a whole lot in committee, and then has to be reconciled with the HELP bill.

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