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Ken Silverstein

From this author

[Commentary]

Shaky Foundations

The Clintons' so-called charitable enterprise has served as a vehicle to launder money and to enrich family friends.
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[Letter from Baton Rouge]

Dirty South

The foul legacy of Louisiana oil

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[Perspective]

On Brining and Dining

How pro-oil Louisiana politicians have shaped American environmental policy
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[Postcard]

The Most Cajun Place on Earth

A trip to one of the properties at issue in Louisiana’s oil-pollution lawsuits 
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[Browsings]

Secret Oil Company Memos on Pollution in Louisiana

"All of these practices are flagrant violations of the law.”
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[Controversy]

Anatomy of an Al Qaeda “Conference Call”

Dubious sources feed national-security reporter Eli Lake a fraudulent story for political purposes — once again
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[Perspective]

On the Selling of the Egyptian Coup to Liberals

How the mass killing of Islamists is being justified in America
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[Commentary]

A Brilliant Life: Remembering Alexander Cockburn

Alexander Cockburn passed away on July 21 at age 71. He wrote many pieces for Harper’s Magazine over the years, among them “The Tedium Twins,” a classic of humor writing…

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[Article]

The government’s man

How to read the résumé of a terrorist expert

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[Washington Babylon]

Signing Out

This is my last post here at Washington Babylon and I’ll be leaving my position as Harper’s Washington Editor (I will remain as a contributing editor to the magazine). I’ve…

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[Washington Babylon]

Broder and Woodward Still on Lecture Circuit

Two years ago, I wrote about private groups offering big speaking fees and perks to David Broder and Bob Woodward, even though both had talked in the past about the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Incumbency: The Democrats’ Best Hope

The scenario for the midterm elections remains grim for Democrats, but they have two factors working in their favor. First, the pathetic state of the GOP and second, and more…

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[Washington Babylon]

Plumbing the Depths: A review of Megan McCain’s new book

From Leon Wolf in the New Ledger: I initially had reservations about writing this book review at all. After all, it is clear to everyone who has read Meghan McCain’s…

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[Washington Babylon]

American Inequality: The making of a Banana Republic

From Tim Noah at Slate: When it comes to real as opposed to imagined social mobility, surveys find less in the United States than in much of (what we consider)…

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[Washington Babylon]

With Congress, Charity Begins at Home

Last year I posted an item about the James E. Clyburn Research and Scholarship Foundation, the personal charity of House Majority Whip James Clyburn. The foundation’s donors included a number…

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[Washington Babylon]

Chelsea’s Wedding and the Political Class

From Joe Bageant: How about them political elites, huh? Five million bucks for Chelsea Clinton’s wedding, 15K just to rent the air-conditioned shitters — huge chrome and glass babies with…

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[Washington Babylon]

Another Congressional Perk: College scholarships for pals

From the Dallas Morning News: Longtime Dallas congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson has awarded thousands of dollars in college scholarships to four relatives and a top aide’s two children since 2005,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Doh! Bachmann spells name wrong in registering her PAC

As Wonkette reported earlier today, Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota has formed her very own Leadership Political Action Committee, the slush fund of choice for the modern politician. Like many…

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[Washington Babylon]

More on Obama’s Chances to Win Reelection

Nelson Hernandez (among others) took issue with my “clever analysis of President Obama’s excellent chances of re-election.” Hernandez made a number of good points, though he made several comments (for…

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[Washington Babylon]

About That “Year of the Insurgent” Narrative: And what new bogus storyline will the media find to replace it?

A few short months ago the media was filled with narratives about 2010 being the “Year of the Insurgent,” a storyline that was always overblown. That’s not because the public…

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[Washington Babylon]

Race and the Courts

From Stephen Bright, in the Fulton County Daily Report: The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ third ruling that a white supervisor calling black men “boy”—as in “Boy, you better…

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[Washington Babylon]

David Broder Rushed to Hospital for Emergency Craniorectal Procedure

David Broder of the Washington Post has long had his head so far up Washington’s ass that he is incapable of understanding that there are opinions in America beyond the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Why Obama Will Win Reelection: Walter Mondale

With the Democrats looking to receive a solid (and well-deserved) drubbing in the mid-term elections, there’s much talk in the press about whether Barack Obama will be a one-term president.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Goldberg’s Case for War

James Fallows argues that Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in The Atlantic about the prospect of Israel attacking Iran is not actually an endorsement for such an attack, but that “the article…

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[Washington Babylon]

Jeffrey Goldberg’s Convenient Facts

Jonathan Schwarz and Glenn Greenwald demolish Jeffrey Goldberg’s new piece in The Atlantic. The former writes, “Jeffrey Goldberg has just written a long article about the chances of Israel attacking…

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[Washington Babylon]

Trouble for the Democrats’ Favorite Defense Lobbyist

From the Washington Post: Paul J. Magliocchetti was one of the most powerful and influential lobbyists in Washington not too long ago, known for steering campaign contributions to favored lawmakers…

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[Washington Babylon]

Hope and Change in the Middle East

From Laura Rozen: The 2010 Arab Public Opinion poll will be released Thursday at the Brookings Institution by Shibley Telhami, of the University of Maryland and Brookings’ Saban Center for…

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[Washington Babylon]

Jon Stewart Gives Up

And with good reason. Which side is worse? The Republicans who voted against a bill providing health care for 9/11 first responders? Or the Democrats who used a legislative trick…

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[Washington Babylon]

There Go The Midterms

Afghanistan + The Economy + Health Care Reform = this: Only 41% of those surveyed Tuesday through Sunday approved of the way Obama is handling his job, his lowest rating…

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[Washington Babylon]

AIG Teaches Rangel an Ethics Lesson

From Ruth Marcus: My favorite part of the ethics report on Charlie Rangel involves his efforts to “close” a $10 million gift “to create AIG Hall” as part of the…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Tom DeLay Shakedown: Disciple learned from the master

From the Washington Post: Days after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig sank in the Gulf of Mexico, a conservative nonprofit group called the Institute for Energy Research asked BP to…

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[Washington Babylon]

Cheery Economic News to Get Your Week Started

I missed this when it was published a few days ago. Worth a read. From James Kuntsler: I visited the Slate Political Gabfest podcast yesterday. These otherwise excellent, entertaining, highly…

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[Washington Babylon]

Your Stimulus Dollars at Work

Hmmm. I wonder how many times this sort of thing happened with stimulus money? And how many millions (billions?) were wasted? From the Post-Dispatch: When he applied for federal stimulus…

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[Washington Babylon]

Class: The unspoken word of the Shirley Sherrod affair

Michelle Singletary couldn’t quite bring herself to say the word — she used the term “” — but her column otherwise nailed the real story. Instead of focusing on the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Journolist Uproar: Pot, meet kettle

I don’t think all these Daily Caller stories demonstrate that Journolist was a grand liberal media conspiracy, and almost everyone writes intemperate, sarcastic emails from time to time that would…

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[Washington Babylon]

Spotty Record on Oil Rig Safety

From the New York Times: A confidential survey of workers on the Deepwater Horizon in the weeks before the oil rig exploded showed that many of them were concerned about…

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[Washington Babylon]

Our Federal Government: Job training program for energy lobbyists

From the Washington Post: Three out of every four lobbyists who represent oil and gas companies previously worked in the federal government, a proportion that far exceeds the usual revolving-door…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Latest Israeli Crime

From Haaretz: Lawyers for the Arab man convicted of rape by deception and sentenced to 18 months in prison, say they are considering an appeal to the High Court of…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Washington Post on the Sherrod Case: See no racism

The significance of the Shirley Sherrod affair is clear: an employee at the U.S. Department of Agriculture lost her job and was painted as a racist due to the release…

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[Washington Babylon]

BP’s Ticketmaster Service for California Pols

From Mother Jones: For more than a decade, BP has operated a hush-hush phone line that California lawmakers can call to request box seats to NBA games and concerts at…

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[Washington Babylon]

Newtie’s Big Ideas

“‘Consultants argue that public anger, if properly stoked, alone can carry the party over the finish line. In their view, getting bogged down in the issues is a distraction and…

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[Washington Babylon]

More on Octavia Nasr Firing: CNN reporter canned for saying the speakable

From Glenn Greenwald (via Andrew Sullivan): Just to underscore how mild and mainstream were Nasr’s firing comments, consider this 2002 column from ultimate establishment centrist David Ignatius, expressing “sincere respect…

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[Washington Babylon]

Marlboro Kids

From the New York Times: Human Rights Watch, the group best known for documenting governmental abuse and war crimes, plans to release a report on Wednesday showing that child and…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Democrats: Running on empty

From Dana Milbank: It would not be accurate to say that Democrats are worried about losing control of the House in November. It would be accurate to say that Democrats…

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[Washington Babylon]

Your Tax Dollars At Work: Paying for sexual harassment

From Politico: Taxpayers have paid out nearly $1 million per year in settlements to congressional employees who have been harassed or otherwise treated badly by their political bosses over the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Hole-In-One: Ethics “waivers” allow congress to keep golfing

From the Sunlight Foundation: To allow members of Congress and Hill aides to attend their annual fundraising golf tournaments free of charge, Washington’s premier partisan clubs get ethics waivers from…

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[Washington Babylon]

Health Care Firm Crawls Out From Under Rock: Congressman Boehner takes its money

Remember WellCare, the Tampa-based insurer that was accused of “bilking taxpayers of hundreds of millions of dollars by using fraudulent practices that were integral to the company’s profit-making,” says a…

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[Washington Babylon]

World Cup: Defeat for Van Diver, Van Whiner and Van Thug

Spain was clearly the best team in the World Cup and it deserved yesterday’s 1-0 victory over Holland. It controlled the ball and the tempo for most of the match,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Fellowship Travelers: State Department bars Nieman fellow as “terrorist”

From Associated Press: The U.S. government has denied a visa to a prominent Colombian journalist who specializes in conflict and human rights reporting to attend a prestigious fellowship at Harvard…

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[Washington Babylon]

Hand-to-Mouth at a Higher Level

From the New York Times: Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment, the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate…

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[Washington Babylon]

What the Octavia Nasr Case Proves

From the Angry Arab: The dismissal of Octavia Nasr proves this: No matter how much you grovel and how much you insult Arabs and Muslims in the US, as Nasr…

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[Washington Babylon]

Palin’s Plans: Horndog wing will not be enough to carry her across the line

There’s been much speculation about Sarah Palin’s political prospects and the possibility that she will win high office in the 2012 elections. Yesterday Andrew Sullivan posted an item in which…

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[Washington Babylon]

Nixon and Kissinger: The Cheech and Chong of Political Murder

From Jeff Stein: President Richard M. Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry A. Kissinger, joked that an “incompetent” CIA had struggled to successfully carry out an assassination in Chile,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Media Filters: For Washington Post, Krugman not a reliable source but Wall Street analyst totally impartial

One of the more revealing examples of the mainstream media’s laughable claims of “objectivity” came in a Sunday Washington Post story about what lies ahead for the U.S. economy. Written…

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[Washington Babylon]

World Cup: Hands of God

Because I tend to root for Latin American teams at the World Cup (except for Argentina), I began to worry about the fate of its teams when the media narrative…

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[Washington Babylon]

World Cup: Holland deserved it

Holland 2, Brazil 1. In my last post, I noted that soccer is impossible to predict because so much depends on who scores the first goal, luck and poise. Brazil…

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[Article]

Tea Party in the Sonora

For the future of G.O.P. governance, look to Arizona

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[Washington Babylon]

BP: Corporate Code and political money don’t mix

From the Washington Post: BP, the global energy corporation whose massive oil spill is fouling huge swaths of the Gulf of Mexico, proclaims in its corporate code of conduct that…

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[Washington Babylon]

World Cup: Cream rises to top

There were a lot of upsets in the first round but the best teams have reached the quarter-finals at the World Cup: Argentina, Brazil, Germany and Spain (with Holland a…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Lowest Form of Life

From Matt Taibi: I thought I’d seen everything when I read David Brooks saying out loud in a New York Times column that reporters should sit on damaging comments to…

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[Washington Babylon]

Russian Spies and Campaign Finance

A reader, who asked to remain anonymous, sends along the following (slightly edited) email: There are many reasons to move to public financing of elections, the chief one of which…

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[Washington Babylon]

Nibbling at Reform

From Allen Sloan: One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from a former editor, who told me how to handle topics that were likely to annoy…

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[Washington Babylon]

Washington Post: Now hiring

“Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has,” says Lara Logan of CBS. Andrew Sullivan asks, “When will the Washington Post hire her?” You know the answer…

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[Washington Babylon]

Best Newspaper Lede of All Time

From a British sportswriter in 1966, before the World Cup game between England and Germany. Via Andrew Sullivan: Tomorrow, Germany will attempt to defeat us at our national game. It…

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[Washington Babylon]

From “The More Things Change” File

From Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asked [Congress] to investigate and hold hearings on the extent to which White House…

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[Washington Babylon]

Guns to Somalia: Arms trafficking scheme exposed

From Laura Rozen: A federal grand jury in Miami, Florida has indicted an Israeli defense consultant and an American citizen of conspiring to transfer hundreds of AK-47s to the breakaway…

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[Washington Babylon]

So long U.S. Team: You will not be missed

Random World Cup observations: First, does anyone still want to argue about the mediocrity of the U.S. team, which was mercifully eliminated by Ghana on Saturday? In what was arguably…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Weigel Affair

I posted an item Friday morning about why I generally don’t enjoy blogs, saying, “Having one’s own opinion validated twenty times a day really isn’t all that stimulating, though that’s…

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[Washington Babylon]

Pre- and Post-Game Commentary

A number of emailers, not all necessarily friendly, have asked if I intend to post today after the U.S.-Ghana game. In fact, I don’t intend to comment, no matter what…

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[Washington Babylon]

Blogs and Double Standards

I don’t know much about Congressman Paul Kanjorski or whether he’s a racist, but I do know that if a Republican had said this — “We’re giving relief to people…

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[Washington Babylon]

Cry, Baby, Cry

It’s interesting how some teams lose a game at the World Cup and instead of complaining loudly about controversial officiating calls, take responsibility for the loss. For example, here are…

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[Washington Babylon]

Political Journalism’s “State Secret”

From Romenesko: Politico’s Gordon Lubold and Carol E. Lee wrote that “a beat reporter … would not risk burning bridges by publishing many of McChrystal’s remarks.” Their observation was then…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Real News From Afghanistan

No, it’s not about Stanley McChrystal. From AP: June has become the deadliest month of the Afghan war for the NATO-led international military force. An Associated Press count based on…

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[Washington Babylon]

The American Media Finally Realizes It Sucks

The Daily Show nails it again. Bonus: President Gretchen Carlson. Double Bonus: The Hooter’s Memorial at Iwo Jima.

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[Washington Babylon]

Letters on Arizona, Soccer

Email from Cheryl Cage, Democratic candidate for the Arizona State Senate, running against Al Melvin, in Legislative District 26, near Tucson: Your piece in the July Harper’s was, unfortunately, spot-on.…

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[Washington Babylon]

A Victory for Vanilla-Lovers: U.S. advances to second round

The U.S. ties two weak teams, England and Slovenia, and barely beats Algeria and not only advances to the second round but wins its group. Life really is unfair. Even…

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[Washington Babylon]

Laughing Matter? GOP insider alleges hush money paid to former RNC employee

From ABC: The Republican National Committee has doled out more than $100,000 to the top staffer let go after the embarrassing discovery that the party spent nearly $2,000 to entertain…

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[Washington Babylon]

The First Commandment: Kill the Grizzly

From Right Wing Watch (via Andrew Sullivan): Last week, researchers at Yellowstone National Park trapped a Grizzly Bear, tranquilized it and fitted it with a radio collar. Shortly after the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bloggers in Pajamas or Op-ed Writers in Depends? You choose

During the Dog Days of the Cold War, the Soviet Union used to send “Youth Delegations” to international diplomatic events composed almost entirely of doddering 60-year-old-plus hacks. That’s pretty much…

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[Washington Babylon]

Offshore: Where the money is

From The Mufson Report (formerly known as The Washington Post): Willie Sutton robbed banks because that’s where the money is. And oil companies venture into deep waters for exploration because…

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[Washington Babylon]

Mea Culpa: Landon Donovan Not Hateable

OK, OK, I have been convinced by readers that I was unfair to Landon Donovan. However, I still think he should never have claimed after the 2-2 draw with Solvenia…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Oil Spill Winners: As usual, K Street makes a killing

From the Washington Post: Companies involved in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill are hiring a bevy of high-priced Washington lobbyists and consultants to help them weather the crisis, as…

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[Washington Babylon]

Why I Hate Landon Donovan

I vowed not to write about the U.S. team again, but it’s really impossible not to. First, Landon Donovan is an ass. After the game he said the referee “stole”…

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[Washington Babylon]

Room Service, or how Japan’s lobbying for ending commercial whaling ban includes cash, hookers

From the Sunday Times, via TPM: Japan, in an effort to secure votes to allow commercial whaling, has bribed small countries with aid packages, plus spending money and prostitutes for…

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[Washington Babylon]

Gusher: Money from oil industry keeps flowing to congress

From the Washington Post: Lobbyists for BP hosted at least 53 fundraising parties for lawmakers and candidates in recent years — four of them since the explosion and oil spill…

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[Washington Babylon]

U.S. Lobbying Firm’s Kyrgyz Ties

APCO Worldwide, which wanted to represent Turkmenistan for me, has shady ties in Kyrgyzstan as well. From the Wall Street Journal: Weeks before ethnic clashes killed hundreds of people in…

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[Washington Babylon]

Arizona from the Right: A conversation with Senator Ron Gould

Senator Ron Gould bills himself as “the most conservative” politician in the Arizona state legislature, and he has the flat-top haircut to prove it; next to Gould, Sergeant Joe Friday…

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[Washington Babylon]

What’s The Matter With Arizona? A conversation with Senator Rebecca Rios

I have a piece in the July issue of the magazine (not yet available online) about the political looniness in the state of Arizona, which goes well beyond the issue…

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[Washington Babylon]

Save the Walruses: Oil companies unveil visionary green campaign

From Dana Milbank: Congressional investigators looking into the Gulf of Mexico oil spill found that BP and three other oil companies had filed “oil spill safety response plans” for the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Campaign Fundraisers and Votes: Purely coincidental

From the Washington Post: The Office of Congressional Ethics is investigating eight lawmakers who held fundraisers within 48 hours of a major House vote on a Wall Street reform bill…

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[Washington Babylon]

UNESCO Tables Grotesque Obiang “Prize”

In the face of a huge international uproar, I’m told UNESCO has decided today not to allow itself to be used (at least for the time being) by Teodoro Obiang,…

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[Washington Babylon]

World Cup Reaction

I received a number of nasty emails about my item yesterday on why I hate the U.S. soccer team. Keep them coming. Look, I admit my aversion to the U.S.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama and the Gulf Spill: The president’s role

From Rolling Stone: Like the attacks by Al Qaeda, the disaster in the Gulf was preceded by ample warnings – yet the administration had ignored them. Instead of cracking down…

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[Washington Babylon]

Huffington Post Allows Lobbyist to Take Dictator Out for Spin on its Site

A new story in AzeriReport describes how a lobbyist for the corrupt government of Azerbaijan used the Huffington Post as a bulletin board. The lobbyist in question is Jason Katz…

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[Washington Babylon]

Will UNESCO hop in bed with dictator for $3 million? Obama administration comes out against award

Tomorrow UNESCO will decide if it has any shred of dignity or if it will allow itself to be used by a corrupt African dictator for PR purposes. As I’ve…

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[Washington Babylon]

Why I (Still) Hate the U.S. Soccer Team

A year ago I laid out the reasons why I can’t stand the American soccer team. I felt the same way after its first World Cup game, though what I…

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[Washington Babylon]

Boot Helen Thomas: Howard Kurtz finally sees White House press as being too clubby

The Washington press corps is one big incestuous clusterfuck, but the instance in which Howard Kurtz criticized the beltway media was for its failure to lkick out Helen Thomas from…

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[Washington Babylon]

America’s Challenge: Fighting fools and perverts

From Daniel Byman and Christine Fair: They blow each other up by mistake. They bungle even simple schemes. They get intimate with cows and donkeys. Our terrorist enemies trade on…

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[Washington Babylon]

Twinkies: The raw materials

Ever wonder what goes into a Twinkie? Wonder no more. From coolhunting.com, via Andrew Sullivan.

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[Washington Babylon]

Big Tears: Congressman Melancon cries for the Gulf

Point One: The Washington Post reports today that Congressman Charlie Melancon of Louisiana is all choked up about the situation in the Gulf. “The real personification of the leak’s political…

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[Washington Babylon]

Don’t Try Contacting BP’s Wildlife Expert: He’s been dead for five years

From Associated Press: BP PLC’s 582-page regional spill plan for the Gulf, and its 52-page, site-specific plan for the Deepwater Horizon rig vastly understate the dangers posed by an uncontrolled…

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[Washington Babylon]

House Initiative on Corruption: Kill the watchdog

From Politico: The Office of Congressional Ethics, a powerful symbol of Democrats’ promise to “drain the swamp” in Washington, is in danger of having its power stripped after the midterm…

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[Washington Babylon]

Math Quiz: How many drinks does it take to end up in the wrong bed?

Barking up the wrong tree, via Andrew Sullivan, offers a guide (of sorts) to college drinking.

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[Washington Babylon]

Stop the Presses: Media blowhards fight for Helen Thomas’s chair!

Has the Helen Thomas affair prompted reporters to reflect on Middle East coverage? For example, is there a media bias that favors Israel? Is the plight of the Palestinians ignored?…

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[Washington Babylon]

Are Voters Angry?

Steven Taylor of Outside the Beltway writes: Ultimately, I would argue that if the re-elect race for the House is 85% or higher, then most of the media narrative that…

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[Washington Babylon]

BP Execs Promoted Despite Ignoring Safety Problems

From ProPublica: A series of internal investigations over the past decade warned senior BP managers that the company repeatedly disregarded safety and environmental rules and risked a serious accident if…

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[Washington Babylon]

Helen Thomas and “Objective Journalism”

Granted, Helen Thomas’ remarks were vile and disgusting, but it’s been hard to stomach much of the media commentary about her. For example, CBS correspondent Mark Knoller is quoted in…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Gulf Spill: A Drop in the Bucket

From William Minter: The estimates are at best approximate on both sides on the equation, but six weeks after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Jim Messina: Cracks in the “Mr. Fix It” Image

I wrote an item earlier this year about the journalistic practice of the “beat sweetener,” namely writing fawning profiles of top political officials in the hopes of currying favor for…

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[Washington Babylon]

Past Encounter With Future South Carolina Scandal Participants

I don’t have any particular insight into the ongoing political scandal in South Carolina, but I do know the two primary players involved: political consultant Will Folks and gubernatorial candidate…

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[Washington Babylon]

Dictator Plays Race Card in Seeking His Very Own UNESCO Award

The New York Times had a story today about a topic I have covered here several times lately: how Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the dictator of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, is…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Sesame Street Cover-up: Glenn Beck airs floatilla video previously suppressed by all news outlets except none

Thanks to the diligent work of Glenn Beck, the world has finally seen footage from the flotilla incident that shows Israeli soldiers being hit with clubs. Until Beck aired the…

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[Washington Babylon]

More on BP’s Oily Mess, in the Gulf and in Nigeria

The oil spill in the Gulf was the topic of an item posted yesterday, which cited the remarks of a man who grew up in Nigeria and now lives in…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bob Woodward and the Iraq War

Former Washington Post reporter Lorraine Adams on Bob Woodward: I worked with him in passing at the newsroom, actually I worked with him on a few stories so I knew…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congressman Gary Miller, the Rolling Stones, and Campaign Business

During the past few days I’ve reported here on Congressman Gary Miller’s misrepresentations about his military service. As I had noted in the original story, Miller has also been involved…

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[Washington Babylon]

BP’s Oily Mess: Welcome to the United States of Nigeria

I received an email from a reader this morning that said, “A friend from Nigeria now living in the U.S….said BP has made such a mess in Nigeria that generations…

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[Washington Babylon]

UNESCO’s Award for the Worst of the Worst

Yesterday I posted an item about how UNESCO may allow Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the corrupt dictator who rules Equatorial Guinea, to endow a prize in his own name. In…

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[Washington Babylon]

A Trip Down Memory Lane: U.S. financed 1971 Bolivian coup

From digitalemunction.com: For nearly four decades, there’s been an open ques­tion about the 1971 coup that brought dic­ta­tor Hugo Banzer Suárez to power in Bolivia: was the U.S. gov­ern­ment involved?…

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[Washington Babylon]

UNESCO for Sale: Dictators allowed to buy their own prizes, for the right price

In the face of intense pressure from human rights and advocacy groups and a barrage of bad publicity, the lunkheads who run UNESCO are apparently reconsidering their decision to allow…

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[Washington Babylon]

More on Congressman Miller’s “Service” During Vietnam War

After I posted an item yesterday about California Congressman Gary Miller misrepresenting his military service, Miller’s office contacted several of the publications I cited to correct the record. Miller told…

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[Washington Babylon]

Piracy on the High Seas

From David Grossman: How insecure, confused and panicky a country must be, to act as Israel acted! With a combination of excessive military force, and a fatal failure to anticipate…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Only Real Questions About the Israeli Attack

1. When will Israel call for an investigation into the incident? 2. When will the Washington Post editorial page cite the investigation in hailing Israel as the only “true democracy…

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[Washington Babylon]

“It has been a tremendous honor to have served”: Congressman Gary Miller’s Vietnam Odyssey

[Editor’s note: After this item ran, Miller’s office contacted Congress.org (and apparently several other publications cited below) to correct the misinformation about his military record.] Congressman Gary Miller of California…

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[Washington Babylon]

Facebook Privacy: What a joke

From The Onion: All 1,472 employees of Facebook, Inc. reportedly burst out in uncontrollable laughter Wednesday following Albuquerque resident Jason Herrick’s attempts to protect his personal information from exploitation on…

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[Washington Babylon]

The “Phantom” Motrin Recall

From the Washington Post: The company at the center of a massive recall of children’s Tylenol and other popular over-the-counter products tried to perform a “phantom recall” of defective Motrin…

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[Washington Babylon]

Industrial Warfare

From Steven Pearlstein: The biggest oil spill ever. The biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. The deadliest mine disaster in 25 years. One recall after another of toys from…

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[Washington Babylon]

J.D. Hayworth: Two-time nominee as dumb congressman

John McCain’s campaign has started running a web ad attacking his GOP primary opponent, J.D. Hayworth, ridiculing him for saying earlier this week that “we never formally declared war on…

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[Washington Babylon]

Day Traders: Members of congress set own rules on stock trades

In 2006, I wrote a piece about then-Congressman Jeb Bradley, who owned about $1 million in oil, gas and electric company stock, took over $45,000 in campaign contributions from energy…

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[Washington Babylon]

CIA’s Brainstorm: Saddam and Gomorrah

From Jeff Stein: During planning for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group kicked around a number of ideas for discrediting Saddam Hussein in the eyes of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Senator Nelson: Do not ask this man to download music to your iPod

From the Washington Post: Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) has long pushed an amendment to limit those pesky and expensive transaction fees at automated teller machines, but his fellow senators didn’t…

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[Washington Babylon]

New lead in Times Square case

Interesting story from ProPublica: U.S. and Pakistani investigators are pursuing a new lead in the failed Times Square bombing: That a major in Pakistan’s army knew of Faisal Shahzad’s plans…

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[Washington Babylon]

Gold Fever

You’ve probably heard about Goldline, the precious-metals purveyor that buys advertising on the shows of a number of conservative commentators, most famously Glenn Beck. Beck, of course, is a big…

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[Washington Babylon]

Goldman Sachs Abroad: Helping the rich get richer

From Global Witness: The investment bank Goldman Sachs is backing an oil deal in Angola by U.S. firm Cobalt International Energy, despite a risk that local partners in the deal…

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[Washington Babylon]

Newt: I have here in my hand a list of names….

From Politico: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Wednesday said that “secular socialism” has “infiltrated” the nation’s courts, the Congress, academia, the bureaucracy, Hollywood and the news media and is…

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[Washington Babylon]

Toyota: Testing well

From USA Today: For four decades, the company Toyota commissioned to investigate allegations of unintended acceleration has played a central role in many of the most heated auto safety debates,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama’s Freedom Agenda for Egypt

From Adam Shatz in London Review of Books: Barack Obama, keen to break with Bush’s messianic talk about spreading democracy, has worked to rebuild trust with the Egyptian government. In…

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[Washington Babylon]

Real Financial Reform

Forget the Dodd bill. Read about and listen to Richard Duncan, who several years ago predicted the collapse of the housing bubble. Now he wants to break up the big…

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[Washington Babylon]

Political Masterpiece Theater

From Political Wire: The True Republican PAC is running an advertisement in Alabama’s GOP gubernatorial race attacking Bradley Byrne (R) because he supports the teaching of evolution in schools. Byrne…

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[Washington Babylon]

Everything You Wanted to Know About the British Election But Were Afraid to Ask

The Onion asks the question on the mind of all Americans: “Is David Cameron the one that was the British Obama, or is he the other guy that was the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Don’t Cry For Me, Florida

A real tearjerker from the St. Petersburg Times, about the difficulties faced by the unemployed. As Gov. Charlie Crist switched from Republican to independent in the race for U.S. Senate,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Political Donations from the Tax Master

“Attorney General Greg Abbott filed suit today against Houston-based TaxMasters and CEO Patrick Cox, accusing the company of deceiving customers with tax problems,” reports the Dallas Morning News. “Cox is…

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[Washington Babylon]

Afghanistan’s Western War

From Doug Bandow: The vast majority of passengers on my flights into and out of Kabul were white males, many with military-style haircuts and several with military tattoos. A few…

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[Washington Babylon]

Smearing Goldstone: Usual Suspects

From Matthew Yglesias: I find it a bit curious that strident defenders of Israeli foreign policy take a harder line on Richard Goldstone’s apartheid-era conduct than does Nelson Mandela and…

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[Washington Babylon]

Senator Bond Bored by Times Square Plot?

From the Wall Street Journal: [Senator Kit] Bond emerged Tuesday from a briefing arranged by the Justice Department for members of the intelligence panel and said he’s “not convinced by…

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[Washington Babylon]

Gulnara’s World Cup: Princess of the Uzbeks strikes again

From Eurasianet: The head of FC Barcelona, one of the most famous football clubs in the world, has had extensive dealings with Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of Uzbekistan’s president, according…

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[Washington Babylon]

As Oil Pours Into Gulf, Oil Industry Fights Anti-Corruption Measure

It takes real balls for the oil industry to fight against transparency and accountability in the middle of a massive oil spill, but that’s precisely what the American Petroleum Institute…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Alex Gibney on Casino Jack

Alex Gibney heads Jigsaw Productions and is the executive producer, director, and writer of the new movie “Casino Jack and the United States of Money,” which tells the story of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Blowback from Afghanistan

From the Washington Post: U.S. military officials in eastern Afghanistan thought they had come up with a novel way to stem the anger and disillusionment about government corruption that fuels…

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[Washington Babylon]

Senator Ensign Investigation, Undercover

From Channel 8 News in Las Vegas: Embattled U.S. Senator John Ensign awaits word on whether the Senate Ethics Committee will move forward with public hearings into scandals swirling around…

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[Washington Babylon]

The News Media’s $43 Million Man

Take this quiz from Vanity Fair and match up the salary of news executives with the size of their corporate layoffs. For example, which executive recently announced that some seven…

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[Washington Babylon]

Model Workers

From Politico: An immigration proposal circulated by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) would make it easier for foreign fashion models to work America’s catwalks. Just don’t bother asking Schumer’s office how…

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[Washington Babylon]

Hedge Funds Evading Regulation, With Ample Hired Help

From Politico: More than half the 83 lobbyists registered last year to work for the industries’ two trade groups, the Private Equity Council and the Managed Funds Association, have served…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Future of Palestine?

It’s not pretty. From John Mearsheimer: The Palestinians are not going to get their own state any time soon. They are instead going to end up living in an apartheid…

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[Washington Babylon]

The “A” Word: Anarchy is Somalia’s recipe for success

From Benjamin Powell: Perhaps the title overstates the situation slightly. It is hard to call any country mired in poverty an economic success. Yet by most measures Somalia’s poverty is…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama X

From Gawker: Violent black radical Barack Hussein Obama X is learning about wind energy in Iowa, The Washington Post reports in a most unfortunate photo caption error. It appears Obama…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congress: Flying Blind on Afghanistan

From Roll Call: President Barack Obama dispatched more than 50,000 additional troops to Afghanistan with essentially no legislative debate….This silence is amazing because it is widely accepted that past administrations,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Palin’s Financial Rise

From New York: Sarah Palin is a singular national industry. She didn’t invent her new role out of whole cloth. Other politicians have cashed out, used the revolving door, doing…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Parties of Spend and Spend

Yesterday I noted here that the GOP had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on its recent meeting in Honolulu. Turns out, not surprisingly, that the Democrats are no more…

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[Washington Babylon]

They Oughta Pay Us

From Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, on the country’s worst governors: Number of miles Gov. Perdue flew in a private jet provided by a lobbyist to attend to…

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[Washington Babylon]

GOP’s Hawaiian Vacation: The party of spend and spend

From National Journal: The RNC spent more than $340K at a semi-annual meeting in Honolulu in Jan., the latest example of the party spending lavishly on itself while GOP officials…

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[Washington Babylon]

Dreaming of a Life in Hollywood? Stop

From The Onion: Saying that he’s had a few movie ideas kicking around for a while now, local resident and very depressing man Scott Norgren purchased screenwriting software Tuesday. “I’m…

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[Washington Babylon]

More from the UBS Whistleblower

Last week I posted an item here on an interview with Bradley Birkenfeld, a former banker who “blew the whistle on thousands of secret bank accounts rich Americans held at…

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[Washington Babylon]

U.S. Politicos Held Offshore Accounts with UBS

From the Daily News: A former banker who blew the whistle on thousands of secret bank accounts rich Americans held at Swiss giant UBS claimed Thursday some U.S. politicians also…

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[Washington Babylon]

Christopher “Dudus” Coke: Best name ever for (alleged) drug dealer

Interesting story from the Washington Post: Last fall, the blue-chip law firm of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips signed a $400,000 contract to lobby on behalf of the government of Jamaica,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Party Bosses and the Boss

I did an item awhile back about a fundraiser for Congressman Ed Towns that was hosted by the Entertainment Software Association and held at the Verizon Center during a show…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bad News: banks safer than biolabs

ProPublica talks with Charles S. Faddis, a former top operative for the CIA and author of a new book about “likely terror targets in the U.S.: dams, rail lines, military…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama: Not a Great Communicator

From Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, on yesterday’s nuclear summit: In the middle of it all was Obama — occupant of an office once informally known as “leader of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Funeral Decorum from Rep. Massa: Hit on attendees, yes, solicit the corpse, no

From the Washington Post: Just three months after Eric Massa was elected to Congress, his young male employees on Capitol Hill began complaining to supervisors that the lawmaker was making…

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[Washington Babylon]

Clinton Donor Figures in New Halliburton Bribe Document

From Saharareporters.com: Saharareporters has come into possession of a document which shows that several former Nigerian Heads of State, and in some cases their wives, were beneficiaries of Halliburton bribe…

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[Washington Babylon]

Media Reaction to New Evidence Implicating Kissinger in Murder: Yawn

The Associated Press reported a fairly amazing story over the weekend. It began: As secretary of state, Henry Kissinger canceled a U.S. warning against carrying out international political assassinations that…

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[Washington Babylon]

Teodoro Nguema Obiang: Part Imelda Marcos, part Cruella de Ville

As recently reported here, the U.S. government has been investigating Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, son of the dictator of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, for money laundering and corruption. Obiang, who earns…

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[Washington Babylon]

Morris Dees: A Life Fighting Poverty

I’ve written in the past on various occasions about Morris Dees, head of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the bogus “civil rights organization” whose chief (and wildly successful) mission…

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[Washington Babylon]

Two Former Senators May Find Themselves Out of Board Positions with Kyrgyz Revolution

Looks like former Senators Bob Dole and Bennett Johnston are on the board of a Kyrgyz bank called AsiaUniversalBank (AUB). During its final weeks in power, the Kurmanbek Bakiyev regime…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama’s War Powers

From Eli Lake at Reason: When it comes to the legal framework for confronting terrorism, President Obama is acting in no meaningful sense any different than President Bush after 2006,…

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[Washington Babylon]

How Green is the iPad?

From the Washington Examiner: The Apple clientele is not homogenous — it’s got a few different species of hip. But watch closely the current iPad commercial and you’ll see Apple’s…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Mac McClelland on Burma

Mac McClelland writes “The Rights Stuff” blog for Mother Jones magazine and her work has also appeared in The Nation, GQ South Africa, Hustler, and other publications. She is the…

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[Washington Babylon]

If You Voted for McCain, This Man Will Touch Your Penis

And it’s covered by your insurance company. Check him out.

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[Washington Babylon]

Gambling Wars

In Alabama the hottest political issue is not deficits or job creation. It’s a computerized gambling machine called electronic bingo. Governor Bob Riley has launched a major effort to put…

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[Article]

Mad men

Introducing the defense industry's pay-to-play ad agency

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[Washington Babylon]

Washington Babylon on Break

Ken Silverstein is traveling. Washington Babylon will return next week.

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[Washington Babylon]

Is Pentagon in Bed with “Queen of the Uzbeks”?

Should the Pentagon be cutting deals with a company apparently controlled by the powerful daughter of Uzbekistan’s dissident-boiling dictator, Islam Karimov? As previously noted here, Gulnara Karimova has amassed a…

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[Washington Babylon]

Is Californistan Californicated?

If you missed this yesterday, from the Boston Globe, via National Review Online: Traditional Wall Street investors have taken note. Iraq is now considered a safer bet than Argentina, Venezuela,…

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[Washington Babylon]

When Will The U.S. Be Leaving Afghanistan? Never! (or not anytime soon)

A few months back I attended a panel on Afghanistan sponsored by the the Middle East Policy Council, which is headed by Frank Anderson, a former senior CIA official. The…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Khost Bombing: What went wrong?

The inestimable Jeff Stein is now writing for the Washington Post, and his debut “SpyTalk” column looks at the Khost bombing last December 30th, which killed seven CIA officers and…

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[Washington Babylon]

Liberian Justice, Brought to You by Lockheed

Emira Woods of the Institute for Policy Studies sent along this article from the Wall Street Journal: Lockheed Martin Corp. became the nation’s No. 1 military contractor by selling cutting-edge…

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[Washington Babylon]

News Flash: Republicans fail to block legislation (on student loans)

“Legislation hailed by supporters as the most significant change to college student lending in a generation passed the House on Sunday night,” reports the Washington Post. “The student aid initiative,…

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[Washington Babylon]

“Hate,” Immigration, and the Southern Poverty Law Center

I spoke at a panel last week sponsored by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a conservative group, about its new report on the Southern Poverty Law Center. The report…

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[Washington Babylon]

That Acorn Sting

Initially, I had no problem with the sting pulled on ACORN by the conservative activists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles. “It’s a serious matter when at least three different ACORN…

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[Washington Babylon]

Health Care, Waterboarding and Conspiracies

On balance, and for reasons not necessarily related to its contents, I suppose it’s better that the health care bill passed than not. But the Democrats, advocates, and (worst of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Campaign Dollars and the Financial Services Reform Legislation Debate

“U.S. tax authorities are expected to ‘very shortly’ launch another prosecution against a foreign bank similar to the tax evasion case they pressed against Switzerland’s UBS,” an Internal Revenue Service…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Richard Posner on Capitalism and Crisis

Richard Posner has been a judge on the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals since Ronald Reagan appointed him to that position in 1981. He is also a senior lecturer…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congressional Spending: Whitewash is cheap

Congress is normally not shy about spending federal money, but according to a story from Roll Call, one committee is coming in under budget: ethics. Spending records indicate the House’s…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Pelosi Pledge: Change you can’t even believe

“The American people(1) voted to restore integrity(2) and honesty(3) in Washington, D.C.,(4) and the Democrats(5) intend to lead the most honest(6), most open(7) and most ethical(8) Congress(9) in history(10).” Nancy…

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[Washington Babylon]

Is a New Wave of Foreclosures Coming?

From the Washington Post: The housing market is facing swelling ranks of homeowners who are seriously delinquent but have yet to lose their homes, and this is threatening a new…

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[Washington Babylon]

Pork for Scandal-plagued NJ University: So much for congressional vetting of earmark requests

From ABC News: Department of Homeland Security investigators have contacted New Jersey officials with questions about the fate of federal grant money awarded to Stevens Institute of Technology to help…

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[Washington Babylon]

Senator Ensign’s Spirit of Bipartisanship

From the New York Times: Previously undisclosed e-mail messages turned over to the F.B.I. and Senate ethics investigators provide new evidence about Senator John Ensign’s efforts to steer lobbying work…

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[Washington Babylon]

Pay Day for Senator Corker’s Donors

From the New York Times: Senator Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who is playing a crucial role in bipartisan negotiations over financial regulation, pressed to remove a provision from draft…

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[Washington Babylon]

Revolving Door: Unsafe at any speed

From the Washington Post: Dozens of former federal officials are playing leading roles in helping carmakers handle federal investigations of auto defects, including those for Toyota’s runaway-acceleration problems. A Washington…

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[Washington Babylon]

Did Obama Advisor Resign Due to Federal Probe?

From ABC News: When the White House announced last week it would be losing the services of Lewis A. Sachs, one of the president’s top economic advisers, the reason given…

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[Washington Babylon]

Brooklyn Bridge For Sale In Washington: No Tie Between Campaign Money and Earmarks

From the Washington Post: House Appropriations defense subcommittee member James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) works hard at fundraising: Two to three times a week, he telephones contributors to ask for…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congress Sticks It to Main Street Again?

From the Washington Post: When financial reform legislation finally lands on the Senate floor, a provision that advocates call the single most important item for Main Street investors will probably…

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[Washington Babylon]

Biggest Beneficiaries of the Jobs Bill? Not the jobless

From Taxpayers for Common Sense: The Senate is working on a compliment to the recently passed $15 billion jobs bill. This nearly $150 billion package is supposed to help the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Azerbaijan’s 11-Year-Old President

Nice story in the Washington Post: Even by the standards of a city that celebrates extravagance, it was a spectacular shopping spree: In just two weeks early last year, an…

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[Washington Babylon]

ABA Prez: Every human being entitled to legal representation — especially those paying cash

TPM ran an item yesterday in which American Bar Association President Carolyn Lamm made an emotional plea on behalf of the principle of legal representation for all. In response “to…

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[Washington Babylon]

PFC Schmuck

From Wired: In Israel, the military had to call off an entire operation after a trooper posted the time and place of an upcoming raid in the West Bank on…

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[Washington Babylon]

A Powerpoint Guide for Dictators

I noted here recently that two former Pentagon officials had pitched their services to the government of Guinea, which is accused of the massacre of over 100 civilians last September.…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Peter Hessler About Driving in China

Peter Hessler is a staff writer at the New Yorker, where he served as Beijing correspondent from 2000 to 2007. Harper Collins just released his latest book, Country Driving, which…

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[Washington Babylon]

Disaster Porn: A geography lesson from Rick Sanchez

On the Daily Show last night (video below), Jon Stewart highlighted Rick Sanchez’s coverage of the earthquake in Chile, saying that the CNN newsman reminded him of “a guy at…

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[Washington Babylon]

Defining Deviancy Down

Over the past month or so, the Supreme Court, Congress, and government agencies have taken a number of steps that, collectively, “define deviancy down” (in the words of one Washington…

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[Washington Babylon]

Desiree Rogers and the Danger of the Beat Sweetener

Poor Desiree Rogers. A victim of the Salahi State Crashing affair, she’s now out as White House social secretary, replaced by fundraiser Julianna Smoot. When she took the job a…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama: The Republicans stole my lunch money

From Dana Milbank, in yesterday’s Washington Post: Our president is not a bully; in fact, he is the victim of bullying. He is bullied by Republicans on health care. He…

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[Washington Babylon]

Health Care and Meat Inspectors: Obama at the Health Care Summit

Poor Obama. It must be hard being so much smarter than his political opponents, which was so evident at yesterday’s health care summit. Of course, being smart doesn’t always lead…

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[Washington Babylon]

Sally Quinn Taken Out Back And Shot (or at least her column was)

Sure, you can get a column at the Washington Post simply by marrying Ben Bradlee–but apparently you can’t keep it forever. At least not if it’s as awful as Sally…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Upside of Guinea Massacre

From Africa Confidential: Blamed for the massacre of over 100 civilians last September, the junta in Conakry is trying to improve its image via a United States-based public relations company…

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[Washington Babylon]

Sting’s Lame Alibi: Why I did show in torture-loving Uzbekistan

A few months back I noted here that Sting has traveled to Uzbekistan and played a concert at the invitation of Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of dictator Islam Karimov. Now…

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[Washington Babylon]

Cronyism: The other surge in Afghanistan

From the Washington Post: Afghanistan’s biggest private bank — founded by the Islamic nation’s only world-class poker player — celebrated its fifth year in business last summer with a lottery…

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[Washington Babylon]

Washington Babylon on Break

Ken Silverstein is traveling. Washington Babylon will return next week.

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[Washington Babylon]

David Broder Loves Sarah Palin…And Dan Quayle

“The snows that obliterated Washington in the past week interfered with many scheduled meetings, but they did not prevent the delivery of one important political message: Take Sarah Palin seriously,”…

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[Washington Babylon]

GOP Fiscal Discipline Hits Hawaii

Watch the Republicans put their finger on the pulse of America. From the Daily Show.

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama: The Last to Catch On

From The Plum Line: At the private White House meeting today between Obama and Congressional leaders, the President and John Boehner got into a testy exchange, aides say, with Obama…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bad Weather Lightening Pockets of Congress Members

From an email sent out this afternoon by Bellwether Consulting Group, which raises money for Republicans: Subject: Canceled Events: Granger, Burr, Isakson & Griffin Due to the inclement weather forecast,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Electorate already lost faith in democracy, Supreme Court finishes things off

Writing for the majority in the Citizens United v. FEC case, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy stated: “The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to…

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[Washington Babylon]

Senate report details stretch Hummers, skirt-chasing attorneys, shrink-wrapped cash!

The senate is holding hearings and issuing a report today that shows how a number of corrupt African officials — and their American enablers — used the U.S. banking systems…

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[Washington Babylon]

In Aftermath of Court Ruling, McCain Facing Tough Re-election Challenge

From The Onion: In a landmark decision that overturned decades of legal precedent, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Tuesday to remove all restrictions that had previously barred corporations from…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bottoms Up: Lobbyists win big for foreign rum maker

From ProPublica: A transfer of billions of dollars in federal aid from public projects in Puerto Rico to one of the world’s largest liquor conglomerates over the next 30 years…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congressman Issa’s Joke: Dictatorship in Kazakhstan, and Washington D.C.

A bizarre congressional hearing yesterday, as Kazakhstan’s Foreign Minister, Kanat Saudabayev, testified before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is co-chaired by Congressmen Benjamin Cardin and Alcee…

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[Washington Babylon]

Where Art Thou, Esme?

From Politics Daily: Somewhere in England, I so want to believe, lives a jazz-loving, relentlessly honest, incisively bright, deeply sentimental 78-year-old woman named Esmé who long ago befriended an American…

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[Washington Babylon]

Stop The Presses (no starch)!: Cosmo skewers the senate

“The treason of the Senate! Treason is a strong word, but not too strong, rather too weak to characterize the situation in which the Senate is the eager, resourceful, indefatigable…

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[Washington Babylon]

Health Care Lobbying: There goes the GDP of Grenada

From the New York Times: President Obama has blamed many factors for the stalling of his health care overhaul, from the recent special election in Massachusetts that deprived Democrats of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Hitler: There’s an app for that

The latest in the Downfall parodies: Hitler on the iPad (via Huffington Post)…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Real State of the Union

From The Hill: A day after bashing lobbyists, President Barack Obama’s administration has invited K Street insiders to join private briefings on a range of topics addressed in Wednesday’s State…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bernanke-gate! What’s in those memos?

Looks like someone leaked some very specific information to Congressman Darryl Issa. In a letter sent yesterday to Congressman Edolphus Towns, chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Waterboarding Zubaydah: It didn’t work so well after all

From Jeff Stein: Well, it’s official now: John Kiriakou, the former CIA operative who affirmed claims that waterboarding quickly unloosed the tongues of hard-core terrorists, says he didn’t know what…

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[Washington Babylon]

They’re Back!!!! A Neocon Resurrection?

From Newsweek Had you Googled “neoconservative” and “death” that day, four days after the 89-year-old Kristol expired, you’d have found lots on their long-rumored—and for some, much-anticipated and -savored—demise. On…

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[Washington Babylon]

Al Qaeda: The Pentagon’s official historian

From Justin Elliott at TPM: When the Pentagon’s internal think tank decided in 2004 it needed a better understanding of Al Qaeda, it turned to an unlikely source: the terrorism…

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[Washington Babylon]

Industry: Failure of health-care reform means less money for us

From the Associated Press: Nearly as shaken by the Massachusetts vote were health care provider groups that have supported the Democratic effort, such as drug makers, hospitals and doctors. While…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Pillars of Afghanistan’s Economy: Drugs and bribes

From a new United Nations report: Poverty and violence are usually portrayed as the biggest challenges confronting Afghanistan. But ask the Afghans themselves, and you get a different answer: corruption…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama, Year One

Many Democrats and liberal bloggers are trying to convince themselves, publicly at least, that last night’s victory by Scott Brown was largely due to the poor campaign run by Martha…

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[Washington Babylon]

What the End of Democratic Rule Really Means

“Finally Americans will get the opportunity to see what it looks like when a filibuster-proof majority is squandered,” I wrote here last July, after Al Franken was declared the victor…

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[Washington Babylon]

Chasing The Two-Dollar T-shirt

My article “Shopping for Sweat: The human cost of a two-dollar T-shirt” appears in the current issue of Harper’s. For those wanting to know more, I was interviewed about the…

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[Washington Babylon]

More on Haiti’s History

Jack Shafer at Slate writes to say that I was unfair to Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution in an item yesterday on Haiti. I had referred to a post which…

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[Washington Babylon]

Glenn and Sarah: A love story

I try not to blog about Glenn Beck because there’s really not much to say at this point, but in this instance Jon Stewart makes it impossible. Watch the Daily…

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[Washington Babylon]

Photos From Haiti

The Boston Globe has a stunning collection of photographs from Haiti. Hard to take.

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[Washington Babylon]

Haiti: Media provides sanitized history for American audiences

As I noted here yesterday, much of the media coverage (including the blogosphere) of the tragedy in Haiti lacks any sort of historical perspective and makes it impossible to understand…

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[Washington Babylon]

Haiti: A trip down memory lane

“In the wake of the devastating earthquake, American eyes are again turned toward Haiti—something that only seems to happen when yet another disaster strikes, and never during the daily chaos…

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[Washington Babylon]

Google, Paper Tiger

From Foreign Policy: Unlike many other honorable members of the technology blogosphere, I am not too excited about Google’s ultimatum to the Chinese government (if you have been living in…

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[Washington Babylon]

Senate Race in Massachusetts: K Street vs. “The World’s Sexiest Man”

Interesting developments in the senate race between Democrat Martha Coakley and Republican Scott Brown: From the Washington Examiner: Coakley said in a debate Monday night that her opponent Scott Brown…

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[Washington Babylon]

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Peter Orszag But Didn’t Care Enough to Ask

From Gawker: What a wild few months for Office of Management and Budget stud-cum-nerd Peter Orszag! His lovechild is born! He’s engaged to not-the-mama! And he’s got the New York…

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[Washington Babylon]

How Could They Let Him Fly on a One-Way Ticket? They didn’t

From Justin Elliott at TPM: In a remarkable example of how bad information can travel far and wide, dozens of media outlets around the world have said Umar Abdulmutallab was…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Gregory Johnsen on Yemen

Gregory Johnsen, a former Fulbright Fellow in Yemen, is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Johnsen co-runs the website Waq al-Waq with Brian O’Neill, a…

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[Washington Babylon]

Follow The Money, If You Can: Healthcare Reform

From the Washington Post: Many of the Washington interest groups that are seeking to shape final health-care legislation in the coming weeks operate with opaque financing, often receiving hidden support…

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[Washington Babylon]

The White House Party Crasher: My Neighbor

I woke up this morning and discovered that I live down the street from a private club headed by a man identified in today’s Washington Post as the third White…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama Administration Blushing: Shades of Bush

OK, maybe this isn’t quite as bad (yet) as “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US”, but it doesn’t look good. This from a Washington Post story on yesterday’s talk…

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[Washington Babylon]

Yemen: A primer

Face it, until recently many of you didn’t know for sure if Yemen was a country or an erectile dsyfunction medication. Now that Yemen has emerged as a major focus…

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[Letter from Cambodia]

Shopping for Sweat

The human cost of a two-dollar T-shirt

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[Washington Babylon]

AIG to U.S. Gov’t: Drop Dead

From the Washington Post: When word spread earlier this year that American International Group had paid more than $165 million in retention bonuses at the division that had precipitated the…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for John Scott-Railton on Cambodia

While completing a master’s degree at the University of Michigan, John Scott-Railton helped develop “participatory mapping” projects aimed at protecting the fragile property rights of poor families living in Phnom…

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[Washington Babylon]

It Could Happen Here

From The Onion, via Andrew Sullivan: In a sudden and unexpected blow to the Americans working to protect the holiday, liberal U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt…

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[Washington Babylon]

Subprime lending problem? What problem?

From the Washington Post: Foreclosures already pocked Chicago’s poorer neighborhoods but the downtown still was booming as the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago convened its annual conference in May 2007.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Toxic Green Cloud Over Copenhagen

Wonkette had a funny pre-climate change summit item about members of Congress, even conservative Republicans, fighting to go to Copenhagen. The story was headlined “Not EVERYONE In Congress Can Go…

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[Washington Babylon]

Health Care, Obama, and Leadership

From Robert Samuelson: Barack Obama’s quest for historic health-care legislation has turned into a parody of leadership. We usually associate presidential leadership with the pursuit of goals that, though initially…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama Doing For Climate Change What He Did For Health Care

“President Obama called on world leaders to come to an agreement on climate change, no matter how imperfect,” the New York Times reported today. The Times also said that Obama…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Sweat of His Labor: Kristof and the global apparel industry

I have an article in the January issue of Harper’s called “Shopping for sweat: The human cost of a two-dollar T-shirt,” which looks at the apparel industry in Cambodia. That…

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[Washington Babylon]

Taibbi v. Liberal Blogosphere, Continued

Tim Fernholz of the American Prospect wrote me an email complaining about an item I wrote yesterday, which questioned the motives of those attacking Matt Taibbi’s piece on Obama in…

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[Washington Babylon]

Yes, We Have No Tomatoes: Costco’s missile defense shield for Palin

The Salt Lake City Tribune tells the tale of Helen Rappaport, a Utah woman who went shopping at Costco shortly before a Sarah Palin book signing event at the store:…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama’s Strategy for Victory: Defeat

I mentioned in a post yesterday that liberal bloggers tend to exempt President Obama for blame over the failures of his administration. Some times it’s said that Obama inherited a…

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[Washington Babylon]

Taibbi vs. Obama (and the Liberal Blogosphere)

Unemployment stands at over 10 percent, meaningful health care reform is collapsing, and the banks have reaped huge profits thanks to the Obama administration’s policies. Naturally, liberal bloggers are upset–but…

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[Washington Babylon]

Will Tony Blair Eat Gonads One Day?

From the Daily Mail: Is there any way this country can officially disown Anthony Blair? Those of us who were never fooled by him now have to watch as he…

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[Washington Babylon]

Calling It In: The banks and Obama

From the New York Times: President Obama didn’t exactly look thrilled as he stared at the Polycom speakerphone in front of him. “Well, I appreciate you guys calling in,” he…

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[Washington Babylon]

Really Bad Lieutenant, Port of Call: New Orleans

From ProPublica: During the turbulent days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, New Orleans police shot 10 civilians, at least four of whom died, according to interviews and internal police documents.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Health Care Reform: It works after smoking a bong

If you missed this last week, here’s Robert Reich’s take: The public option is dead, killed by a handful of senators from small states who are mostly bought off by…

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[Washington Babylon]

This Can’t Be Good: Robert Kagan loved the Nobel speech

Robert Kagan, one of the intellectual architects of the Iraq War, is swooning over Obama’s speech. That’s scary: I don’t know what to say about an “Obama doctrine,” because based…

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[Washington Babylon]

Grade A: Defense contractors paid to review their own performance

From Politico: Defense contractors developing the Army’s largest modernization program — the Future Combat System — also were paid $91 million in 2007 to report back to the Pentagon on…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Daily Dumb: Gretchen Carlson edition

She never learned what a “czar” was while studying at Oxford. From the Daily Show: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Gretchen Carlson Dumbs…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Bankers’ Financial Protection Agency

From Public Citizen: The 16 representatives sponsoring two amendments that would weaken critical consumer protections in financial reform legislation have received at least $2.3 million from the financial services sector…

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[Washington Babylon]

From “The More Things Change” File: Congressional junkets

From the New York Times: Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican, toured a prince’s vineyard and castle in Liechtenstein and spent an afternoon at a ski resort in…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bennie Thompson’s Congressional Hearings? Priceless

From the Washington Post: At a hearing in late March, the nation’s credit card companies faced the threat of expensive new rules from an unlikely regulator: the House Homeland Security…

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[Washington Babylon]

Liberal’s lament: Afghanistan and Obama

From Garry Wills: I did not think he would lose me so soon—sooner than Bill Clinton did. Like many people, I was deeply invested in the success of our first…

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[Washington Babylon]

Sally Quinn: The life of the party

The Washington Post recently announced the winner of its “America’s Next Great Pundit” contest, and Kevin Huffman, (who Wonkette aptly described as “nothing more than a composite of all preexisting…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Washington Post on Desiree Rogers: “No detail escapes her eye”

“On the night of the Obamas’ first state dinner, White House social secretary Desirée Rogers glided past the rope line of press and photographers at 6:53 p.m., pausing to boast,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Afghanistan: The quagmire deepens

Last night’s speech on Afghanistan was typical Obama: instead of acting decisively, he splits the difference. The United States will send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan but with a timetable,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama’s Afghan Speech: The (TV) review is in

From Tom Shales: Would you buy a used war from this man? Americans might be seeing their bright, young president in a dark, new light this morning after watching his…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama’s “Freedom Agenda”

We recently witnessed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton telling Chinese leaders that their country’s human rights record was of little concern to the United States. Now over the weekend we’ve…

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[Washington Babylon]

“Black Friday”: Scenes from the front

From James Wolcott: The Baltimore TV stations likewise dispatched perky reporterettes to the nearby malls to interview shoppers who had camped out for hours to take advantage of “doorbuster” sales…

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[Washington Babylon]

Carolyn Lamm: A hero in her own mind

Carolyn Lamm, president of the American Bar Association and friend of the world’s dictators, wrote a letter complaining about an article about her in Foreign Policy, which I linked to…

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[Washington Babylon]

ABA President’s Curious Means of “Advancing Rule of Law”

From Foreign Policy: “Defending Liberty, Pursuing Justice” is the motto of the American Bar Association, and among the association’s four stated goals, one is to “advance the rule of law.”…

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[Washington Babylon]

Before I Vote, Let Me Check My Portfolio

From the Washington Post: When Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) this summer proposed a $4 billion tax on medical-device firms to help offset the cost of health-care reforms, an unusual mix…

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[Washington Babylon]

Not Funny: Reporter detained in Iran for ties to the Daily Show

From Newsweek(via Laura Rozen): I saw the flicker of a laptop monitor under my blindfold. Then I heard someone speaking. It was a recording of another prisoner’s confession. “It’s not…

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[Washington Babylon]

More on Equatorial Guinea’s Oil-Sotted Crook

From Gawker: A tipster, who works on Rodeo Drive, says Teodoro Nguema Obiang, the Ferrari-driving big spender who plunders Equatorial Guinea’s oil wealth is dating a family member and just…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Marian Wang on “Lady Bloggers”

Marian Wang works and writes for Mother Jones. She previously was a freelance investigative reporter and blogger for The Chicago Reporter, the Chi-Town Daily News and ChicagoNow. Wang’s recent post,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Our SOB: Will State Department finally act against crook from oil-rich Equatorial Guinea?

It will be interesting to see if the State Department, which by order of a presidential proclamation and act of congress is required to bar corrupt foreign officials from American…

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[Washington Babylon]

U.S. Government Documents Crime Spree by Dictator’s Son: Why no action by the feds?

In 2004, George W. Bush issued Presidential Proclamation 7750, which barred corrupt foreign officials from entering the United States and ordered the State Department to compile a list of banned…

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[Washington Babylon]

How Much Does It Cost to Hire a “Respected Economist”?

From the Washington Post: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and an assortment of national business groups opposed to President Obama’s health-care reform effort are collecting money to finance an economic…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Washington Version of the Twinkie Defense

The New York Times reported over the weekend that dozens of statements from members of congress printed in the Congressional Record during the House debate on health care “were ghostwritten,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Blogger Junket to Uzbekistan: Torture chambers likely not among tour stops

A short while back I noted here that Gulnara Karimova, daughter and henchwoman of Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov, had recently hosted rock star Sting in Tashkent, the nation’s capital. Sting…

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[Washington Babylon]

Hold the Feta: Marine foils Florida “terror” plot

From the St. Petersburg Times: Marine reservist Jasen Bruce was getting clothes out of the trunk of his car Monday evening when a bearded man in a robe approached him.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congress: Not quite the People’s House

From Politico: As Washington reels from the news of 10.2 percent unemployment, the Center for Responsive Politics is out with a new report describing the wealth of members of Congress.…

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[Washington Babylon]

What’s the Term? “You got screwed”

From the Washington Post: Economists say that free trade generally promotes U.S. economic growth and a higher standard of living. In addition, proponents of free trade say, the U.S. job…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Idiocy Begins: Pundits and politicians on Hasan

From Jim Sleeper: Now that we know that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was steeping in a kettle of Islamicist paranoia and rage, Joe Lieberman will hold hearings to examine the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Green Jobs: Moving to China

From the Boston Globe: Little more than a year after cutting the ribbon at a new factory in Devens built with more than $58 million in state aid, Evergreen Solar…

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[Washington Babylon]

Employee Recommendation: A moron, but shows initiative

From The Smoking Gun: Meet Aaron Siebers. The 27-year-old Denver man, a Blockbuster employee, was skateboarding yesterday afternoon when he fell and ripped his uniform pants. Due to work last…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama and the Closing of the Arabian Mind

From Marc Lynch: Obama’s window is closing. Arab audiences see Guantanamo still open (including in an endlessly repeating al-Jazeera promo), US troops escalating in Afghanistan, Gaza still blockaded, and no…

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[Washington Babylon]

On Bended Knee: Gideon Levy on Obama’s Israel Policy

From Gideon Levy at Haaretz: Before no other country on the planet does the United States kneel and plead like this. In other trouble spots, America takes a different tone.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Sting: Obama, Synchronicity, Hypocrisy

The biography of a celebrity asshole, in three short chapters. Excerpts below all come from news stories published in October of 2009. From the Associated Press, on Sting’s deep thoughts…

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[Washington Babylon]

Goldman Sachs: The casino always wins

From Greg Gordon at McClatchy : In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Mysterious $75,000 Inheritance

Here’s a bizarre story to read before going back to work today. From the Washington Post: Recently a professor of mine, whom I’d studied with 20 years ago at Bennington…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Wild West: Livingstone for governor

Neil Livingstone worked with Oliver North during the Iran/contra period and is now a beltway security consultant and terrorism pundit who publicly advocated for the war in Iraq and then…

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[Washington Babylon]

Members of Congress: Corrupt and incompetent is no way to go through life

From the Washington Post: House ethics investigators have been scrutinizing the activities of more than 30 lawmakers and several aides in inquiries about issues including defense lobbying and corporate influence…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Desmond Travers on the Goldstone Report

Desmond Travers was one of the four members of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, which produced the controversial Goldstone Report. Travers is a retired Colonel…

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[Washington Babylon]

High-level Reporting in Iraq

If you missed this item from Michael Massing — it was posted a few days ago — it’s definitely worth a read: What a delight it must be to be…

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[Washington Babylon]

Paying the Price for Democracy in Afghanistan

From ProPublica: The United Nations cannot account for tens of millions of dollars provided to the troubled Afghan election commission, according to two confidential U.N. audits and interviews with current…

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[Washington Babylon]

An Object Lesson in Governmental Failure: Derivatives reform

If you want to understand why Congress seems completely incapable of checking the power of Wall Street, look back to a hearing on the Hill last October 7, and the…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Latest Washington Indictment

From Reuters: A U.S. lobbyist has been charged with violating Sudanese sanctions regulations, acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign power, money laundering, passport fraud and making false statements,…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Ticking Clock of Corruption

From Seth Hettena: Vedomosti, a gutsy Russian business newspaper, has come up with a rather ingenious way of studying local officials for possible signs of corruption. (English Pravda version here.)…

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[Washington Babylon]

Special Alert: Stop what you’re doing and drink your bong water!

From Associated Press, via Andrew Sullivan: Bong water can count as a controlled substance, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a decision that raises the threat of longer sentences…

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[Washington Babylon]

Visclosky’s New Record in Pork: From incorporation to earmark in 16 days

From the Washington Post: It takes a while for most start-up companies to gain the confidence of a U.S. congressman and the promise of federal funds. But last year, a…

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[Washington Babylon]

Sri Lanka, Lobbyists and War Crimes

In May, I wrote about how beltway lobbyists, led by Patton Boggs were cashing in big time on the war in Sri Lanka. The lobbying firm, I noted, was being…

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[Washington Babylon]

Weekend Read: Confessions of a G.O.P. hit man

Martin Eisenstadt’s new memoir, One Man’s (Wildly Inappropriate) Adventures with the Last Republicans, is essential reading for political junkies. Some readers of this blog may recall that Eisenstadt worked for…

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[Washington Babylon]

A Foreign Service Guide to the World’s Hot Spots and Hellholes

As Scott Horton recently noted a few months back, no country in the world but the United States “regularly hands out choice ambassadorships as a favor for campaign funding bundlers…A…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Washington Bubble and the Political Wink

I love when Washington political reporters inadvertently reveal that they live in a beltway bubble and talk to no one other than those inside of it. As was the case…

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[Washington Babylon]

Correction: Pork funneled to library, not museum

An email, slightly edited, from Martha Regula of the National First Ladies’ Library complaining about a piece I wrote discussing earmarks funneled to her institution: Let me point out just…

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[Washington Babylon]

They’re Back: Hill veterans back to lobby for drugmakers

From ProPublica: Four years ago, a group of lawmakers and aides crafted Medicare Part D, the prescription drug program for seniors that has produced billions of dollars of profits for…

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[Washington Babylon]

Oink: News from the federal pork investigation

The Washington Post reported over the weekend on the ongoing federal investigation into defense earmarks, saying that it was “increasingly focused on a former top aide to Rep. Peter J.…

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[Washington Babylon]

How Awful Is Richard Cohen: Let us count the ways

“Does any of this matter, or is it merely interesting?” Richard Cohen of the Washington Post asked about his own column in today’s paper. Since Cohen wrote it, you already…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama and the “Loony Left”

“Can I speak freely about the liberal whiners?” asks a well-connected Democratic strategist. “These are the same people who have never participated in, much less won, a campaign, who have…

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[Washington Babylon]

How Obama Cracks Down on Lobbyist Influence

From Politico: At a meeting last April with corporate lobbyists, aides to President Barack Obama and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) helped set in motion a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign, primarily financed…

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[Washington Babylon]

Revealed: Bart Simpson behind helium balloon hoax

The story that captivated the nation ends with a whimper, not a bang. “A 6-year-old boy…thought to be inside a balloon that floated over Colorado for over two hours has…

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[Washington Babylon]

Too late to defeat the Taliban?

From IPS: A veteran Army officer who has served in both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars warns in an analysis now circulating in Washington that the counterinsurgency strategy urged by…

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[Washington Babylon]

Hasn’t Polanski Suffered Enough?

From Calvin Trillin: Celebrities would just be fools, To play by little people’s rules. So Roman’s banner we unfurl. He only raped one little girl.

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[Washington Babylon]

Not Much of a Sting

From TPM: [Congresswoman] Myrick and three other members of the Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus came to a news conference today armed with Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to…

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[Washington Babylon]

Newspapers: Not dead yet

From The Onion: According to a report published this week in American Journalism Review, 93 percent of all newspaper sales can now be attributed to kidnappers seeking to prove the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama’s Gourmet Kitchen Cabinet

From Bloomberg: Some of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s closest aides, none of whom faced Senate confirmation, earned millions of dollars a year working for Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc.…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Wall Street Way

Fom Steven Pearlstein in the Washington Post : Analysts at Goldman Sachs suggested Tuesday that, despite a 50 percent run-up in stock prices that has left the Dow Jones industrial…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Best and the Brightest, Redux

Rufus Phillips, Vietnam expert, as quoted by the New Yorker: I’m afraid the President, who seems like a supremely rational being, is trying to find the most rational policy option…

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[Washington Babylon]

Israeli Justice: Better never than late

From Associated Press: The Israeli military takes months to investigate whether its soldiers committed crimes against Palestinians in the West Bank, deliberately trying to dim chances of any prosecution, an…

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[Washington Babylon]

Repression at Harvard: First they came for the scrambled eggs

From The Awl: Harvard University and the New York Times are the high church bishoprics of the money culture’s permanent counter-reformation: elite northeastern institutions that compulsively monitor each other for…

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[Washington Babylon]

Large Insect Nearly Ends World Before 2012

From Wired: It sounds like the opening scene of a B movie: A giant bug lands on a truck driver transporting intercontinental ballistic missiles. The trucker swerves off the road,…

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[Washington Babylon]

You Can Fool Some of the People…

From Glenn Greenwald: While Obama’s popularity has surged in Western Europe, the changes in the Muslim world in terms of how the U.S. is perceived have been small to nonexistent.…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Joe Berlinger about Crude

Ted Trautman contributed reporting for this interview. Joe Berlinger is the director and producer of the new movie “Crude: The Real Price of Oil,” which tells the story of an…

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[Washington Babylon]

Stiffed by Obama: Dalai Lama told to take a number

From the Washington Post: In an attempt to gain favor with China, the United States pressured Tibetan representatives to postpone a meeting between the Dalai Lama and President Obama until…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama Helps Oversee Vote Fraud in Afghanistan

Imagine if the Bush Administration were helping cover up the vote farce in Afghanistan? How much bloviating would be emanating from the liberal blogosphere at this point? From Peter Galbraith:…

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[Washington Babylon]

Senator Max Baucus is on PhRMA

From the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics: From January 2007 through June 2009, Senator Max Baucus collected contributions from 37 outside lobbyists representing PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry’s…

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[Washington Babylon]

War: Bipartisanship Republicans can get behind

Up until now President Obama has been unable to round up any Republican backing for his major initiatives. Finally, though, it appears that Obama’s call for bipartisanship has paid off.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Election Fraud and Pinching Derrieres: The U.N. mission in Afghanistan

From Laura Rozen: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has announced that he is ending the appointment of American diplomat Peter Galbraith as his deputy special representative to the UN mission…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congress Cracks Down on Defense Fraud: But it was just by accident

From the Project on Government Oversight: Last week, the House inadvertently took a large step forward in protecting taxpayers from misbehaving contractors. The House passed the “Student Aid” bill that…

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[Washington Babylon]

Take Me to Your Leader

From Eric Spiegelman, via Politico: Ladies and gentlemen, your President is a robot. Or a wax sculpture. Maybe a cardboard cutout. All I know is no human being has a…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Acorn Fraud and the Media

Must read piece at Reason on the media’s response to the ACORN scandal. Highlight: One of the more convincing non-coverage defenses came from Austin American-Statesman Editor Fred Zipp (“First, it’s…

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[Washington Babylon]

Show Me the Money!

From the Washington Post: Democratic political committees have seen a decline in their fundraising fortunes this year, a result of complacency among their rank-and-file donors and a de facto boycott…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Splendors of War

From the Guardian: The number of former servicemen in prison or on probation or parole is now more than double the total British deployment in Afghanistan, according to a new…

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[Washington Babylon]

Like Condi, Hillary Offering Photo Ops for Dictators

Remember those awful pictures of George W. Bush’s secretary of state Condoleezza Rice embracing an assortment of corrupt, brutal energy-rich dictators? Now Hillary Clinton is offering precisely the same service.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama’s Likely Legacy: Failure in Afghanistan and Iraq

“Obama’s decision is complicated by a deepening domestic political divide and no guarantee of success whichever option he chooses,” the Washington Post wrote today in a story about Afghanistan. “One…

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[Washington Babylon]

Health Care Reform: Blue Dog Democrat Strikes it Rich

From ProPublica: Rep. Mike Ross — a Blue Dog Democrat playing a key role in the health care debate — sold a piece of commercial property in 2007 for substantially…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Peter Maass on the Violent Twilight of Oil

Luke Mogelson contributed reporting for this interview. Peter Maass, a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine, is the author of Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil, which…

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[Washington Babylon]

Booze for Rockets: An American contractor on the Iraqi black market

From ProPublica: Last spring, the U.S. diplomatic mission in Iraq got a makeover, replacing the scandal-plagued Blackwater private security company with a firm named Triple Canopy. The new $1 billion…

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[Washington Babylon]

Underage Prostitution, Gotcha Journalism, and the Ethics of the Acorn Sting

I’ve always admired the work of ACORN and thought right-wing attacks on the group bordered on the hysterical, but that was a terrific undercover sting mounted by the two young…

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[Washington Babylon]

News Flash: Fourteen members of congress as corrupt as Don Young

From Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s new report on the most corrupt members of congress: Rep. Young’s ethics violations stem from the misuse of his position to benefit…

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[Washington Babylon]

Doctor’s Lobby on Health Care Reform: Bend over, this won’t hurt a bit

From the Los Angeles Times: The American Medical Assn., after 60 years of opposing any government overhaul of healthcare, is now lobbying and advertising to win public support for President…

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[Washington Babylon]

Turkmenistan’s Friend in the Obama Administration

Before he was named as the administration’s special envoy on international energy, David Goldwyn advocated for closer ties to Stalinist Turkmenistan as head of the energy industry-endowed U.S.-Turkmenistan Business Council.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Not Reading the Health Reform Bill: Ignorance or bliss?

I was on NPR’s On The Media on Saturday to talk about conservative critics of the Obama administration’s health care reform bill who are arguing that legislation is being rushed…

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[Washington Babylon]

In Defense of Joe Wilson: Mark Slouka

Those of us at Harper’s appreciate rudeness no matter who is in charge. See this wonderful essay by Mark Slouka from June 2008: [S]urely one could argue that the American…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Lawnmower That Saved California

From the indispensable Center for Investigative Reporting: Soon after hijackers obliterated the World Trade Center towers eight years ago, Marin County received more than $100,000 in surveillance equipment to keep…

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[Washington Babylon]

Joe Wilson and the Belgian Arms Maker

First off let me say that I’m not picking on Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina because he called President Obama a liar. I’m all for the breakdown of political…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congressman Joe Wilson: Confederate General

From Facing South: Rep. Joe Wilson is getting his 15 minutes of national fame after bellowing “you lie!” during President Obama’s health care address last night. But Wilson earned notoriety…

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[Washington Babylon]

Shocking: Wall Street Journal loves the rich

From David Cay Johnston: This morning’s page-one Wall Street Journal story on incomes in America contains many bungled facts and concepts in a single sentence, giving a false impression about…

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[Washington Babylon]

“I Am Getting Into Spanking Her”: California Assemblyman’s hands-on lobbyist policy

From Wonkette: Republican Michael D. Duvall, a California state assemblyman representing Orange County, loves family values and ethics, and thus is a member of the Rules Committee…He enjoys telling his…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congressman Murtha’s Esteemed Colleagues

From the Center for Public Integrity: For months, a cloud has swirled around Congressman John Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, and the relationship that Murtha…

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[Washington Babylon]

How the Fed Buys Top Economists (and Journalists)

From Huffington Post: The Federal Reserve, through its extensive network of consultants, visiting scholars, alumni and staff economists, so thoroughly dominates the field of economics that real criticism of the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Tea Party Death Express

From Lindsay Beyerstein: One of the featured corporate sponsors of the Tea Party Express had to pay millions of dollars to settle lawsuits for its role in a bus fire…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Dumbest Man in Washington D.C.

There may not be a bigger moron in Congress than Paul Broun of Georgia. His latest, as reported in the Athens Banner-Herald: U.S. Rep. Paul Broun is again raising the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Foreign Aid Making American CEOs Very Rich

From USA Today: Four chief executives whose government-funded non-profit corporations are paid to deliver U.S. foreign assistance earned more than half a million dollars in 2007, a USA TODAY review…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama, Coups and Banana Republics

“Two months after he was overthrown in a coup, Honduras’s ousted president said Wednesday that he sees little progress in U.S.-backed negotiations aimed at restoring him to power and has…

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[Washington Babylon]

Reading Richard Cohen: A fate worse than waterboarding

Like Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, I too am “torn between my desire for absolute security and my abhorrence of torture.” How can one solve this dilemma? Easy–cancel your subscription…

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[Article]

Developmentally disabled

Why foreign aid to Afghanistan stays in America

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[Washington Babylon]

You Read It Here First: Obama is not God

From the Washington Post: [T]he criticism of Barack Obama has turned strikingly personal as some of his liberal media allies have gone wobbly on him. After playing a cheerleading role…

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[Washington Babylon]

How Many Lobbyists Does It Take To Get $7.4 Billion From the Pentagon?

From the Washington Post: President Obama ordered federal officials to disclose their contacts with lobbyists trying to influence how the government doles out money to jump-start the economy. Yet few…

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[Washington Babylon]

Cadaver News Network

From David Rothkopf: [CNN] has in fact recently transformed itself into the Cadaver News Network. Between its non-stop coverage of Michael Jackson’s demise (that was a guy who really knew…

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[Washington Babylon]

Ohio Terror Plot: Little Red Riding Hood held as person of interest

From the Port Clinton News Herald: Authorities fielded a flurry of calls Saturday from concerned residents who saw men in ski masks, Ghostbusters, ballerinas, ninjas and Little Red Riding Hood.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Florida GOP Politico’s Political Motto: Charge it!

From the St. Petersburg Times: Ousted House Speaker Ray Sansom racked up about $173,000 on his Republican Party-issued credit card, taking his family on a trip to Europe, making visits…

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[Washington Babylon]

Follow The Money, Please

From Public Citizen: Lobbyists and lobbying firms representing seven of the top 10 TARP recipients in the financial services industry as well as four of their major trade association allies…

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[Washington Babylon]

Georgia Republican Setting New Standard for Corruption

From the Atlanta Journal Constitution: U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal, a Republican candidate for governor in 2010, personally intervened with Georgia leaders to preserve an obscure state program that earns his…

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[Washington Babylon]

From The Tastes Like Chicken Files

“South Auckland man Paea Taufa was found roasting his pitbull terrier-cross in an umu pit at his home in Mangere,” reads a story in the New Zealand Herald. “The dog…

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[Washington Babylon]

Major Democratic Donor Arrested For Bank Fraud

The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York issued a press release today announcing the arrest of Hassan Nemazee, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Nemazee…

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[Washington Babylon]

The White House and the Justice Department: Different approaches to UBS

The Justice Department is sending UBS bankers to prison: Former UBS banker, Bradley Birkenfeld of Weymouth, Mass., has been sentenced to 40 months incarceration by Judge William J. Zloch in…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Myth of the Obama Movement

“Grass-Roots Battle Tests The Obama Movement,” ran a headline in the Washington Post yesterday atop an article that looked at why health care reform has bogged down. The story examined…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Vote in Afghanistan

P.J. Tobia provides some interesting analysis: > Yesterday I met with a high-level official from the UN backed Election Complaints Commission(ECC.) The ECC ’s job is to look into allegations…

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[Washington Babylon]

UBS, Money Laundering, and Phil Gramm

From Investment International: > In his last years in the Senate, Gramm succeeded in blocking legislation that, in the words of The New York Times, would have made it easier…

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[Washington Babylon]

Wanted: Baby Jesus’ head

From Fox: > Police are looking for the people who stole the head of baby Jesus off a marble statue at a church in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. > “Somewhere someone is…

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[Washington Babylon]

Orly, the Queen of Israel

From Haaretz: She believes Obama poses a threat to Israel not only because of his support of radical Islamic groups such as Hamas, but also because of his “radical socialist”…

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[Washington Babylon]

Health Care Deadlock, Explained

From The Onion: After months of committee meetings and hundreds of hours of heated debate, the United States Congress remained deadlocked this week over the best possible way to deny…

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[Washington Babylon]

Coming soon: Vote fraud in Afghanistan

From IPS: Afghanistan’s presidential election has long been viewed by U.S. officials as a key to conferring legitimacy on the Afghan government, but Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his powerful…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congressman Buchanan knows where the bodies are buried

From the St. Petersburg Times: On Aug. 1, the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office responded to a home burglary. Among the stolen items — original records that purportedly showed illegal reimbursements…

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[Washington Babylon]

The CIA and the Cockpit Lounge

Great read from the New York Post (via Talkingpointsmemo): On Dec. 4, 2001, five members of a Las Vegas-based charter crew were detained by Russian authorities after they landed without…

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[Washington Babylon]

Senator Webb: Burma’s man in Washington?

From Foreign Policy: The release of John Yettaw to Senator Jim Webb illustrates just how tricky the engagement calculus is. Yettaw is the Missouri man who said a vision compelled…

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[Washington Babylon]

Death is Cheap

From ProPublica: >The United States has turned to the cheapest labor possible. About two-thirds of the 200,000 civilians working under federal contracts in the war zones are foreigners. Many come…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Closing of the American Mind, Cable News Edition

Rick Perlstein provides the context and history: > It used to be different. You never heard the late Walter Cronkite taking time on the evening news to “debunk” claims that…

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[Washington Babylon]

Health Care’s Army of Lobbyists: Six for every member of Congress

From Bloomberg: If there is any doubt that President Barack Obama’s plan to overhaul U.S. health care is the hottest topic in Congress, just ask the 3,300 lobbyists who have…

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[Washington Babylon]

Transparently Phony

From ProPublica: Back in July, a software company named Smartronix landed an $18 million contract to build a Web site where taxpayers could easily track billions in federal stimulus money.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Ghosting Sarah Palin’s Facebook Page

From Gawker: Just before midnight, a “note” was posted on Sarah Palin’s Facebook page titled, “Concerning the “Death Panels.” Predictably, the media latched onto it and reported her thoughts. However,…

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[Washington Babylon]

There Is a God: Santorum mulling presidential bid

From Politico: Add former Sen. Rick Santorum to the list of potential 2012 Republican presidential candidates. POLITICO has learned Santorum will visit first-in-the-nation Iowa this fall for a series of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Afghanistan: More American aid money headed down the drain

“The United States will not meet its goals in Afghanistan without a major increase in planned spending on development and civilian reconstruction next year, the U.S. ambassador in Kabul has…

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[Washington Babylon]

Reader Replies on Anne Wexler: She was best since sliced bread (and probably a virgin as well)

A reader did not care for the item I posted a few days ago about Anne Wexler, the former Eugene McCarthy activist turned Fortune 500 lobbyist. (My item cited a…

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[Washington Babylon]

Trickle Down Recovery

From the Washington Post: The pile of economic data indicating that the worst of the recession is over just keeps growing. In the past few weeks, the government has reported…

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[Washington Babylon]

Anne Wexler: Burger Queen

Michael Kinsley has a good piece in the Washington Post today about the recently departed Anne Wexler, whose death has been widely mourned in Washington media circles. Wexler started out…

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[Washington Babylon]

Where In The World Is Your Member of Congress?

It’s going to be roughly 100 degrees today in Washington, but fortunately numerous members of Congress won’t have to suffer through the heat because they’re out of town on all-expense…

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[Washington Babylon]

I’ll Tase You, Bro’

From the Greensboro News-Record: A Homeland Security ban against using Tasers on immigration detainees could get in the way of a 287(g) compact between federal authorities and the Guilford County…

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[Washington Babylon]

Administrative Note

Ken Silverstein is away until August 5. Washington Babylon will return then.

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[Washington Babylon]

How Crazy is Glenn Beck?

Very, very crazy. The evidence is clear. And if you haven’t seen it, this is also fun.

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[Washington Babylon]

More on Sessions v. Sotomayor

From the indispensable Facing South, published by the Institute for Southern Studies: There’s more than a little irony in some of the questioning U.S. Sen. Jefferson Beauregard “Jeff” Sessions III…

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[Washington Babylon]

Democrats Weaken Key Bill Backed By Unions

I have a story in the current issue of the magazine about the corporate campaign to kill the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for unions to…

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[Washington Babylon]

Sotomayor Hearings: Content-free

From Jonathan Turley: This week, the public is again witnessing the ritualistic exercise of the confirmation of a Supreme Court nominee. Of course, the outcome of Sonia Sotomayor’s hearings is…

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[Washington Babylon]

Politico’s Parties

My piece earlier this week on Politico received some interesting commentary (and I’ll be discussing the article today with Glenn Greenwald, for his podcast at Salon). Columbia Journalism Review wrote…

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[Washington Babylon]

Health Care Lobbyists: Awful people, even by the Hill’s standards

From CQ: Just as Congress moves into high gear on health overhaul legislation, insurance trade groups with a big stake in the outcome are packing the halls of the Capitol…

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[Washington Babylon]

Sotomayor and the Democrats

Great piece from James Ridgeway: Sonia Sotomayor’s all-but-certain conifirmation will be a notable victory for the Democrats, and a long-overdue victory for diversity on the nation’s highest court. Whether it…

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[Washington Babylon]

Senator Coburn, Sotomayor, and I Love Lucy

From Immigration Prof Blog: Is this a great country, or what? Even though Alabama’s Jeff Sessions was blocked from a federal judgeship because of kooky statements about the NAACP and…

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[Washington Babylon]

Politico Not Exactly Virginal on Wall Between Reporting/Money

Politico recently caused a stir with its excellent story about the Washington Post‘s attempt to raise money with “salons” at the home of its publisher. But Politico itself is hardly…

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[Washington Babylon]

How Many Hondurans Supported Coup?

Take a look at this story: Did a CID-Gallup poll last week indicate that a plurality of Hondurans support the military coup against democratically elected President Zelaya? Yes, according to…

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[Washington Babylon]

P.J. in Afghanistan

Not O’Rourke, P.J. Tobia. A former reporter for the Nashville Scene, he’s currently reporting from Afghanistan. This is a great story about life in Kabul, complete with amazing photos: Here…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Michael Jackson Memorial: LA’s version of the Tim Russert funeral

An excerpt from a good piece by Chris Hedges about Michael Jackson: His memorial service—a variety show with a coffin—had an estimated 31.1 million television viewers. The ceremony, which featured…

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[Washington Babylon]

Honduran Kingmaker

A fascinating piece from today’s Washington Post about Allen Andersson, the rich American who helped bring Manuel Zelaya to power in Honduras in 2005: And then, there’s one of his…

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[Washington Babylon]

Administrative Note

Ken Silverstein is away until July 13. Washington Babylon will return then.

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[Washington Babylon]

A Few Facts About the Honduran Military Coup

There’s very little truth to anything you’ve read about the coup in American newspapers. President Manuel Zelaya is no radical. He approved a big minimum wage increase, which was desperately…

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[Washington Babylon]

Other Pay-to-Play Schemes at the Washington Post?

So the Washington Post got busted for its pay-to-play scheme. But publisher Katharine Weymouth clearly doesn’t see the problem — to hear it from her, the newspaper’s pitch to corporate…

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[Washington Babylon]

Editor Bill Wasik at Politics and Prose Monday Night

Attention Harper’s readers in Washington, D.C.: Make sure to go to Politics and Prose bookstore (5015 Connecticut Avenue) tonight at 7 p.m. to see senior editor Bill Wasik discuss his…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Clinton Foundation: It depends on how you define “is”

When Barack Obama nominated Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, he made her appointment contingent on her husband revealing the contributors to his foundation in order to avoid any questions…

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[Washington Babylon]

Absolute Last Word on Soccer: Fans make PETA activists look open-minded

Not since endorsing horse slaughter have I received so many angry emails from readers of this blog as I have in response to my recent posts about the lamentable American…

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[Washington Babylon]

Washington Post and Reporters For Sale to Highest Bidder

From Politico: For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to “those powerful few” — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and…

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[Washington Babylon]

For Your Morning Viewing Pleasure

The Daily Show and the Colbert Report were both unmissable last night. The former featured segments on Iraq and Dick Cheney (whose balls are so big they can be seen…

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[Washington Babylon]

Clinton Boner Picture Identified

Yesterday I posted an item describing a picture (sent to me by several sources) of former President Bill Clinton posing for the camera with Gulnara Karimova, daughter of the dictator…

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[Washington Babylon]

More on the Awful American Soccer Team

I received dozens of replies to yesterday’s post about why I hate the American soccer team and was so happy to see it seize defeat from the jaws of victory…

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[Article]

Labor’s Last Stand

The corporate campaign to kill the Employee Free Choice Act

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[Washington Babylon]

Coleman Concedes: The good news and the bad news

From the New York Times: Nearly eight months after Election Day, Al Franken, a former comedian and an author, appeared certain on Tuesday to become the next United States senator…

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[Washington Babylon]

Clinton’s Latest Boner: Ex-president poses with dictator’s daughter

Two trusted sources have sent me a picture of former President Bill Clinton posing for the camera with a woman who the sources say is Gulnara Karimova, daughter of the…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Evil of Sam Zell

I used to work at the Los Angeles Times and still read it online regularly, although I rarely see a hard copy. I was just in Los Angeles for a…

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[Washington Babylon]

I hate the U.S. (Soccer Team)

Americans almost always interpret international sports victories as demonstrations of national superiority, so it was wonderful to watch the U.S. soccer team’s massive choke in the Confederation Cup final against…

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[Washington Babylon]

Snack Attack: Industry lobbies on junk food

From the Wall Street Journal: The food and beverage industries are coming around to support some efforts in Washington to limit the sale of junk food in school vending machines,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Administrative Note

Ken Silverstein is away until June 29. Washington Babylon will resume when he returns.

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama and political triangulation: the more things change…

First see this from the Washington Post: What does it tell you when banks, investment houses, insurance companies and derivatives traders are so pleased with their regulators that they are…

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[Washington Babylon]

Barack Hoover Obama

Kevin Baker has an excellent piece in the July issue of the magazine (available to subscribers) about the similarities between our current president and our thirty-first, Herbert Hoover: The comparison…

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[Washington Babylon]

Ensign Love Triangle

From Politico: The son of the couple at the center of the sex scandal that has engulfed Sen. John Ensign was being paid by the National Republican Senatorial Committee in…

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[Washington Babylon]

Ladies’ Men

From Politico: Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), whose name turned up in an investigation of an alleged prostitution ring in 2007, said Ensign was going through “personal difficulties they’re going through…

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[Washington Babylon]

Friend of Azeri Dictator Reportedly to be Named Ambassador to Baku

The indispensable Laura Rozen reported that Matthew Bryza, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasian affairs, “is being recommended by supporters as U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan.” Rozen…

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[Washington Babylon]

Russian Oligarch Retains Advisory Firm Close to Hillary to Help Resolve Visa Ban

Intelligence Online reports that the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska has hired an advisory firm with close ties to Hillary Clinton to help him get a visa to enter the United…

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[Washington Babylon]

William Jefferson’s Attorney: a degree in advanced chutzpah

From the Washington Post: Federal prosecutors laid out their bribery case against former U.S. representative William J. Jefferson yesterday, telling jurors that he squeezed hundreds of thousands of dollars in…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Ensign scandal: Did girlfriend double-bill for utilities?

From the Washington Post: Ensign is considered a leading voice among social conservatives in the G.O.P. In 1998, as a House member running against Reid, he called on President Bill…

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[Washington Babylon]

Keep Guessing Who’s Coming to Dinner at the Obama White House

From MSNBC: The Obama administration is fighting to block access to names of visitors to the White House, taking up the Bush administration argument that a president doesn’t have to…

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[Washington Babylon]

Who Won in Iran?

It’s always so hard to know what’s really going on in places like Iran, given the combination of government repression/censorship and the Western-centric reporting of so many journalists. Ahmadinejad is…

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[Washington Babylon]

Glenn Beck’s Undistilled Looniness

“How do you look at Nazis and think they’re right-wing?” he asks. “We’re surrounded by people who want to control you.” The point of Beck’s raving–believe it or not–is that…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama Energy Adviser: Brought to you by ExxonMobil

As Laura Rozen and I have reported, it appears that President Obama is soon to name David Goldwyn, an adviser to oil companies and dictators, to a key administration post,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Not Ready for Mt. Rushmore: The American Scholar looks at Reagan mythmaking

Just because it’s always good to look at the past with open eyes, here’s a new piece by Matt Dallek: Criticism of Reagan has been largely absent from the political…

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[Washington Babylon]

Is Secrecy on Drone Attacks Hiding Civilian Casualties?

From Inter Press Service: The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s refusal to share with other agencies even the most basic data on the bombing attacks by remote-controlled unmanned predator drones in…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama to Name Oil Industry Crony to Top Position

As first reported here, international energy consultant David Goldwyn, “will likely be named U.S. special envoy for energy. That comes from an item yesterday by Laura Rozen at The Cable.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Government Vigorish: The Microsoft story

Ted Disante of Tucson wrote an interesting note about this item from last week, which referred to Washington as a gigantic lobbying operation: Here’s an additional tidbit to support your…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Myth of Gates as Defense Reformer

Dana Milbank had a good story in today’s Washington Post about Congress larding up the defense bill: This meeting of the Senate Military-Industrial Caucus will now come to order. The…

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[Washington Babylon]

More on Ambassadorships for Sale

From the Washington Post: President Obama has been taking flak of late for giving fat-cat donors cushy ambassadorial posts. Despite some early signals that merit — knowledge of the local…

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[Washington Babylon]

Pentagon Flies the Friendly Skies

From the Center for Public Integrity: Despite the Pentagon’s big budgets, DOD personnel routinely accept free flights, accommodations, and hospitality from outside interests, according to a Center for Public Integrity…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Tom Daschle Effect: Terry McAuliffe crushed in Virginia

The former Clinton bagman goes down in Virginia. How delightful. As with Tom Daschle, Barack Obama’s misguided choice to run Health and Human Services, it seems Americans are tired of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Unprecedented Growth In Israeli Settlements

From the Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, via Americans for Peace Now: They are the focus of President Obama’s interest in the Middle East and are even liable to cause…

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[Washington Babylon]

Federal Court Legalizes Illegal Campaign Contributions

From Associated Press: A federal judge dismissed two of three campaign finance violation charges Monday against a prominent Los Angeles attorney for allegedly funneling $26,000 to Sen. John Edwards’ 2004…

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[Washington Babylon]

Depression Chic

The rich really are different. From the Los Angeles Times: Coffee tables made from barrels. Lamps crafted from brooms. Chairs swathed in burlap and sackcloth. Look at the some of…

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[Washington Babylon]

No NIMBY Problem in India on Jailing Terrorists

From Indian Express: Mumbai: On June 3, the high-security Arthur Road Jail saw a new superintendent taking charge….[J]ail superintendent Rajendra Dhamne…is responsible for guarding 26/11 gunman Ajmal Kasab, one of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Glazed or Cream-Filled? Jesus and Donuts

Life without Jesus is like a donut, because there’s a hole in the middle of your heart. Via Dan Savage.

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[Washington Babylon]

Doing Business With Phil Gramm’s Bank

From Bloomberg: California billionaire Igor Olenicoff had already invested $200 million with UBS AG in 2001 when his Swiss bankers ushered him to an underground vault in Geneva. Olenicoff, a…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Lobby

At times it seems like Washington is one gigantic lobbying machine. To wit: Insurers and drug companies are working to gut health care reform. Big Tobacco wrote the tobacco bill.…

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[Washington Babylon]

How Many Law Firms Does It Take to Figure out Where a Congressman Lives?

If you are Congressman Robert Wexler, the answer is three. Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) paid more than $6,700 in legal fees in the first quarter of this year, funds spent…

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[Washington Babylon]

Wells Fargo’s Stagecoach to Hell

From the Baltimore Sun: Wells Fargo loan officers guided minorities toward high-rate mortgages and joked that they were “riding the stagecoach to hell” for routinely steering prime-loan-qualified customers toward subprime…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bush Recount Helper Gets Prison Term For Public Corruption

From the Department of Justice: Defendant Mary McCarty was sentenced today to 42 months of imprisonment, to be followed by 3 years of supervised release. Defendant McCarty was immediately remanded…

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[Washington Babylon]

Cheery Photo-ops and Mud

From The Hill: In public, Senate Republicans have kept their distance from conservative attacks on Sonia Sotomayor— but behind the scenes, they have encouraged activists to keep their crosshairs trained…

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[Washington Babylon]

“Renegade”: From RW to BO, with love

From Politico: It was Barack Obama himself who first proposed that Newsweek reporter Richard Wolffe make a play to be this generation’s Theodore White—the legendary journalist whose insider account of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama’s Speech, Pro and Con

The pro comes from M. J. Rosenberg: Mission accomplished. For the first time in memory, an American President spoke to Muslims and Arabs not as antagonists who need to take…

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[Washington Babylon]

Kim Jong-il’s Son: Cheese scholar, peacemaker (on the playground)

From the BBC: So little is known about Kim Jong-un – the youngest son and reportedly the named successor of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il – that even his date…

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[Washington Babylon]

Brian Williams, Head of the Presidential Puppy Corps

The media treated George W. Bush very well during the early days of his administration (as it does every incoming president) but the slavish devotion to Barack Obama is an…

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[Washington Babylon]

Who Will Tell The People?

From Politico: The congressional cussing caucus is in need of new members. The Capitol lost its prince of profanity when Rahm Emanuel left for the White House five months ago.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congressman Cantor and Cockfighting

The former sheriff of Page County, Virginia, Daniel Presgraves, has been indicted on 22 counts of public corruption, including accepting bribes to protect cockfighting. Based on the indictment, Presgraves appears…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congressman Visclosky Hit With Subpoena

From Politico last Friday: Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-Ind.) has been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury looking into the PMA Group, a once-high flying lobbying firm that collapsed after a…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Math Hasn’t Changed: $500,000 buys ambassadorship

From Bloomberg: Louis Susman has one thing in common with many of his predecessors nominated to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom: money. Susman, 71, a retired Citigroup…

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[Washington Babylon]

Conservative Critic: Sotomayor Exhibits Dangerous Bias Towards Rice and Beans

From The Hill: Sotomayor also claimed: “For me, a very special part of my being Latina is the mucho platos de arroz, gandoles y pernir — rice, beans and pork…

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[Washington Babylon]

Sharon Stone and the Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Chaka Kahn

From Starpulse: Sharon Stone flapped her way through a speech at the recent opening of a luxurious resort in Turkey – stunning the crowd with her admission she had never…

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[Washington Babylon]

Sotomayor And The Crafty Catholic Lobby

From David Rothkopf: I had to accept the reality that The Lobby existed exactly as described in best-selling literature and on well-respected blogs. After all, these clearly well-organized, crafty Catholic-Americans…

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[Washington Babylon]

You Don’t Know Jack

Now you do. An interactive guide from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington: For many years, Rep. Murtha has been treating our tax dollars like his own personal piggy…

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[Washington Babylon]

The 100 MPG Hummer: Suckers Wanted

Last week Raser Technologies announced a Capitol Hill event for its unlikely new product: an electric Hummer H3, which the company claims gets up to 100 miles per gallon. Even…

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[Washington Babylon]

Funny Numbers: the New York Times terror report

From Talkingpointsmemo: We’ve gotten our hands on the Pentagon report on which the New York Times based its front-pager last week asserting that 1 in 7 Guantanamo detainees “returned” to…

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[Washington Babylon]

The CIA’s Congressional Mumblers and Dissemblers

From Jeff Stein: A former deep-cover CIA operative says the spy agency’s congressional briefers routinely shade the truth or hide facts altogether from congressional overseers. “They mumble, they dissemble, and…

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[Washington Babylon]

Norm Coleman’s Donors and Remembering 9/11

I wrote yesterday about the non-profit group associated with former Senator Norm Coleman’s political donors, the Step Into World Peace foundation. The group’s website stopped working last week, after I…

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[Washington Babylon]

Israel and “Regime Change” in Iran

From Foreign Policy: Israeli media are reporting that a small and unconventional Iran office in the Israeli Ministry of Defense will be shut down. The 30-year-old office has been headed…

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[Washington Babylon]

Stepping Into It: Norm Coleman’s donors and their plans for “World Peace”

When I was writing last fall about then-Senator Norm Coleman’s friends and political donors, I received several tips about a curious Minnesota-based non-profit called the Step Into World Peace (SIWP)…

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[Washington Babylon]

More Trouble For Congressman Murtha

From yesterday’s Washington Post: Over the past five years, a local defense contractor with close ties to Rep. John P. Murtha, a Democrat who has represented southwestern Pennsylvania for three…

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[Washington Babylon]

CIA Discovery: Tribes in Afghanistan!

“US intelligence agencies have launched an intensive effort to examine the various tribes linked to the Taliban to determine whether some can be broken off through diplomatic and economic initiatives,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Dictator/oil consultant being considered for senior administration position

Two sources have told me that David Goldwyn, a long-time advocate and consultant for the oil industry and energy-rich Third World countries, is on the short list for a top…

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[Washington Babylon]

Death in Libya: Political prisoner latest victim of Bush’s “Freedom Agenda”

Former President George W. Bush’s “Freedom Agenda,” a set of policies that exists only in the minds of Washington Post editorial page writers and senior fellows at the American Enterprise…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama’s Flip-Flops on National Security

From, God help me, Charles Krauthammer: Observers of all political stripes are stunned by how much of the Bush national security agenda is being adopted by this new Democratic government.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Dick Cheney IS 9/11

Jon Stewart describes the sexual potency of the Obama-Cheney “duel”on the Daily Show last night : “There is one unifying thread that runs through every strata of our media, and…

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[Washington Babylon]

Texas’s Latest Great Idea: Give guns to drunk frat boys

From the Houston Chronicle: The Senate today tentatively passed a controversial bill to allow college students who are at least 21 years old and licensed to carry concealed handguns to…

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[Washington Babylon]

And You Thought Congress Was Bad

From the Washington Post: Public fury has been rising over items that politicians have charged to taxpayers — a massage chair, pornographic movies, a moat cleaning, a plasma TV, horse…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Sound of the Revolving Door

From USA Today: More than one in four members of President George W. Bush’s Cabinet have landed jobs with consulting or lobbying firms in which they can help clients navigate…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Stimulus And The Nuclear Option

From the Washington Post: A private company was being paid $300 million by the federal government to clean up radioactive waste at two abandoned Cold War plants in Tennessee when…

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[Washington Babylon]

FDA Asks Industry to Help It Defend Miscarriage-Inducing Chemical

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: As federal regulators hold fast to their claim that a chemical in baby bottles is safe, e-mails obtained by the Journal Sentinel show that they…

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[Washington Babylon]

Business Week: The Great Ethanol Scam

From the magazine’s current issue: More than one major transportation-based industry in America besides Detroit is on the ropes. For the fourth time in our history the ethanol industry has…

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[Washington Babylon]

Death, Lobbyists and Sri Lanka

I recently posted an item about the ongoing bloodshed in Sri Lanka and reported that the lobbying firm of Patton Boggs was being paid $35,000 per month by that country’s…

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[Washington Babylon]

Corporate Front Man: Richard Berman manages the news on key labor-backed bill

Richard Berman, a prominent lobbyist for the food and restaurant industry, is one of the leading opponents of the hotly-debated Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would make it easier…

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[Washington Babylon]

FBI Investigates Former Senator Coleman: an empty suit?

From Huffington Post: The FBI is investigating allegations that former Senator Norm Coleman had clothing and other items purchased on his behalf by a longtime friend and businessman Nasser Kazeminy,…

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[Washington Babylon]

The More Things Change…

Via michaelmoore.com: Obama ’09: In a reversal, President Barack Obama objected on Wednesday to the release of dozens of photographs showing the abuse of terrorism suspects, fearing the pictures could…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Worst Writer in America?

From Wonkette: The worst writer in America, Richard Cohen — that thoughtless, valueless, condescending, sociopathic sexist poster-boy for the vapidity of the Washington Post’s opinion section — has written such…

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[Washington Babylon]

Laying the Body on Dick Cheney

Jesse Ventura on Larry King: Jesse Ventura: I would prosecute every person who was involved in that torture. I would prosecute the people that did it, I would prosecute the…

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[Washington Babylon]

More on Murtha-Backed Biodefense Facility

I’ve posted several items over the past month on how Congressman John Murtha & friends have been supporting a controversial biodefense facility that would develop and manufacture “vaccines and other…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Death of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi

The Washington Post reports that a “former CIA high-value detainee, who provided bogus information that was cited by the Bush administration in the run-up to the Iraq war, has died…

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[Washington Babylon]

The White House Correspondents Dinner: “This is the real deal”

The description in the headline comes from Christian Slater, which is quite a testament to the multitudes that assembled at the dinner. A Washington Post reader had a different opinion:…

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[Washington Babylon]

Defense Plant Doesn’t Want Earmarked Money: But lobby firm gets it anyway

From the Kansas City Star: U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver likes earmarks. His rule: If they come to his district, federal funds are well worth wrangling over, especially for infrastructure repairs…

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[Washington Babylon]

Breaking: Left-Wing and Right-Wing Bloggers Both Upset

The Onion has the scoop: “When will the MSM dinosaurs realize that they’re TOTALLY irrelevant?” wrote 39-year-old part-time librarian James Last, commenting on coverage of Obama’s first 100 days in…

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[Washington Babylon]

Making Sense of the White House Correspondents Dinner

From Chris Lehmann: How does one make sense, after all, of an event where you can see Ashton Kutcher directly in the path of an onrushing Donald Rumsfeld? Where Michael…

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[Washington Babylon]

It’s Only Torture When They Do It

From Andrew Sullivan: Here we have it in broad daylight: the New York Times’ cowardice in the face of its own government. In an obit today, the editors manage to…

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[Washington Babylon]

G.O.P. Solidarity: It’s a holiday in Somalia

Experience the joys of small government.

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[Washington Babylon]

The League of Extraordinary Egos: Meet the Washington media

Washington is a town of self-indulgence, huge egos, and self-congratulation. A yearly ritual at which such traits are most grandly on display is nearly upon us. Tomorrow night is the…

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[Washington Babylon]

As Seen From Space: The global economic collapse

From Foreign Policy: Want to get a sense of just how bad things are? Take a spin on Google Earth. The latest issue of International Economy, edited by FP contributor…

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[Washington Babylon]

The View From Iraq

From Tom Ricks: If you haven’t yet reviewed the papers from the Midwest Political Science Conference, here’s a little gem that will tell you more about Iraqi politics than a…

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[Washington Babylon]

This is Health Care Reform

“Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said Thursday that so far a breakneck schedule for writing a health care overhaul into law remains on track, with a committee markup scheduled for…

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[Washington Babylon]

Hearts and Minds in Afghanistan

From page 8 of today’s Washington Post: “The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Wednesday he had dispatched a joint U.S.-Afghan team to investigate U.S. airstrikes that killed more than…

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[Washington Babylon]

Biopork: New DHS Appointee Ties to Congressman John Murtha

“The Obama administration’s controversial pick to be the Department of Homeland Security’s geek-in-chief is either a leading authority on the deadliest terror threats — or a biowar chicken little, dangerously…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congressman Conyers’ Super Bowl

From the Detroit News : Rep. John Conyers’ campaign committee spent nearly $46,000 on travel and transportation during the first three months of 2009, a figure far higher than his…

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[Washington Babylon]

Guess Who’s Coming to the Bailout?

From the Center for Public Integrity: The top subprime lenders whose loans are largely blamed for triggering the global economic meltdown were owned or bankrolled by banks now collecting billions…

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[Washington Babylon]

The CIA’s Foggy Crystal Ball

In December 2000, the National Intelligence Board, under the authority of the CIA, released a report called “Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue About The Future With Nongovernment Experts.” The experts…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congressman Murtha Strikes Again

From the Washington Post: The headquarters of Murtech, in a low-slung, bland building in a Glen Burnie business park, has its blinds drawn tight and few signs of life. On…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Financial Crisis, the IMF and Karl Marx

The Atlantic has a good piece in its current issue called “The Quiet Coup: How bankers took power, and how they’re impeding recovery”, written by a former IMF official named…

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[Washington Babylon]

Global Economic Crisis Worsens: Dolph Lundgren latest victim of free-market capitalism

The Daily Mail reports that Dolph Lundgren is struggling to “maintain his trim physique” and was “displaying a slightly rounded tummy as he holidayed in the Mexican Riviera.” Indeed, as…

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[Washington Babylon]

Inside Israel’s Illegal Settlements Program

From Secrecy News: Last January 30, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz disclosed a secret Israeli government database on settlements in the occupied West Bank, and posted the Hebrew text of the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Good Way to Start the Week: Jack Shafer eviscerates Cokie Roberts

From Slate: Each Monday, NPR Senior News Analyst Cokie Roberts trades four minutes of on-air blather about politics, the economy, and world events with whichever unlucky Morning Edition host has…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congress Stiffs Troubled Mortgage Holders

With swine flu, the retirement of David Souter, and the bankruptcy of Chrysler, the media didn’t devote much space to the Senate screwing nearly two million mortgage holders yesterday. The…

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[Washington Babylon]

Fundraising and Hate-mongering

From Alexander Cockburn at The Nation, wisely citing me about Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, “the arch-salesman of hate-mongering”: Ever since 1971 U.S. Postal Service mailbags have…

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[Washington Babylon]

The GOP’s New Big Tent

From CNN: Coming soon to a battleground state near you: a new effort to revive the image of the Republican Party and to counter President Obama’s characterization of Republicans as…

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[Washington Babylon]

How you get to be dean of the Washington press corps

David Broder writes today, “It’s been more than four decades since Arlen Specter, senator from Pennsylvania, earned the nickname ‘Specter the Defector.’ With his decision this week to leave the…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Pope and the Dictator’s Son

From Foreign Policy: Belarussian President Aleksandr Lukashenko’s PR machine kicked into overdrive yesterday during a meeting with Pope Benedict. RFE/RL’s Luke Allnut notes that the Belarussian strongman’s adorable son Nikola…

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[Washington Babylon]

Swine and Flu

From Associated Press: Rep. Michele Bachmann says she finds it an “interesting coincidence” that the last swine flu outbreak in the U.S. occurred under a Democratic president — though her…

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[Washington Babylon]

Washington Lobbyists Cash In On War in Sri Lanka

It’s hard to know who bears more responsibility for the bloodshed in Sri Lanka, the government or the Tamil Tigers, but it’s clear that huge numbers of civilians are being…

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[Washington Babylon]

Financial Journalism’s Failure

From a letter to the Financial Times: So why did journalism fail? One only needs to examine the financial industry’s elaborate programmes to cultivate the media to realise that journalists…

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[Washington Babylon]

Dianne Feinstein’s Husband Hits Jackpot: with help from the senator

From the Washington Times: On the day the new Congress convened this year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that…

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[Washington Babylon]

Torture and the War on Terror

When reading this: A video tape smuggled out of the United Arab Emirates shows a member of the country’s royal family mercilessly torturing a man with whips, electric cattle prods…

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[Washington Babylon]

To New York With Love

From Chris Lehmann: My ill-starred tenure at New York magazine was, among other things, a crash course in the staggering unselfawareness of Manhattan class privilege. Sure, there was the magazine’s…

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[Washington Babylon]

The World is Flatter

From the Washington Post: The global economic crisis has hit home for Tom Friedman. When the New York Times columnist married heiress Ann Bucksbaum in 1978, he joined one of…

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[Washington Babylon]

A Kinder, Gentler Torture

The Daily Show segment last night, which captured Bush administration apologists offering up their latest justifications for torture, was riveting television. A particular highlight: this exchange between Chris Wallace of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Behind the “Clean Coal” Blitz

From The Center for Public Integrity: They’ve put the black rock on billboards in the swing states, and they’ve splashed it on full-page ads in CQ Weekly, Roll Call, Politico,…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Chavez Uproar: Open Veins and Closed Minds

Eugene Robinson just won a Pulitzer, but like most commentators he doesn’t seem to have read the book, Open Veins of Latin America, by Eduardo Galeano, a copy of which…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congresswoman Harman and AIPAC: “This conversation doesn’t exist”

From CQ: Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would…

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[Washington Babylon]

Wolcott on the Media: The tweet smell of success

I disagree with James Wolcott’s main thesis here that the media is “wired” towards Republican power. The Washington media is wired for power alone (and perhaps a tinge of celebrity).…

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[Washington Babylon]

Federal Raid on Lobby Shop Leaves Democrats Cash-Strapped

From the Washington Post: Three senior House Democrats revealed sharp declines in donations for the first quarter of 2009 after the shuttering of a lobbying firm that in previous election…

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[Washington Babylon]

More Reasons to Hate AIG

From ProPublica and the Los Angeles Times: Civilian workers who suffered devastating injuries while supporting the U.S. war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan have come home to a grinding battle…

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[Washington Babylon]

Oil Über Alles

Five years ago, the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by a number of major American energy firms operating in…

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[Washington Babylon]

State of Play: Congressional investigations

From the Washington Post: A House Democrat from Indiana has conducted an extensive audit of his political committees, after a lobbying firm that raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for…

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[Washington Babylon]

Why Cutting Weapons Programs Won’t Be Easy

Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s recent decision to cut big ticket weapons systems (even as he was increasing defense spending by four percent overall) was met with predictable howls of outrage…

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[Washington Babylon]

Lobbying: More profitable, by far, than the cocaine trade

From the Washington Post: In a remarkable illustration of the power of lobbying in Washington, a study released last week found that a single tax break in 2004 earned companies…

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[Washington Babylon]

Corrupt Former Congressman Rested and Ready

Ready for talk radio: Three years after pleading guilty to federal corruption charges, former Ohio Rep. Bob Ney is back in the public spotlight. Ney will debut as a talk…

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[Washington Babylon]

Top Secret Plans, Get Yer Top Secret Plans Right Here

I noted here yesterday that Britain’s top counterterrorism official had been forced to resign after he was “photographed carrying a document that outlined details of a major antiterrorism operation.” Today…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congressman Joe Barton’s Campaign Investment Strategy

From CQ: Texas Rep. Joe L. Barton ’s campaign reported losing $703,500 in the financial markets last year. A large chunk of those stock market losses — $196,900 — were…

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[Washington Babylon]

Pirates and the CIA: What would Thomas Jefferson have done?

“It was the sixth such attack this week and one of 66 this year by Somali pirates, a collection of shrewd businessmen and daring opportunists who have pulled off a…

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[Washington Babylon]

Britain’s Counterterror Chief: Quick but not swift

From the New York Times: Britain’s most powerful counterterrorism officer resigned on Thursday, a day after being photographed carrying a document that outlined details of a major antiterrorism operation in…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Red Cross Report and Manadel al-Jamadi

From Jeff Stein at CQ: There are 14 names in the confidential Red Cross report that surfaced last week on the CIA’s “ill treatment” of detainees. But you will not…

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[Washington Babylon]

Politicians, Hookers and the Weekly Standard

From the Marathon Blog: The Weekly Standard sets a new standard for hypocrisy in this week’s Scrapbook column that attacks Eliot Spitzer for trying to rehab his image in the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Louis Freeh: What some people will do for money

From the Los Angeles Times Former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh says $2 billion that flowed from a British arms manufacturer to U.S. bank accounts controlled by Prince Bandar bin…

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[Washington Babylon]

More on $1 Billion Murtha-Connected Biodefense Facility

A few weeks ago, I reported here on a plan by Congressman John Murtha’s friends and campaign donors to obtain up to $1 billion for a controversial project to build…

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[Washington Babylon]

Potato Chips: Now with real potatoes!

A Frito-Lay spokeswoman, quoted in the Washington Post: For Frito-Lay, a focus on real ingredients is a new way to help consumers overcome their guilt about eating snack chips. Last…

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[Washington Babylon]

Feds Exploring Congressman Visclosky’s Ties to Controversial Lobby Shop

The New York Times had a story over the weekend reporting that the feds are exploring links between Congressman Pete Visclosky of Indiana and the PMA lobby shop: Mr. Visclosky,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congressman Joe Barton’s Favorite Charitable Cause: Joe Barton

From the Washington Times: The top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee operates a tax-exempt foundation that has raised donations from the industries his committee oversees, while giving…

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[Washington Babylon]

Where’s the Financial Transparency Obama Promised?

This is an important story from Investors Business Daily: Accounting rule-makers on Thursday did all they could to make the nation’s credit nightmare go away — or at least go…

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[Washington Babylon]

Investigative Reporting Panel at Berkeley

Sorry for the late notice, but I’ll be appearing on an investigative reporting panel today at Berkeley. Details below: Investigative Reporting Seminar with Professor Lowell Bergman When: April 3, 2009,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Losing May Be Winning for Norm Coleman

From Politico: Even if Norm Coleman pulls off a long-shot legal victory in the extended Minnesota Senate race, Democrats are vowing to make him wish that he hadn’t. Separate and…

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[Washington Babylon]

First of the Alleged UBS Tax Cheats Charged

The guy is a yacht broker from Florida, which somehow comes as no surprise: Steven Michael Rubinstein, of Boca Raton, Fla., has been charged, via criminal complaint, with filing a…

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[Washington Babylon]

Geithner and Citibank: Helping a friend in need

Great story from ProPublica: Geithner, who maintained ties to senior bank executives and others in the financial world, had a particularly close relationship with former Treasury secretary Robert E. Rubin,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Katrina Contractor On Board at FEMA

From POGO: On March 4, 2009, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that Jason R. McNamara will serve as the Chief of Staff for the Federal Emergency Management…

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[Washington Babylon]

Why are Gun Sales Up?

From the lows of mid-day March 6th through the close of trading yesterday, the Dow Jones is up 23%, the NASDAQ 100 is up 24% and the Russell 2000 is…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Politics of Reconciliation: How to count to $15 trillion

The Daily Show nails Judd Gregg. Nancy Pelosi too, though the Gregg clip is the highlight.

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[Washington Babylon]

Republican Math

From Conor Clarke : I’m still reading the Republicans’ alternative budget (pdf), but I did want to highlight this graph from Republican Paul Ryan’s Wall Street Journal op-ed on the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Lobbyists Hit Bailout Gold

From the Sunlight Foundation: Lobbying firms and special interests have filed nearly 1,700 new registration forms so far in the first quarter of 2009, a review of lobbying disclosure forms…

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[Washington Babylon]

MIA: $300 Million worth of helicopters

From Wired: Over the past two years, the U.S. military has paid $241 million to supply the Iraqi government with Russian helicopters – and received exactly none of those copters.…

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[Washington Babylon]

The (Gated) Fourth Estate

From Glenn Greenwald: In his just-released cover story on Paul Krugman’s status as Obama critic, Newsweek’s Evan Thomas includes these observations: “By definition, establishments believe in propping up the existing…

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[Washington Babylon]

Tortured Confession: Waterboarding and Abu Zubaida

From the Washington Post: In the end…not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida’s tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed…

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[Washington Babylon]

Lobby Firm’s Libya Strategy Leaks

Libya’s exiled opposition (there is no domestic opposition allowed) got its hands on the lobbying strategy of Col. Moammar Qadaffi’s Washington lobbying firm, the Livingston Group. As reported by O’Dwyer’s:…

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[Washington Babylon]

New Depo from Case Linked to Norm Coleman: Senators “don’t make shit”

Remember all those stories last fall about various and sundry campaign donors to then-Senator Norm Coleman? Those donors, including a man named Nasser Kazeminy, seemed to take very good care…

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[Washington Babylon]

Rahm Emmanuel: Sleeping at wheel pays well

From the Chicago Tribune: Before its portfolio of bad loans helped trigger the current housing crisis, mortgage giant Freddie Mac was the focus of a major accounting scandal that led…

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[Washington Babylon]

This Sounds Vaguely Familiar: Where was Larry Summers in 1999?

Worth reviewing this story from the New York Times, November 5, 1999: Congress approved landmark legislation today that opens the door for a new era on Wall Street in which…

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[Washington Babylon]

Stiglitz: “This amounts to robbery of the American people”

From Reuters: The U.S. government plan to rid banks of toxic assets will rob American taxpayers by exposing them to too much risk and is unlikely to work as long…

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[Washington Babylon]

It’s Deja Vu All Over Again: Wall Street and Bill Clinton

“The Obama administration, after months of criticizing Wall Street, has been scrambling to woo top bankers and financiers to back its latest bailout plan,” the Wall Street Journal reported today.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Geithner in the Polls: Darling of the “Political Class”

From a Rasmussen poll yesterday: America’s Political Class gives Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner rave reviews: 76% have a favorable opinion of him. Two-thirds (66%) of the Political Class say Geithner’s…

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[Washington Babylon]

Wall Street Math

One… Treasury Details Plan to Buy Risky Assets The Obama administration formally presented the latest step in its financial rescue package on Monday, an attempt to draw private investors into…

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[Washington Babylon]

Senator Sanders Blocking Key Obama Nomination

I reported back in February on the case of Gary Gensler, the former Goldman Sachs employee and derivatives cheerleader who President Obama nominated to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission…

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[Washington Babylon]

Hedge Fund Socialism

There’s already much debate about the merits of the administration’s plan to clean up toxic assets, but one person I spoke with – a well-connected Democrat representing a big investment…

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[Washington Babylon]

Doddering in the Polls

From Associated Press: While Dodd, 64, has only recently found himself in the nation’s political hot seat because of his role in the AIG bonus debacle, it has become clear…

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[Washington Babylon]

Jeffrey Goldberg and Israeli War Crimes

Jeffrey Goldberg is upset. “When the IDF fails to achieve its goal, and ends up inflicting needless destruction and suffering, it sullies not only its own name, but the name…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congressman Murtha’s Friends Team Up on Big Biodefense project

As has been widely reported, two firms with close links to Congressman John Murtha–lobby shop PMA Group and defense contractor Kuchera Defense Systems–have recently been raided by the feds. Now…

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[Washington Babylon]

Eric Cantor: Still on UBS’s dole

As the economic crisis unwinds, House Republican Whip Eric Cantor has been a stern advocate for Main Street vs. Wall Street, has denounced the excesses of financial institutions, and just…

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[Washington Babylon]

News from Absurdistan

During both the Bush and Clinton years, the White House argued that the United States should “engage” with governments in the Caspian region, saying that such a strategy would do…

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[Washington Babylon]

More on Countrywide’s VIPs

From the Washington Post: Executives at Countrywide Financial, one of the biggest names of the housing boom, routinely violated internal company policies to provide below-market rates on home loans to…

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[Washington Babylon]

Senator Dodd and the AIG Bonuses (Updated)

From Gawker: Two AIG executives fingered by the New York Post as recipients of blood-money bonuses personally donated to the presidential campaign of Chris Dodd, who inserted language into the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Can Those AIG Contracts Be Broken?

From Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post: The legal argument for honoring these ill-considered contracts is that a deal is a deal and that trying to abrogate them will only…

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[Washington Babylon]

Senator Schumer and AIG: A short timeline

U.S. News, March 17, 2009: “They should voluntarily return them. If they don’t, we plan to tax virtually all of it,” New York Sen. Chuck Schumer declared on the Senate…

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[Washington Babylon]

AIG and Congress: Washington on $53,000 a Day

A few highlights on AIG’s Washington influence buying scheme, from Open Secrets: In the last 20 years American International Group (AIG) has contributed more than $9 million to federal candidates…

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[Washington Babylon]

Senator Grassley to AIG Execs: Consider suicide

From AP: Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley suggested that AIG executives should accept responsibility for the collapse of the insurance giant by resigning or killing themselves. The Republican lawmaker’s harsh comments…

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[Washington Babylon]

Report: Israeli Appointee Barred from U.S. as “Intelligence Risk”

From the Washington Times: Uzi Arad, who is expected to serve as national security adviser in the next Israeli government, has been barred from entering the United States for nearly…

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[Washington Babylon]

Pork Gallery

From the Washington Post: Just because there’s still a Justice Department investigation rattling around you doesn’t mean lobbyists can’t contribute to buying a portrait for you to hang in your…

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[Washington Babylon]

Coming Soon: Colonel Qaddafi, Libya’s George Washington

From O’Dwyer’s: Libya paid more than $750K in fees since September to The Livingston Group for its work to improve ties with the U.S. That sum generated half of the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Chas Freeman and Saudi Money

One of the most common charges hurled by the opponents of Charles Freeman Jr., who yesterday withdrew as chair of the Obama administration’s National Intelligence Council, was that he “headed…

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[Washington Babylon]

A Personal Bailout

From the New York Times: Top banking regulators were taken aback late last year when a California congresswoman helped set up a meeting in which the chief executive of a…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Freeman “Purge Trial”

From Jacob Heilbrunn in National Interest: Only now does Charles Freeman become truly interesting. Freeman, who has withdrawn from being named chairman of the National Intelligence Council, triggered an intense…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama’s War

Milt Bearden, who ran the CIA’s covert assistance to the Afghans from Pakistan during the Soviet occupation, has a good piece in National Interest: There is an unrelenting insurgency—we call…

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[Washington Babylon]

He Said, She Said

From the Chicago Sun-Times, via Justin Rood: Inverness Police say former Cook County Republican Chairman Gary Skoien admitted having two prostitutes in his children’s playroom when his wife walked in…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Post and Charles Freeman

An editorial in today’s Washington Post says that Charles W. Freeman Jr. “looked like a poor choice to chair the Obama administration’s National Intelligence Council” and criticized Freeman for suggesting…

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[Washington Babylon]

Senator Vitter Turns Tail

From Roll Call, via TalkingPointsMemo: Among Members of Congress, there’s a long-standing, proud tradition of the Airport Freakout. Add to the list of those who’ve indulged in meltdowns and temper…

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[Washington Babylon]

International Bankers and Corruption: How Citigroup does business abroad

London-based Global Witness has just put out a good report on how some major international banks, including Citibank, “have been dealing with some of the world’s most corrupt regimes.” Gavin…

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[Washington Babylon]

Citibank Does Baghdad: Iraqis beware, you might just want to put your cash under the bed

From Spencer Ackerman: Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once observed that if you can’t solve a problem, enlarge it. In that spirit, take a look at this press conference in…

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[Washington Babylon]

Freeman Withdraws

Via Think Progress: Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair announced today that Ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr. has requested that his selection to be Chairman of the National Intelligence…

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[Washington Babylon]

Citigroup: Sell Wal-Mart for fear of union

From MarketWatch: Citigroup Inc. lowered its rating on Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to hold from buy on Tuesday, citing concern that legislation intended to make it easier for employees to unionize…

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[Washington Babylon]

Dick Gephardt, Labor and Lobbying

I posted an item last week about former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt, who had been very pro-labor during his long tenure in Congress. I noted that he’s now a…

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[Washington Babylon]

Romney 2012: Not an auspicious start in wooing conservatives

This past weekend’s National Club for Growth annual conference featured three dinner speakers. Thursday night: South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. Friday night: South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint. Saturday night: former…

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[Washington Babylon]

Reply on Iraq Video

Last week, I posted a video showing an American military officer trash-talking a group of Iraqi police. Here’s a reply from Tim Hanes, former Captain, U.S. Army: No, this video…

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[Washington Babylon]

Media Fuels Tale of Obama-Limbaugh “Feud”

“GOP Fights Back Over Criticism of Limbaugh,” ran the headline in today’s Washington Post. “White House Is Accused Of Cynicism, Hypocrisy.” The accompanying story was written by Howard Kurtz and…

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[Washington Babylon]

Dick Gephardt: From NAFTA foe to the U.S. Chamber

Remember Dick Gephardt, the former House House Majority Leader, mortal foe of NAFTA and overall friend of the working class? He’s a lobbyist now of course, and his firm, Gephardt…

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[Washington Babylon]

Citigroup: Penny stock firm still spends millions on lobbying

Shares of Citigroup Inc., once the nation’s most powerful bank, fell below $1 a share Thursday. The stock fell to 98 cents in late morning trading, down 15 cents or…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Incredible Santelli: Watch and learn with CNBC

The Daily Show reports: “Wall Street is mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore — unless by “it” you mean $2 trillion in their own bail-out…

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[Washington Babylon]

David Frum on Rush: “A walking stereotype of self-indulgence”

From NewMajority.com: President Obama and Rush Limbaugh do not agree on much, but they share at least one thing: Both wish to see Rush anointed as the leader of the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Democrats Vote Against Cutting Earmarks for Clients of PMA Group

An amendment to “prohibit taxpayer dollars from being earmarked to 14 clients of a lobbying firm under Federal investigation for making campaign donations in exchange for political favors for the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama vs. Bush on National Security Cases

From ProPublica: In a half-dozen national security lawsuits we’ve been following, the Obama administration has so far largely stuck by the positions taken by the Bush administration. (The one significant…

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[Washington Babylon]

Guess Who’s Profiting from Housing Meltdown?

From the New York Times: Whether they deserve to be or not, Countrywide Financial and its top executives would be on most lists of those who share blame for the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bush as Dark Knight: National Review’s list of top conservative movies

The Dark Knight ranks No. 12. Andrew Klavan offer this explanation: This film gives us a portrait of the hero as a man reviled. In his fight against the terrorist…

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[Washington Babylon]

McMeltdown: Cops respond to emergency McNuggets call

From The Smoking Gun: Angered that her local McDonald’s was out of Chicken McNuggets, a Florida woman called 911 three times to report the fast food “emergency.” Latreasa Goodman, 27,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Who is Blocking Amendment to Ban Earmarks From Raided Lobby Shop?

You would think that Congress would have an easy time halting earmarks obtained by a lobbying firm recently raided by the feds and the subject of an ongoing federal investigation.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Pharmaceutical Lobby Pays Back Senator Hatch for Years of Service

From the Washington Times: The pharmaceutical industry that long has benefited from Sen. Orrin G. Hatch´s legislative efforts has directed large sums of money to a charity he helped found…

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[Washington Babylon]

A Dissent on that Porn Study

A few days ago I posted an item on a study that found that “[e]ight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in…

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[Washington Babylon]

YouTube from Iraq

Via Mondoweiss, an amazing and disturbing YouTube video that shows an American military officer trash-talking to a group of Iraqi police. It doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in the…

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[Report]

Invisible Hands

The secret world of the oil fixer

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[Washington Babylon]

Warren Buffett: Floating on $2.8 Billion

From Warren Buffett’s letter to the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc, February 27, 2009: We are fortunate that Berkshire’s two most important businesses – our insurance and utility groups –…

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[Washington Babylon]

Religion, Politics and Porn

From New Scientist: Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year’s presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions.…

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[Washington Babylon]

A Brief Guide to the Foggo Case Johns and Janes

Dusty Foggo, the CIA’s executive director under Porter Goss, was sentenced yesterday to more than three years in prison for funneling agency procurement contracts to an old friend and defense…

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[Washington Babylon]

Budget, High and Low

From Paul Krugman: The budget will, among other things, come as a huge relief to Democrats who were starting to feel a bit of postpartisan depression. The stimulus bill that…

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[Washington Babylon]

Rocky Mountain News, Farewell Edition

From the Rocky Mountain News: Colorado’s oldest newspaper will publish its final edition Friday. The Rocky Mountain News, less than two months away from its 150th anniversary, will be closed…

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[Washington Babylon]

Dusty Foggo to the Slammer

From Associated Press: A former high-ranking CIA official has been sentenced to more than three years in prison for a fraud scheme in which he steered procurement contracts to an…

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[Washington Babylon]

CIA Under Obama: Not much change?

From the Wall Street Journal: The Central Intelligence Agency’s new director outlined spy policies Wednesday, including an aggressive campaign in Pakistan, that underscored considerable continuity with the Bush administration. CIA…

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[Washington Babylon]

Murders in Iraq: Not fit for prime time

From Stars and Stripes: A videotape played Thursday in the trial of a U.S. soldier shows him describing how he shot two of four bound and blindfolded Iraqi prisoners in…

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[Washington Babylon]

New EPA Official’s Law Firm Lends Industry Helping Hand

The White House has nominated Jonathan Cannon to serve as Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, where he has previously worked under Presidents Reagan, Bush (senior) and Clinton. Cannon…

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[Washington Babylon]

Why No Attacks on U.S. Since 9/11?

From Slate, first part of what looks to be an interesting series: The 9/11 attacks were heralded as the harbinger of a new era of foreign-based terrorism in the United…

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[Washington Babylon]

Climate Change: There’s money to be made

From the Center for Public Integrity: The number of lobbyists seeking to influence federal policy on climate change has grown more than 300 percent in five years, with a slew…

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[Washington Babylon]

Government Details Case Against Former CIA Official

From ProPublica: Paramilitary agents for the CIA’s super-secret Special Activities Division, or SAD, perform raids, ambushes, abductions and other difficult chores overseas, including infiltrating countries to “light up” targets from…

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[Washington Babylon]

Controversial Lobby Firm Still Winning Earmarks: Congressional sponsors identified

Arizona Republican Jeff Flake put out a press release tonight saying that he had found “at least eight earmarks in the omnibus spending bill for clients of the PMA Group,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Senator Jim Bunning: Stupid — the kind you don’t get better from

From the Courier-Journal: U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning predicted over the weekend that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would likely be dead from pancreatic cancer within nine months. During…

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[Washington Babylon]

Spin, Spin: From Diplomat to Bechtel

From Eli Lake: A just-retired U.S. diplomat who led negotiations that restored full diplomatic ties between the U.S. and Libya has taken an important job with Bechtel, a major U.S.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Turkmen Dictator Finds Help in United States

For my book Turkmeniscam: How Washington Lobbyists Fought to Flack for a Stalinist Dictatorship, I posed as Kenneth Case, a businessman with energy interests in Turkmenistan. A number of beltway…

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[Washington Babylon]

Is Phil Gramm Involved in UBS Case?

A reader e-mailed with an interesting question: Former Senator Phil Gramm is a senior executive with Swiss banking giant UBS. According to the information filed Wednesday in the criminal case…

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[Washington Babylon]

Back to the Beach for Congressman Waters’s Husband?

A beltway insider with close ties to the State Department tells me that Sidney Williams, the husband of Congresswoman Maxine Waters, has expressed interest in getting back his old job…

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[Washington Babylon]

Clean Energy? A profile of oilman Ely Calil

I have an article in the March issue of the magazine about Ely Calil, a London-based international oil fixer (and friend, as I note in the story). Calil is one…

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[Washington Babylon]

Will Former Congressman Weldon Walk?

There’s a story making the rounds that former Congressman Curt Weldon will not be charged in a seemingly endless influence-peddling probe that dates back more than two years. “It has…

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[Washington Babylon]

WellCare’s National Health Care Plan

I mentioned last fall that this scandal was likely to blow down the road: It looks like the eruption is coming, as AP reports now: While Florida politicians were considering…

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[Washington Babylon]

Charity For Poor Funnels Money to GOP

From the Athens Banner-Herald: Officers of a Monroe-based charity that is under investigation by federal authorities donated nearly $50,000 to conservative candidates and causes in recent years, Federal Elections Commission…

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[Washington Babylon]

A Real Vetting Problem: Japanese minister quits after “drunken appearance” at news conference

From AP, via Talkingpointsmemo: Japan’s finance minister abruptly resigned Tuesday over allegations he made a drunken appearance at a G-7 news conference, shaking Prime Minister Taro Aso’s already deeply unpopular…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama Nominee’s Past Includes Botched Privatization of Uranium Company

Chris Hayes had a nice piece not long ago about President Obama’s nomination of Gary Gensler to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). A long-time employee of Goldman Sachs,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Did Murtha’s Favorite Lobby Firm Use Straw Donors?

From the Washington Post: Marvin Hoffman is listed in campaign finance records as one of the many lobbyists with the powerful PMA Group donating money to lawmakers. But Hoffman is…

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[Washington Babylon]

What’s That in His Pocket?

From John Judis: There are many good things to say about the stimulus bill. But all in all, it wasn’t as good as it could be: It’s probably too small…

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[Washington Babylon]

Plouffing the Press

From the Washington Post: It takes a certain amount of nerve to have an event at the National Press Club and then ban the press from covering it. It takes…

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[Washington Babylon]

Joliet Jackhammer: New job for Blago?

From the Chicago Tribune: An unlikely suitor has stepped to the plate with a job offer for former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The Joliet JackHammers, a Will County minor-league baseball team,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congressman Austria’s History Lesson

From the Columbus Dispatch, via Talkingpointsmemo: “When (President Franklin) Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression. He tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use…

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[Washington Babylon]

An Australian Reporter’s Take on the Middle East

Interesting interview about Middle East coverage at Columbia Journalism Review with Sydney Morning Herald foreign correspondent Paul McGeough. A few excerpts: People keep repeating that Hamas’s charter is opposed to…

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[Washington Babylon]

Homeland Security TV: Be Very Afraid

This is new to me: the Homeland Security Television Channel, “the world’s first online, on-demand television network dedicated to homeland security and global development.” The channel is also “dedicated to…

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[Washington Babylon]

American Arms Sales to Iraq: Signs of a long stay?

From Eli Lake: As President Obama weighs options for withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq, the country’s military is purchasing American helicopters, cargo planes and tanks equipment that typically requires…

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[Washington Babylon]

Former CIA Official on Engagement With Hamas and Middle East Peace

Yesterday I posted the first part of a conversation with Emile Nakhleh, former head of the CIA’s Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program and author of the new book, A Necessary…

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[Washington Babylon]

Lobby Firm Raided by Feds Has Deep Links to Democrats

As noted here last night, the FBI has raided a lobby shop, PMA, which is closely enmeshed with Congressman John Murtha, chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. According to Taxpayers…

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[Washington Babylon]

Former CIA Official on Gitmo, Iraqi Elections and Iran Policy

Emile Nakhleh headed the CIA’s Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program until leaving the agency in 2006. During his tenure, he briefed top officials on issues related to Iraq and Afghanistan,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Feds Raid Another Firm Linked to Congressman Murtha

I’ve been writing for years about the indecently close ties between House Democrat John Murtha and the defense lobbying firm PMA, so was not surprised to learn, via ABC News,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Did Secret Payments Secure Kyrgyz Military Base?

From Laura Rozen: As the Kyrgyz Republic threatens to kick the United States out of its Manas air base, which it has been using as a major logistics and supply…

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[Washington Babylon]

Local Media Barred From Plouffe Speech in Azerbaijan

As I reported here yesterday, David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s former campaign manager, jetted off to Azerbaijan to give a speech at a university. Plouffe claimed he went to the country…

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[Washington Babylon]

Will Defense Get Cut?

From Stephen Walt: Obama’s plan to cut the Department of Defense’s budget request by roughly ten percent is a step in the direction of a more sensible foreign and defense…

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[Washington Babylon]

David Plouffe and the Call of Oil

Barack Obama took office just a few weeks ago and already David Plouffe, his campaign manager, appears to be doing quite well for himself. He’s already signed a lucrative book…

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[Washington Babylon]

Former High Times Publisher on the Phelps-Bong “Scandal”

From Mike Edison at the Daily Beast: George W. Bush never had to answer for his “youthful indiscretions.” Michael Phelps, not so lucky. Having been caught red-handed with a smoking…

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[Washington Babylon]

Note to Taxpayers: You just lost 30 percent on the federal bailout

From the Washington Post: The Bush administration received assets that were worth $78 billion less than the amount it invested as part of the massive infusion of capital into the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Senator David Vitter and the Inevitability of STDs

Jon Stewart’s take on the debate surrounding the economic stimulus bill. Make sure to watch the section (around the 4:30 mark) on Senator Vitter and family planning.

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[Washington Babylon]

So Who Did He Pay Off?

From a Justice Department press release today: WASHINGTON – A government contractor and former employee of the U.S. Department of the Treasury was sentenced in Washington today in connection with…

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[Washington Babylon]

Senator Coleman’s Finances: Does anyone see a pattern here?

From Politico: Norm Coleman has a strong interest in convincing voters that he hasn’t given up hope of returning for a second Senate term. But as the fight over Minnesota’s…

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[Washington Babylon]

What to Expect at Panetta’s Confirmation Hearing

From Spencer Ackerman: Thursday afternoon is Panetta’s long-awaited confirmation hearing. As something of a cipher on intelligence matters, Panetta can expect a tough hearing. With the CIA intimately involved in…

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[Washington Babylon]

General Zinni Gets Shafted

From Laura Rozen: When retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni told the Washington Times today that he was offered the job of U.S. ambassador to Iraq before being passed over in…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama Strategy for Managing G.O.P. Opposition: Cookies

Somehow, I doubt this approach is going to work. Obama won an overwhelming mandate, I wish he’d start acting like it. Can the shrill tone of Washington be changed through…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congressman Rangel Buys and Sells and Doesn’t Tell

From the Sunlight Foundation: House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel predicted, on C-SPAN’s Newsmakers program that aired Sunday, Feb. 1, 2009, that his multitude of ethics woes would…

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[Washington Babylon]

More Donors to Congressman James Clyburn’s Personal Charity

Speaking of House Majority Whip James Clyburn’s Tom DeLay-style personal charity, which I reported here yesterday, here are a few more contributors: Nike, National Association of Realtors, BNSF Railroad, URS…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Daschle Affair and the Washington Bubble

Lesson No. 1 from the Tom Daschle affair is that Washington is completely clueless. As early as Monday, it was pretty apparent that Daschle was going to have a hard…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama Mulling Radical Tax Plan

From Andy Borowitz: President Barack Obama is mulling a controversial new tax program that would require members of his Cabinet to pay taxes owed under the Federal tax code, the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Daschle’s Pontiac: When Tom was a penny pincher

Check out this old Tom Daschle campaign spot (via famousdc.com). Haunting.

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[Washington Babylon]

Daschle Watch

The news just keeps getting worse for poor Tom Daschle: Tom Daschle backed the patron who paid him a million-dollar salary and supplied him with a free car and driver…

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[Washington Babylon]

How Tom Daschle Scrambles to Make Ends Meet

From Emily Yoffe in the Washington Post. Like many Americans whose steady, reliable job has suddenly disappeared, Thomas Daschle cobbled together a bunch of gigs when he was laid off…

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[Washington Babylon]

DeLayed Reaction: House majority whip’s foundation has that old-time aroma

Think back to the terrible old days when the Republicans ran congress, and how companies seeking to win access and favor with the GOP would make “contributions” to the DeLay…

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[Washington Babylon]

That Was Fast: Obama staffer lands on his feet in private sector

Jeff Berman, the national delegate director for the Obama presidential campaign, has a new job: The international law firm Bryan Cave LLP (www.bryancave.com) announced today that Jeff Berman has joined…

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[Washington Babylon]

A Positive Spin on Tom Daschle: “The second-biggest whore for the health care industry in American politics”

Glenn Greenwald tells you everything you need to know about Tom Daschle: He embodies everything that is sleazy, sickly, and soul-less about Washington. It’s probably impossible for Obama to fill…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bush’s Plutocrat Assistance Program

From Bloomberg, via Laura Rozen: The average tax rate paid by the richest 400 Americans fell by a third to 17.2 percent through the first six years of the Bush…

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[Washington Babylon]

Tom Daschle: Secretary of Health and Public Speaking Fees

From the Associated Press: Tom Daschle collected nearly a quarter of a million dollars in fees in the last two years speaking to leaders of the industry President Barack Obama…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Deborah Nelson on Vietnam War Crimes, and Why They Matter Now

Deborah Nelson is the Carnegie Visiting Professor at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland at College Park. She is the author of the new book, The War…

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[Washington Babylon]

Joe Lieberman, Stand-up Comic: So did you hear the one about waterboarding?

Once inside the banquet hall, which is always off-limits to the media, the Alfalfans took turns trying to crack each other up. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) — the club’s…

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[Washington Babylon]

Tom Daschle and the Old Boys’ Club

The Senate: shameless and clueless. From the Washington Post: Early reactions from the Senate have shown little need for much of a fight. No Senate Republican has stepped forward to…

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[Washington Babylon]

Slumdog Millionaires?

From the Washington Post: “Slumdog Millionaire” — or “Slumdog Crorepati,” as the Hindi-language version is known — received 10 Oscar nominations and has become the modern-day fairy tale of the…

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[Washington Babylon]

One Administration, Two Tax Cheats

First Timothy Geithner and his lame excuses, now this: Thomas A. Daschle, nominated to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, did not pay more than $128,000…

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[Washington Babylon]

A Trip Down Memory Lane With Michael Steele

Michael Steele, yesterday after winning the post of RNC chairman: “We have an image problem,” Steele said. “We’ve been misidentified as party that is insensitive, a party unconcerned about the…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Pentagon’s Iraq Expert

Turns out that Laurie Mylroie, dubbed “The Neocons’ favorite conspiracy theorist” by Peter Bergen, was working at the Pentagon not so long ago. Justin Elliott of TPM Muckraker reports: It’s…

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[Washington Babylon]

Wall Street Tanked but Bonuses Thrived

From the New York Times: By almost any measure, 2008 was a complete disaster for Wall Street — except, that is, when the bonuses arrived. Despite crippling losses, multibillion-dollar bailouts…

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[Washington Babylon]

Voter Fraud Fraud

Remember last fall when Republicans claimed that they had discovered hundreds of cases of voter fraud in Ohio? A special prosecutor was even appointed to investigate. He has reported his…

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[Washington Babylon]

Not Just Republicans Questioning Stimulus Package

From the Washington Post: Republican criticism of the stimulus package that the House will vote on tonight has focused on its soaring price tag, but some Democrats on Capitol Hill…

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[Washington Babylon]

Early Test For Obama on Corporate Mergers

Terrific column in today’s Washington Post from Steven Pearlstein: Three things are indisputably true about the pharmaceutical industry: Over the past decade, there has been significant cross-border consolidation, involving major…

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[Washington Babylon]

Goldman Sachs Lobbyist Heads for Job at Treasury

From ABC News: Despite President Barack Obama’s pledge to limit the influence of lobbyists in his administration, a recent lobbyist for investment banking giant Goldman Sachs is in line to…

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[Washington Babylon]

GOP Marketing Makeover Hits Snag: How do you rebrand stupid?

“Let’s just say that, that, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, is brought to the United States to be tried in a federal court in the United States, under…

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[Washington Babylon]

Fuld’s Gold: Lehman Brothers CEO sells mansion for a tenner

From the New York Times: Housing prices are falling around the country, but this one sounds hard to believe: A seaside mansion on Jupiter Island in Florida, bought for more…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bundling The Administration

I generally don’t trust my own reaction to political developments because my own views are too eclectic and non-representative to serve as any type of political weather vane. But I…

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[Washington Babylon]

Another Bailout for Big Banks?

The Institutional Risk Analyst looks at the “political battle building for the mind of Barack Obama on how to resolve, or not, the largest, most profoundly troubled US banks.” The…

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[Washington Babylon]

Big Game Hunting with John Murtha

Check out this story on last week’s raid on properties owned by businessmen close to Congressman John Murtha: The Tribune-Democrat has learned that federal raids on the businesses and homes…

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[Washington Babylon]

Non-Senator Coleman Still Hustling For Political Dollars

Norm Coleman of Minnesota is no longer a senator (at least for the time being) and he’s taken a job as a consultant with the Republican Jewish Coalition. But he’s…

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[Washington Babylon]

Dictator Suck-Up Watch

From Marc Lynch: On his first day in office, Barack Obama placed calls to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Jordan’s King Abdullah, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Excellent! What a perfect…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama Off To Rough Start: Gitmo closed but mispelled names mar debut

Talkingpointsmemo points to a Time magazine article, “The Obama Team’s Debut: Not Quite Ready on Day One.” So while the new Obama Administration did jump out of the gate with…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Heir Apparent in New York: At least she’s not an heiress

I don’t know much about Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand, who has reportedly been named to fill Hillary Clinton’s senate seat. But at least David Patterson didn’t turn this into a political…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama’s Promises: Seven down, about five hundred to go

For those keeping track of how Obama fulfills his campaign promises, the St. Petersburg Times offers a handy interactive guide. He’s off to a relatively good start, but there’s a…

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[Washington Babylon]

More on the Murtha-related Raid

The CEO of Kuchera Industries and Kuchera Defense Systems, the two firms raided by the feds yesterday, was the director of a non-profit group that the Washington Post described in…

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[Washington Babylon]

Feds Raid Offices of Firm Tied to Murtha

Congressman John Murtha’s relationship with his campaign donors is a topic I’ve written about frequently in the past. Today the FBI raided the offices of one of those donors: Federal…

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[Washington Babylon]

Clinton Foundation Donors and Hillary’s Confirmation

The Senate seems likely to confirm Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State soon, but there’s still a hang-up over contributions to her husband’s foundation. I’ve been trying to get answers…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama Kitsch

Seth Hettena writes: How can you discuss Obama tackiness without mentioning this. Good point!…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Obama Doctrine?

Barack Obama’s inauguration speech had some nice moments. I especially liked the section near the end where he said: In the year of America’s birth, in the coldest of months,…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Road to Hell Is Paved with Stupid Celebrity Pledges

Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher and other stars make their pledges to Barack Obama. Low point, among many: Jason Bateman promises to flush “only after a deuce, never a single.” Is…

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[Washington Babylon]

Lobbying The Inauguration

From the Washington Independent: In November, Obama announced that his presidential inauguration committee would not accept donations from corporations, lobbyists, political action committees, or unions. The move appeared to set…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama: Inspiring Tackiness

Inauguration fever is cresting with the inevitable flood of Obama merchandise. Here are three candidates for the worst of the lot: In the “cute and cloying” category, there’s the “Obama,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama’s Middle East Dealmaker

Dennis Ross, Barack Obama’s proposed new Middle East guru/envoy, has gotten generally fawning coverage from the press. In Newsweek,, Michael Hersh wrote: “One man who will probably be running ahead…

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[Washington Babylon]

Civil Rights, Coffee and Race

Talkingpointsmemo notes a footnote to the new Inspector General’s report on the politicization of the Civil Rights Division at DOJ: In that incident in August 2004, Voting Section Chief John…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Way Florida Works

Congressman Kendrick Meek of Florida has announced that he will run for the U.S. Senate. Which may require that he answer some questions about this story from 2007: Boston developer…

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[Washington Babylon]

“I Should Have Wikipedia-ed Neville Chamberlain”: A pundit’s lament

The Daily Show takes us on a tour of pundit boot camp. Attack, you maggots!…

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[Washington Babylon]

Note To Retirees: If Bush Social Security plan had passed, you’d really be screwed

From the Washington Post: If your year-end 401(k) statement made you ill, I have one consolation for you: It could be worse. How’s that possible, given how horrible last year…

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[Washington Babylon]

Israeli War Correspondents

From Philip Weiss: The New Republic seems to depend on former IDF soldiers for more of its Israel coverage than just about anyone else. Benny Morris, Jeffrey Goldberg. And here…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bush Justice Department: It has a dream

Time is running out on the Bush administration but the Justice Department’s civil rights division is fighting to its last breath — to defend the rights of white people.

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[Washington Babylon]

And If That Last Item On The Economy Wasn’t Depressing Enough

From Eric Janszen: Economic data coming out this week reveal an economy in free-fall. The Stats Every single working day in the month of December 2008: 190 U.S. companies filed…

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[Washington Babylon]

How Bad Is The Economy?

From John Judis: Does Barack Obama understand the seriousness of the economic crisis? Yesterday, he laid out his economic agenda, and it was filled with all sorts of important exhortations…

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[Washington Babylon]

Scenes From Gaza

From the New York Times: The International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday it had discovered “shocking” scenes — including small children next to their mothers’ corpses — when…

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[Washington Babylon]

Regime Change or Assassination? The media mulls foreign policy options in Zimbabwe

I’ve mentioned here on previous occasions how the American media covers foreign news through the prism of United States foreign policy. If the U.S. government deems a country to be…

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[Washington Babylon]

Rules of Etiquette From the New Surgeon General: How to order tiger penis

Classic investigative reporting from Stephen Colbert, who takes us behind the scenes at CNN’s special report, “Penis in Peril.” Colbert also explains how Sanjay Gupta threatens America’s traditional food pyramid.

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[Washington Babylon]

Dennis Ross: Could he be a three-time loser?

From Augustus Richard Norton: Reportedly, two-time loser to be given a third chance to fail by Obama: Dennis Ross who was a dead-hand on the wheel as peacemaker in the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Jeffrey Goldberg on Palestinian “Moral Failings”

Stunning remarks from the man who helped sell the Iraq War. Jonathan Schwarz tells the story.

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[Washington Babylon]

Washington Post Takes Critical Look at Obama’s SEC Pick

When Barack Obama picked Mary Schapiro as head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, her nomination was almost universally hailed in the press. Schapiro, it was said, was just the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Department of Bad Ideas

From Taxpayers for Common Sense: Of all the industries in line for a handout in this financially frightening time, the defense industry would seem to bring up the rear. After…

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[Washington Babylon]

Pay-to-Play at UNESCO

Is there a slimier United Nations department then UNESCO? In 2006, UNESCO awarded Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov with a medal for preserving Uzbekistan’s cultural heritage. Human Rights Watch said that…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Latest Obamamaniac: Commentary Magazine

From Commentary: So let’s get this straight: Robert Gates will be the Defense Secretary, we’re ramping up U.S. forces in Afghanistan and providing a reasonable period of time for a…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bret Baier: Why he sucks

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post had a fawning story today about Bret Baier, who has just replaced Britt Hume as the head of Fox’s Washington newscast. “Hume was a…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Gaza Fallout

From Marc Lynch: However this round of violence ends — and it’s hard to see any scenario in which it produces remotely positive results for anyone involved — the outcome…

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[Washington Babylon]

Civilian To Head CIA

Michael Hayden will not be kept on at CIA, which, according to a source I spoke to over the weekend, will come as a relief to many at the agency.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bookmark This

Foreign Policy has launched its newly revamped website, which has lots of great features, including two of my favorite bloggers: Laura Rozen on national security and foreign policy, and Marc…

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[Washington Babylon]

Will Hayden Stay at CIA?

Barack Obama still hasn’t gotten around to naming his CIA director, and there’s still talk that he might retain Michael Hayden. A former senior CIA official I spoke with thinks…

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[Washington Babylon]

Why Richardson Withdrew: Sí Se Puede

It’s not pretty. From the Washington Post: A grand jury in Albuquerque is looking into whether CDR Financial Products received a contract with the New Mexico Finance Authority because of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Why Israel Attacked

From Augustus Richard Norton and Sara Roy: Hamas’ strategic miscalculation in rejecting an extension to a six-month truce with Israel was a gift on a “golden platter” to Israel, as…

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[Washington Babylon]

Our Man in Kabul

From the New York Times: Kept afloat by billions of dollars in American and other foreign aid, the government of Afghanistan is shot through with corruption and graft. From the…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Internet War: Israel Spins The War Online

From Wired: Days after sending aircraft to strike Hamas militants in Gaza, the Israeli government is launching a campaign to dominate the blogosphere. Among other things, the Israeli military has…

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[Washington Babylon]

William Jefferson Scandal Link to Siemens Bribery Investigation?

A few days ago, I noted a joint ProPublica/New York Times story about a massive international bribery scandal involving German engineering giant Siemens. The company reportedly had an “annual bribery…

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[Washington Babylon]

Caroline Palin On The Campaign Trail

Andrew Sullivan writes: “Sarah Palin was more qualified to be vice-president than Caroline Kennedy is to be a Senator. Both are celebrities, but Palin made her own way herself, winning…

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[Washington Babylon]

Fundraising Hot Spots, From Washington to Vail

From the Sunlight Foundation: After months of paging through invitations we had a pretty good idea where the hottest party spots were for members of Congress and lobbyist donors. But…

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[Washington Babylon]

Chemical Weapons and Self-Defense

From the Seattle Times: Scientists have discovered a lotion that can save the lives of U.S. soldiers exposed to chemical weapons — a product vastly superior to the standard-issue decontamination…

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[Washington Babylon]

Correction on Larry Summers/Managed Funds Association

I posted an item a few weeks ago about Obama’s top White House economics adviser, Lawrence Summers, and the Managed Funds Association (MFA), the leading lobbying organization for the hedge…

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[Washington Babylon]

Vilsack’s Subsidies

From Politico: President-elect Obama has pledged to cut farm subsidies and embrace renewable fuels – two initiatives that hit close to the wallet of his newly unveiled pick for agriculture…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Clinton Foundation’s Many Donors

From the Associated Press: Former President Bill Clinton’s foundation has raised at least $46 million from Saudi Arabia and other foreign governments that his wife Hillary Rodham Clinton may end…

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[Washington Babylon]

New SEC Chair Caps Week Of Uninspired Obama Picks

I don’t know a lot about Mary Schapiro, Obama’s pick to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, but her bio doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence. Originally appointed to the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Who’s Getting Bailed Out?

From the Project on Government Oversight’s letter to congressional oversight committees: As you know, the TARP was created for the express purpose of buttressing the financial system by assisting institutions…

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[Washington Babylon]

Caroline Kennedy’s Inspiring Qualities

From the Washington Post: Famously private, [Caroline] Kennedy nonetheless emerged during the Obama campaign as a political force of her own. Along the way, friends and colleagues say, she discovered…

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[Washington Babylon]

Political Reporters Without Politics

From Politico: Time Managing Editor Richard Stengel, reacting on Monday to Jay Carney’s decision to leave the magazine for a job with the Obama administration, said that his outgoing Washington…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Three Stooges in Baghdad

Curly throws a pie at George Bush. Or was that a shoe?…

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[Washington Babylon]

More On Mexico’s Crime Spree

Speaking of crime and violence in Mexico, consider this number: 6,836. That’s the number of people killed in drug-related violence since 2007, more than the number of American fatalities in…

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[Washington Babylon]

Joe Biden’s (Tony) Snow Job

From the Washington Post: Time magazine’s Jay Carney, who said over the summer that Joseph R. Biden Jr. is “incredibly prone to say the wrong thing,” will soon be in…

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[Washington Babylon]

Mexico’s Kidnap Inc.

From the New York Times: An American security consultant who has helped negotiate the release of scores of kidnapping victims in Latin America was himself kidnapped last week in northern…

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[Washington Babylon]

More on Norm Coleman’s Friend and Renovator

So as I noted here earlier today, it turns out that Senator Norm Coleman’s home was renovated with the help of “Shari Wilsey, an interior designer. Wilsey, along with her…

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[Washington Babylon]

Senator Norm Coleman’s Growing List of Friends

From Fox TV in St. Paul: The FBI is now reportedly investigating the allegations that Nasser Kazeminy tried to funnel $75,000 in campaign contributions through the Senator’s wife. By why…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Entitled Kennedys: Handing down the family senate seat

From Froma Harrop: Have New York Democrats lost all self-respect? Their excited talk of whether Caroline Kennedy is “interested” in Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat makes you wonder. The late John…

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[Washington Babylon]

Dumb.com

From the Dallas Morning News: After losing a valuable piece of online real estate to enterprising cyber-squatters, the Bush presidential library has replanted its flag into that e-territory. But the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Gaze Into Your Crystal Ball

From Foreign Policy‘s list of the ten worst predictions for 2008: “If [Hillary Clinton] gets a race against John Edwards and Barack Obama, she’s going to be the nominee. Gore…

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[Washington Babylon]

Eric Cantor: Friend of the little people

One of the more amusing story lines coming out of the elections is that the Republican Party, which previously had been committed to core beliefs like small government and protecting…

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[Washington Babylon]

Key Questions from Blagojevich-Jesse Jackson Story: Who was the emissary?

News stories yesterday identified Jesse Jackson Jr. as “Candidate 5” in the criminal complaint against Governor Rod Blagojevich. “Of the six candidates for the senate seat who are identified by…

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[Washington Babylon]

Depressing Headline Of The Day

It’s still early but it will be hard to top this one: “U.S. Troops Mistakenly Kill Six Afghan Policemen.”…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama Tied To Blagojevich Scandal!!! (Not Really)

Actually, there’s not a shred of evidence to support that, but that hasn’t stopped journalists from speculating wildly about Obama’s potential “links.” Check out Steve Benen’s smart critique of an…

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[Washington Babylon]

Like Father, Like Son?

From the New York Times: Federal authorities on Wednesday identified Democratic Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois as the potential United States Senate candidate who was portrayed in court papers…

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[Washington Babylon]

Be On The Lookout: Illinois Governors have high propensity for crime

Number of men elected as Illinois governor since 1960: 7 Number who have been charged with criminal conduct: 4 Number who have served time in prison: 3 Number of years…

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[Washington Babylon]

Next Up for A Bail Out: Writers

The New York Times: A little while back my daughter told me the following depressing joke: Woman: What do you do? Man: Me? Oh, I write books. Woman: How interesting!…

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[Washington Babylon]

FBI Looking Into Ties Between Norm Coleman and Longtime Supporter

From the Pioneer Press: Federal investigators are looking into allegations that a longtime friend and benefactor tried to steer money to U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, the Pioneer Press has learned.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Mission Accomplished: Blagojevich Promised To “Rock The System”

From the Chicago Tribune, March 8, 2005: On pace to be the most prolific political fundraiser in Illinois history, Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Monday pledged to rein in the excesses…

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[Washington Babylon]

Who’s Who In The Blagojevich Complaint

From the Smoking Gun: In a November 11 conversation, Blagojevich remarked that he knew Obama wanted Valerie Jarrett, a longtime confidante, to succeed him, “but they’re not willing to give…

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[Washington Babylon]

Parental Warning: Uncensored Highlights From Blagojevich Complaint

A tip for finding the juiciest parts of the feds’ Blagojevic complaint: seach for the word “fuck.” A few examples: On November 11, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH talked with JOHN HARRIS…

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[Washington Babylon]

Illinois Governor Arrested For Seeking To Sell Obama’s Senate Seat

From the Chicago Tribune: Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff John Harris were arrested today by FBI agents on federal corruption charges. Blagojevich and Harris were accused of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Dumb and Dumber: More UBS campaign contributions

Back in mid-September I noted here that a number of members of congress had accepted hefty campaign contributions from the American subsidiary of Swiss giant UBS. That seemed odd since…

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[Washington Babylon]

A Campaign Slogan For Chris Matthews: Blowhard for Senate

David Sirota apparently won’t be supporting Chris Matthews if the latter decides to run for the senate in Pennsylvania: Having grown up outside of Philadelphia, I just want to say…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congressman Rangel’s Family Finances

The latest news on Congressman Charles Rangel’s murky finances, from Politico: Between 2004 and 2007, Rep. Charles Rangel steered nearly $80,000 in campaign cash to an Internet company run by…

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[Washington Babylon]

Harper’s Scott Horton At NYU Event Thursday

Just a reminder that the incomparable Scott Horton will be joined by a team of legal experts tomorrow at New York University, for a panel called “After Torture: A Harper’s…

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[Washington Babylon]

Farewell to the Windfall Profits Tax

That was fast. “I’ll make oil companies like Exxon pay a tax on their windfall profits, and we’ll use the money to help families pay for their skyrocketing energy costs…

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[Washington Babylon]

Press Commentators and Financial Ties

The recent New York Times‘s story on the tangled business interests of General Barry McCaffrey has resulted in heavy criticism of NBC News, where McCaffrey serves as a military analyst…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Wade Five

I posted an item earlier today speculating on the names of the five members of congress that Duke Cunningham briber Mitch Wade has discussed with federal investigators. Seth Hettena, who…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Auto Industry: What went wrong?

From Barry Lynn, a regular Harper’s contributor, at the Detroit Free Press: Viewed over the long haul, the all but complete bankrupting of the Big Three is a stunning event.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Tracking Obama Transition Donors: A family united

A post-election story last month from Bloomberg identified health insurer UnitedHealth Group as a likely winner under the Obama administration. The company would “get more customers, including some they now…

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[Washington Babylon]

About Obama’s Team: Cabinet picks do matter

Face it: if you’re a self-described Democratic Party progressive, Barack Obama’s picks for top spots in his administration look pretty grim thus far. Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner are disciples…

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[Washington Babylon]

Mitch Wade Talked To Feds About Which Five Members of Congress?

As I noted here the other day, Seth Hettena has reported that Mitchell Wade, the man who bribed Randy “Duke” Cunningham and “then did much to speed the congressman’s spectacular…

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[Washington Babylon]

Accountability, There and Here

There: India’s highest-ranking security official resigned on Sunday, as the government began to reckon with the fallout from a three-day standoff with militants that raised troubling questions about India’s vulnerability…

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[Washington Babylon]

McCaffrey’s War

From the New York Times: Through seven years of war an exclusive club has quietly flourished at the intersection of network news and wartime commerce. Its members, mostly retired generals,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Summers and Hedge Funds

After being named as Barack Obama’s top White House economics adviser, Lawrence Summers resigned from his post as a managing director of D.E. Shaw & Co, a leading hedge fund.…

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[Washington Babylon]

How Many More Crooks In Congress?

A scoop from Seth Hettena: Mitchell Wade, the man who bribed Randy “Duke” Cunningham and then did much to speed the congressman’s spectacular fall, is asking a judge to sentence…

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[Washington Babylon]

Defeating Nazis, Stopping Holocaust, Cost Less Than Wall Street Bailout

Some astonishing figures in an item by Barry Ritholz (via Andrew Sullivan): The cost to the United States of helping defeat Adolf Hitler, liberate Europe from fascist rule and halt…

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[Washington Babylon]

Press Bubble: How the media covered Citicorp’s fatal 1998 merger

It’s now generally deemed that the 1998 merger between Citicorp and Travelers Group was a pivotal moment in the current implosion of the nation’s economy. “The combination of Citibank with…

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[Washington Babylon]

Dick Morris Triangulates Reverend Wright

From Politico: Dick Morris was a fixture on Fox News during the campaign and a small, but significant amount of his time in the waning days was spent singing the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Democrats On K Street: How supply and demand works in Washington

I noted here recently that Democrats were in hot demand at Washington lobbying firms, including a former “intern” of Joe Biden’s who signed up to represent a big financial firm.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Rangel’s Tax Policy: Help Thyself

Congressman Charles Rangel has improperly received a tax break on a house he owns in Washington, didn’t disclose or pay taxes on rental income from a beachfront property he owns…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bush Pardons: Texas S&L Swindlers Need Apply

President George W. Bush has not thus far granted many pardons, but he has been generous in coming to the aid of one particular constituency group: S&L executives and others…

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[Washington Babylon]

Ken Silverstein is on assignment

Ken Silverstein is on assignment and will return next week.

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[Washington Babylon]

The Great Oz Predicts

A bold prediction from James Pethokoukis of U.S. News & World Report (a double major in Soviet politics and American history and 2002 Jeopardy! champion, according to his bio), in…

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[Washington Babylon]

“He wanted to become a billionaire, and he wanted to do it in Kurdistan.” Meet Shlomi Michaels

Here’s a great investigative story about someone you’ve never heard of, but should know about. From Laura Rozen at Mother Jones: It’s the story of a man with a habit…

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[Washington Babylon]

Rathergate or CBS-gate?

From the New York Times: When Dan Rather filed suit against CBS 14 months ago — claiming, among other things, that his former employer had commissioned a politically biased investigation…

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[Washington Babylon]

Five Reasons Hillary Clinton Should Not Be Secretary of State

It looks like Barack Obama has offered Hillary Clinton the post of Secretary of State and she’s mulling over whether to take the job or not. Obama’s apparent offer makes…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Washington Post’s Principled Stand on Private vs. Public Schools

“Michelle Obama’s visits to two private schools and her inquiries about Washington’s public schools have sparked the inevitable public vs. private debate,” the Post said in an editorial today. “We…

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[Washington Babylon]

Biden’s “Intern” Nabs Lobbying Contract: Washington adjusts to the Obama Era

The Washington Post had two interesting pieces today about how Washington is responding to the election of Barack Obama. The first said that Obama’s election had “touched off a mini-boom…

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[Washington Babylon]

Familiar Faces Come on Board: Fannie Mae veteran on State Department transition team

The Washington Post reports that the “Obama transition team yesterday rolled out a new list of officials who will help guide the process, singling out the Treasury, Defense and State…

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[Washington Babylon]

Voter-Fraud Meme, Minnesota Edition

As Norm Coleman’s lead shrinks in the Minnesota Senate race (now down to 206 votes over Al Franken) his campaign’s claims of voter fraud have become more and more boisterous.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Who Should Obama Name As Intelligence Chief? (And, more importantly, does it matter?)

The Washington Post ran an article yesterday full of breathless speculation about whom Barack Obama would name to head key intelligence agencies. “The nation’s top two intelligence officers expect to…

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[Washington Babylon]

Martin Eisenstadt: America’s Best Pundit

There was a funny, well-executed hoax edition of the New York Times published yesterday, with a main headline of “IRAQ WAR ENDS.” Then this morning someone sent me an email…

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[Washington Babylon]

Potheads for Change

From The Agitator (via Andrew Sullivan): The latest absurdity to come out of the Office of National Drug Control Policy is an anti-pot PR campaign with the motto, “Hey, not…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for David Hendrickson on the Obama Administration, Banana Republics and Foreign Policy

David Hendrickson teaches international politics and American foreign policy in the Political Science Department at Colorado College. He is the author of numerous books and essays, including Peace Pact: The…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bailout Was Urgent, Oversight Not So Much

This is beyond pathetic. ABC reports: Lawmakers and the Bush administration frantically hammered out a gargantuan package to save the nation’s economy earlier this fall. But their efforts to recruit…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bailing Out Failure: The American way

I spoke today with a former government official who was appalled by Obama’s suggested emergency aid to the auto industry and by the Bush administration’s bail-out of the financial industry.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Who Got That $2 Trillion? Fed Won’t Tell

From Bloomberg: The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting…

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[Washington Babylon]

Seventy-Six and Climbing: How high can Bush go?

From CNN: On the day that President-elect Barack Obama is visiting the White House, a new national poll suggests that the current occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the most…

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[Washington Babylon]

Add another $140 billion to bailout cost

From the Washington Post: The financial world was fixated on Capitol Hill as Congress battled over the Bush administration’s request for a $700 billion bailout of the banking industry. In…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bill Kristol: The columnist as campaign operative

From Scott Horton, posted at the Daily Beast: Was John McCain’s senior foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann fired for leaking sensitive information to his friend, the long-time McCain backer and…

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[Washington Babylon]

How Obama Won North Carolina

From Chris Kromm at Facing South: Here are six key factors that gave him the victory: 1 – Obama mobilized the base: Perhaps more than any other candidate could have,…

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[Washington Babylon]

News in Review: Uh-oh

Washington Post editorial: Mr. Emanuel is undoubtedly a partisan, but with centrist instincts. In his previous White House job, he oversaw President Bill Clinton’s effort to win passage of the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Palin and Africa

Sarah Palin may have been duped by two Canadian pranksters, and she may have spent a lot of the G.O.P.’s money on clothing, but is it really possible that she…

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[Washington Babylon]

Letter from Obama Supporter

On my posting this morning, in which I tried not to be cynical: I understand your cynicism about the money Obama took from the people you call (and rightly so)…

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[Washington Babylon]

On Obama, Without Cynicism

I’ve never been able to muster as much enthusiasm for Barack Obama as many of my friends, but I was happy to see him win last night. He was clearly…

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[Washington Babylon]

Punditry Made Easy

The Los Angeles Times has a nice web feature that allows you to predict the outcome of the presidential election, state by state. So here’s my prediction: Obama 311, McCain…

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[Washington Babylon]

What To Look For Tuesday Night: The evidence should be in early

All the available evidence suggests that Barack Obama should cruise to a comfortable margin of victory tomorrow night. “Based on interviews with political strategists in both parties, election analysts and…

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[Washington Babylon]

Former International Republican Institute President: McCain Supported Grants to Khalidi’s Group

One of the lowest moments of this entire campaign has been the McCain campaign’s repulsive smear job of Rashid Khalidi. The best remark about the whole episode came from Khalidi…

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[Washington Babylon]

Governor Palin, I’ve Got I.P. Freely On The Line For You

From the Associated Press: A Canadian comedy duo notorious for prank calls to celebrities and heads of state reached Sarah Palin, convincing the Republican vice presidential nominee that she was…

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[Washington Babylon]

Second Lawsuit Filed Against Senator Coleman’s Friend

From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune: A second lawsuit was filed Friday by minority shareholders who allege that a close family friend of Sen. Norm Coleman used a marine company in Texas…

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[Article]

Useful amateurs

How the smearing of Barack Obama got crowd-sourced

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[Washington Babylon]

Is The Coleman/Kazeminy Lawsuit Just Politics?

Senator Norm Coleman charged today that a lawsuit alleging that his close friend and campaign donor Nasser Kazeminy funneled money to his wife were “absolutely false.” Coleman said “Al Franken…

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[Washington Babylon]

Exposed: The community organizer/crack cocaine connection

The Daily Show reports. With expert testimony from Matthew Vadum of the Capital Research Center and author of a recent “opus” on ACORN.

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[Washington Babylon]

Lawyer In Case Involving Senator Coleman: “We had information and documents to back it up”

I spoke tonight with Casey Wallace, a lawyer at a prominent Texas law firm that filed a lawsuit Monday alleging that one of Senator Norm Coleman’s campaign donors, Nasser Kazeminy,…

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[Washington Babylon]

More Mystery on Senator Coleman and His Donor Friend

A lawsuit filed in Texas earlier this week and now apparently withdrawn alleges that one of Senator Norm Coleman’s campaign donors, Nasser Kazeminy, aided the senator by hiring a firm…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama Campaign Offers Pre-election Sale On Democratic VIPs

From Politico: Aides to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) scheduled pricey luncheons, roundtables, readings, VIP receptions and policy dinners with campaign officials and advisers, offering donors a taste of his potential…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Kent Moors on Saudi Economic Problems, American Foreign Policy and the Future of Oil

Kent Moors is an expert on oil and natural gas policy, and a professor in the Graduate Center for Social and Public Policy at Duquesne University. He has been an…

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[Washington Babylon]

Cheers: Bailout for rum makers

From ProPublica: As Congress debated the historic financial rescue package on Oct. 3, the world economy was hanging in the balance. The House already had rejected Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s…

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[Washington Babylon]

Washington’s Congressional Bloc

Washington, D.C., has only 0.2 percent of the U.S. population and three votes in the Electoral College but it turns out city residents, or at least a select few, have…

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[Washington Babylon]

Good News For Senator Stevens: He can keep his congressional pension

Ted Stevens was found guilty today of having “knowingly failed to list on Senate disclosure forms the receipt of several gifts and tens of thousands of dollars worth of remodeling…

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[Washington Babylon]

It’s October. Where’s Our Surprise?

Barring a complete failure of polling and political punditry (not an impossibility, of course), the outcome seems clear: Barack Obama is going to win the election. Over at FiveThirtyEight.com, John…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Chris Kromm on the Election in the South

Chris Kromm is the Executive Director of the Institute for Southern Studies and the publisher of Southern Exposure. A former community organizer, Kromm also writes for the Institute’s blog, Facing…

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[Washington Babylon]

Oleg Deripaska and the Buying of Washington: Controversial oligarch funds local think tanks

Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska has recently been the subject of a number of unflattering news accounts. An oligarch close to Valdimir Putin, Deripaska is a former metals trader who “survived…

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[Washington Babylon]

Young Voters Still May Be Key

Tom Edmonds, a GOP consultant interviewed here the other day, predicted that young voters would stay home on Election Day, which might allow John McCain to pull off an upset…

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[Washington Babylon]

Is It Over, Part III

From the New York Times: MIAMI — As Mr. McCain enters this closing stretch, his aides — as well as some outside Republicans and even a few Democrats — argue…

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[Washington Babylon]

How To Elect A Tinklenberg

From the Los Angeles Times: Elwyn Tinklenberg is living the long-shot candidate’s political dream. There weren’t enough chairs for the volunteers crammed inside the four-room campaign office Wednesday morning. Every…

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[Washington Babylon]

Will African Americans Turn Out?

From the Associated Press: There have been predictions all year of a record black turnout for Obama. The first actual figures suggest that wasn’t just talk: In North Carolina, blacks…

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[Washington Babylon]

McCain Maintains Advantage In Poll Of Family Members: But Obama closing gap

The latest polls show Obama just ahead among rural swing-state voters and in Montana, and closing in ….. Arizona?…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Cost of Democracy

Gross National Product: Malta: $5.49 billion Madagascar: $5.37 billion Cambodia: $5.34 billion Spending on Fall 2008 U.S. Elections: $5.3 billion Burkina Faso: $5.24 billion Mali: $5.12 billion Nicaragua: $4.97 billion…

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[Washington Babylon]

Sarah Palin, Nieman Marcus and Senator Norm Coleman’s Friends

Several weeks back I reported here on claims from sources that a friend and donor of Senator Norm Coleman had previously bought him suits at Nieman Marcus in Minneapolis. After…

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[Washington Babylon]

Endorsement Fever: This is good news?

Colin Powell and Ken Adelman have endorsed Obama, and that’s supposed to be reassuring? Normally I’d take an endorsement by one of those guys and run in the other direction.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Turkmeniscam at TPMCafe Book Club

I’m discussing my new book, Turkmeniscam: How Washington Lobbyists Fought to Flack for a Stalinist Dictatorship, all week at TPM Cafe. Others taking part in the conversation are Stephen Walt,…

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[Washington Babylon]

About the Youth Vote: A reader sees high turnout for Obama

A letter in response to yesterday’s post, which cited GOP consultant Tom Edmonds arguing that youth turnout for the presidential election would be smaller than expected. Your 10/20 post entitled…

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[Washington Babylon]

Buying the Election

This is astonishing. The state where the Obama campaign has been carpet bombing the airwaves most vigorously this past weekend was West Virginia. If you watched TV over the weekend…

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[Washington Babylon]

Is It Over? Part II

I just ran an interview with GOP media consultant Tom Edmonds, who thinks McCain still has a shot at winning the election. I had tried to contact a few other…

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[Washington Babylon]

Is It Over?

Barack Obama is ahead in every national poll by a seemingly comfortable margin. He’s shattering all records for political fundraising, is attracting huge crowds to his rallies, and the pundits…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Gipper At Play

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: The men are shown with sex toys around their necks, doing skits in blackface, dressed in wigs and women’s clothing and consuming copious quantities of alcoholic…

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[Washington Babylon]

How AIG Spends Its Money: Resort stays and political support

Earlier this month, AIG executives headed to a luxury spa in California to decompress after the company received an $85 billion federal bailout. How else does AIG spend its money?…

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[Washington Babylon]

Did She or Didn’t She? McCain’s alleged girlfriend denies story of affair

From Ed Pound at National Journal: In one of the most sensational stories of the presidential campaign, The New York Times published a 3,000-word, front-page article in February suggesting that…

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[Washington Babylon]

McCain’s Other Joe Problem: Should the senator switch to Sanka?

From BAGnewsNotes–“Has McCain Been Suffering From What The DSM-IV Classifies As Caffeine Intoxication?” Is it just coincidence John McCain is often depicted with a jumbo-sized Starbucks in or at hand?…As…

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[Washington Babylon]

Joe the Plumber Is Not Having a Good Day

From Politico: Joe the Plumber really is no fan of paying taxes. According to records from the Lucas County (OH) Court of Common Pleas found by my colleague Avi Zenilman,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Is ACORN Plotting a Coup?

I had never realized prior to now that ACORN was one of the most powerful organizations in the country. Not only is the group accused of being responsible for the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Harper’s Book Event Tonight in Washington

At Busboys and Poets Bookstore, 2021 14th Street NW (at “V” Street), beginning at 6:30. In an age of PR and spin, is journalistic deception sometimes necessary? If so, under…

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[Washington Babylon]

John McCain: The only man in America with reception for his iPhone

Assuming he has one. From the Washington Post: Early in 2007, just as her husband launched his presidential bid, Cindy McCain decided to resolve an old problem — the lack…

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[Washington Babylon]

Norm Coleman’s Denial and “Transparency”

I published a story last week that discussed Senator Norm Coleman’s cozy relationship with several of his campaign donors. Coleman’s office declined repeated requests for comment, but I said I…

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[Washington Babylon]

Electing Republicans: Your tax dollars at work

From the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform: A draft Committee report circulated by Chairman Waxman finds that in the months before the 2006 elections, the White House Office…

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[Washington Babylon]

A New Media Hero is Born: Just a few years too late

In recent days both the Washington Post and the New York Times have lionized Brooksley E. Born, who during her 1996 to 1999 tenure as head of the Commodity Futures…

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[Washington Babylon]

Did PBS Bury Torture Documentary?

From my colleague Scott Horton: This spring, PBS’s distinguished Frontline series aired a mildly critical account of the lead-up to the Iraq War entitled “Bush’s War.” As the airing of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Mark Foley’s Worthy Successor

From ABC News: West Palm Beach Congressman Tim Mahoney (D-FL), whose predecessor resigned in the wake of a sex scandal, agreed to a $121,000 payment to a former mistress who…

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[Washington Babylon]

New Third Party Candidate Threatens McCain

Not Bob Barr–it’s newcomer Joad Cressbeckler. This video was posted a few weeks back, but it’s especially timely now that Cressbeckler has begun threatening McCain’s core support among “grizzled and…

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[Washington Babylon]

More Smoke From Senator Coleman on His Shopping Habits

Senator Norm Coleman’s office continues to hedge when asked about his relationship with donor Nasser Kazeminy. MinnPost.com provides some background: I had heard this allegation [about a businessman buying suits…

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[Washington Babylon]

When Challenged on Ethics, Sen. Coleman and Rep. Keller Blame the Bloggers

October 8: In a stellar display of political weaselry, Cullen Sheehan, campaign manager for Senator Norm Coleman, tells reporters that he will not “respond to unnamed sources on a blog,”…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Rumsfeld Fellows: Advanced degrees in bungled invasions

When last spotted, Professor S. Frederick Starr was snuggling up with Washington lobbyists employed by the Kazakh government. Starr, the one-time Soviet advisor to President Reagan who currently heads the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Urgent Business Opportunity: This one may be legit

Posted at iTulip.com, Eric Janszen’s web site: To: TRUSTED PERSON Subject: REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP DEAR AMERICAN: I NEED TO ASK YOU TO SUPPORT AN URGENT SECRET BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP…

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[Washington Babylon]

Senator Norm Coleman Gets by with a Little Help From His Friends

Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota seems to enjoy mutually beneficial relationships with his financial contributors and political allies. Earlier this year, National Journal reported that he had a cozy deal…

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[Washington Babylon]

Department of Irony: Congress, lobbyists, and reporters toast “financial reform”

On November 8, 1999, a few months before the NASDAQ index peaked at 5132.52, The American Banker ran several short items in its “Washington People” column. The lead piece reported…

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[Washington Babylon]

Lowry’s Little Burst

Rich Lowry of National Review was highly impressed, even aroused, by Sarah Palin’s debate performance last night: And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing…

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[Washington Babylon]

Book Event on “Turkmeniscam” in Washington

For readers in D.C., I’ll be at Politics and Prose Bookstore this Sunday to discuss and take questions on Turkmeniscam: How Washington Lobbyists Fought to Flack for a Stalinist Dictatorship.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Ifill on George Bush: “Part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan”

I’ve already said that I can understand why some Republicans are complaining about Gwen Ifill being the moderator for tonight’s debate, even though the charges about Ifill’s partisanship are wildly…

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[Washington Babylon]

A Revival of Reverend Wright?

The Judicial Confirmation Network (JCN), a conservative independent group, is running new anti-Obama TV ads in battleground states that feature the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. “Obama chose as his pastor a…

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[Washington Babylon]

Ifill and Blather

“It is a blatant conflict of interest,” Bay Buchanan said on CNN last night. “There’s no question about that.” “She’s tough as nails right down the middle,” Paul Begala said…

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[Washington Babylon]

Lobbyists and Fred Starr Team Up to Promote Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan has been heavily criticized by international observers for its human rights violations, descriptions of which run to the horrifying and lurid, for its rigged elections, and for the fact…

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[Washington Babylon]

Striking Voters: If you look hard, you might see a pattern

From the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law: Election officials across the country are routinely striking millions of voters from the rolls through a process that is…

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[Washington Babylon]

Cheney Watch: Halliburton Bribery Investigation Proceeding in UK and US

A few weeks ago a former senior executive at Halliburton pleaded guilty to paying bribes to Nigerian officials to win a mammoth energy project in that country. The executive, Jack…

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[Washington Babylon]

Former CIA Official Cops Plea

From the Associated Press: A former executive director of the CIA has pleaded guilty to wire fraud as part of a plea bargain. Kyle “Dusty” Foggo was the number three…

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[Washington Babylon]

Will McCain Dump Palin? Not likely

When even some conservatives are calling for Sarah Palin to be replaced as John McCain’s running mate, you know she’s in serious trouble. But it’s unlikely that Palin will be…

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[Washington Babylon]

McCain Cronies Hit Jackpot with Gtech

“As a two-time chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, Mr. McCain has done more than any other member of Congress to shape the laws governing America’s casinos,” the New York…

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[Washington Babylon]

Does the “Media Elite” Have It In For Sarah Palin?

Should the media be scrutinizing the record of Sarah Palin, who until a few weeks ago was the relatively unknown governor of Alaska? Yes. Does Palin’s general lack of political…

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[Washington Babylon]

Lousy Is As Lousy Does: McCain puts his finger on the economic problem

There didn’t seem to be any clear winner in last night’s presidential debate, which presumably is good for Barack Obama since he seems to be slightly ahead at this point.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Drill, Baby, Drill: Newt strikes it rich

From the Center for Public Integrity: Las Vegas casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson upped his ante in former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s unregulated issues-advocacy group in August, with a $750,000 donation…

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[Washington Babylon]

Senator Robert Bennett: There’s no time to do this “right,” just give Wall Street the money

“I’ve spent the last few weeks talking to [Wall Street traders], and they want this money so badly—it’s an obsession,” Adam Davidson said last night during an NPR report. “Obviously…

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[Washington Babylon]

RSVP for the Bailout

From the Sunlight Foundation: If you haven’t been under a rock lately, you know that the Bush Administration is proposing a $700 billion bailout for Wall Street. What you might…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for James Galbraith on the Financial Crisis and the Bailout

James K. Galbraith teaches economics at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, the University of Texas at Austin, where he directs the University of Texas Inequality Project, an…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Nate Silver on Polls and the Election

Nate Silver is the founder of the popular website FiveThirtyEight.com and a writer, analyst, and partner at a sports media company called Baseball Prospectus. He developed a system called PECOTA,…

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[Washington Babylon]

McCain’s “Bittergate”: Fallows on the Contingencies article

The current uproar about John McCain’s remarks on health care is as dumb as the earlier uproar over Barack Obama and the “bittergate” scandal. McCain’s views on deregulation are important,…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Jackass in Red: Meet the G.O.P.’s most famous convention delegate ever

Gabriel Nathan Schwartz rocketed to national prominence when he was drugged by a hooker and robbed of $50,000 while serving as a delegate to the Republican National Convention. But Schwartz…

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[Washington Babylon]

Self-Shill: Ashgabat Calling

From my new piece in the October issue of Wallpaper*, on a recent trip to Ashgabat, the political and cultural hub (as it were) of Turkmenistan. The article is not…

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[Washington Babylon]

Galbraith on Stock Market Crashes and Stuffed Shirts

John Kenneth Galbraith wrote this in 1954, in his book The Great Crash, and it still rings true today: In the autumn of 1929 the mightiest of Americans were, for…

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[Washington Babylon]

How bad is the economy? Don’t jump, but “We’re going to have to redefine what we mean by normal growth”

The government bails out Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG. Lehman Brothers goes bankrupt and Merrill Lynch is sold. Stocks are tanking with the Dow Jones down by 22 percent…

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[Washington Babylon]

Punditry and Wishful Thinking

I’m taking part in the Online 100, a panel put together by PoliticsHome.com, a terrific website that offers breaking political news and analysis. The Online 100, which is meant to…

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[Washington Babylon]

“Submersion Journalism”: Book Event at New York University on Wednesday

Submersion Journalism: Reporting in the Radical First Person from Harper’s Magazine, a collection of fifteen pieces from the magazine, is about to go on sale. One of my stories is…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congress Still Taking Money From UBS Despite Multiple Investigations

Speaking of huge contributions to politicians from Wall Street, you’d think members of Congress would by now be reluctant to accept donations from the American subsidiary of Swiss giant UBS.…

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[Washington Babylon]

A Bipartisan Guide to the Financial Collapse: Who’s not taking money from Merrill and Lehman?

“Both the Republicans and Democrats have given the financial services industry everything it wanted. The finance sector has endless amounts of money to influence politics and can outgun the bank…

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[Washington Babylon]

McCain Strategy: “These Little Facts Don’t Matter”

From today’s Washington Post, which cited Sarah Palin’s repeated claims that she fought the Bridge to Nowhere as an example of “a candidate staying on message even when that message…

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[Washington Babylon]

Criminal Ingratitude: Congressman Doolittle’s aide complains about poor view from stadium skybox

Here’s a lovely nugget from the fed’s indictment of Kevin Ring, the former aide to California Congressman John Doolittle who after becoming a lobbyist worked closely with Jack Abramoff. Ring…

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[Washington Babylon]

Sarah Palin Still a “Stay at Home” Mom at Heart: Which netted her almost $17K from Alaska state coffers

From the Washington Post: Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a “per diem”…

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[Washington Babylon]

Stanley in Africa: Former Halliburton exec’s history of bribes and kickbacks

From ProPublica and PBS’ “Frontline” In the world of Big Oil, Albert “Jack” Stanley was legendary for winning billion-dollar contracts in Third World countries as the Halliburton (HAL, news, msgs)…

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[Washington Babylon]

Does McCain Campaign Chair’s Lobby Shop Share Skybox with AT&T?

There are two great American pastimes: baseball and sucking up to huge corporations. It appears that McCain Campaign Chair Rick Davis has found a way to combine the two. There’s…

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[Washington Babylon]

Torture and Logic

A lot of prisoners had it much worse—a lot of—a lot of prisoners had it much worse than I did. I’d been mistreated before, but not as badly as many…

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[Washington Babylon]

Palin’s Vetting: Five Colleges, None Contacted by McCain

I’ve heard of the five-year plan to graduate from college, but this is the first time I’ve heard of the five-college plan. Yes, that’s the number of different colleges that…

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[Washington Babylon]

Alaska: More Diverse than G.O.P. Convention

Sarah Palin must have felt right at home last night during her speech to the G.O.P. convention: there were almost no black people. African Americans make up only 3.7 percent…

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[Washington Babylon]

Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Rove

Karl Rove thinks that a president who would pick as his running mate a former small-town mayor and state governor with little experience would be making “an intensely political choice”…

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[Washington Babylon]

She’s Not Just a Russia Scholar: Palin’s foreign-policy expertise includes Ireland

From the Boston Globe: Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin got her first passport in 2006 and has visited just four countries, and she had little involvement in her state’s…

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[Washington Babylon]

Three Cheers for Teen Pregnancy

From Lawrence Auster, about the “warm embracing response of Christian conservatives to the Bristol announcement”: Over and over, there’s no disapproval at all of Bristol’s pregnancy. To the contrary, there…

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[Washington Babylon]

“A Blessing to America”: Joe Lieberman’s effusive endorsement (of Obama)

Joe Lieberman really knows how to heap on the praise: “He is a blessing to the United States senate, to America and to our shared hopes for a better, safer…

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[Washington Babylon]

Karl Rove to Chris Wallace: “I think I’m with you”

John McCain’s camp is attacking the media for having the audacity to question Sarah Palin’s foreign policy experience, even though — as the GOP talking points go — her stellar…

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[Washington Babylon]

In Case of Palin, Hypocrisy Might Have Been Easier to Understand

Quite a few news stories and op-eds about the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter have touched on the issue of the alleged “hypocrisy” of the G.O.P. vice-presidential nominee. But…

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[Washington Babylon]

Free Hookers and Blow For G.O.P. Convention Revelers

From ABC News: As residents of New Orleans were fleeing Hurricane Gustav, top Republican party officials donned pink boas and swigged vodka shots at a wild whirl of corporate and…

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[Washington Babylon]

What Would Newt Do?

From James Wolcott: Jake Tapper asks: “What would the response be if Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, and his wife Michelle had a pregnant unmarried teenage daughter?” I can answer that.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Palin and Her Pastors: “Those that die without Christ have a horrible, horrible surprise”

During the 2008 campaign the beliefs of various candidates’ spiritual mentors has attracted a great deal of attention, especially those of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and to a lesser extent…

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[Washington Babylon]

Blog Break

Ken Silverstein is traveling. Washington Babylon will return next week.

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[Washington Babylon]

Credibility Crunch: Biden’s son worked for credit card company that pushed bankruptcy “reform” bill

From the New York Times: During the years that Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. was helping the credit card industry win passage of a law making it harder for consumers…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bipartisan Policy Center: We are not boring

Gil Troy, a professor of history at McGill University and Visiting Scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), writes: In his Washington Babylon item of August 18), Ken Silverstein wonders…

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[Washington Babylon]

How Hunt Oil Buys and Sell(s)

Remember those stories last month about how the Bush administration seemed to give Hunt Oil a wink before it signed a controversial deal in Kurdistan? “Bush administration officials knew that…

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[Washington Babylon]

Your Essential Guide to the Political Conventions

Change a few names and places, and this wonderful piece in the Weekly Standard by Andrew Ferguson is just as perfect in August of 2008 as it was when he…

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[Washington Babylon]

Biden Blatherfest: Read Glenn Greenwald, skip the rest

According to various headlines gathered from RealClearPolitics, Barack Obama’s selection of Joe Biden to be his VP was either “the Perfect Pick” or “A Good Pick…for Republicans,” not to mention…

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[Washington Babylon]

The “Crescendo” Recedes: Public indifferent to Biden’s selection

During the past few weeks, thousands of reporters and commentators have produced countless stories feverishly speculating about who Barack Obama would pick to be his vice presidential nominee. “Obama Veep…

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[Washington Babylon]

Penetrating Campaign Insights from the Washington Post and CNN

“Market share dictates the witless coverage, which is largely for the media’s own amusement,” Chris Lehmann said in an interview posted here yesterday. “You see that all the time on…

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[Washington Babylon]

Olympics Chief OK on China jailing grannies, but really annoyed by Jamaican sprinter’s celebration

During the run-up to the Olympics and beyond, Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee, uttered barely a word of criticism about the Chinese government. China breaks its…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Chris Lehmann on “Moronic” Campaign Coverage and the “Press Bubble”

Chris Lehmann is a senior editor at CQ and a co-editor at Bookforum. He was formerly a columnist of the New York Observer and deputy editor of Washington Post Book…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congressman Murtha’s Racket: Pork and influence peddling or jobs and growth?

Several Pennsylvania residents wrote in about yesterday’s post on how lobbyists and defense contractors with ties to Congressman John Murtha have such extraordinary success winning earmarks out of his House…

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[Washington Babylon]

China Nabs Another Gold Medal: Government sets new record for jailing Olympics protesters

The New York Times reported yesterday that the Chinese government had refused to allow a single demonstration in any of the official “protest zones” it had created for the Olympic…

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[Washington Babylon]

Convicted Felon: Congressional ethics bill filled with loopholes

From The Hill: Former Representative Bob Ney (R., Ohio) said Wednesday that the lobbying bill passed in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal that sent him to prison probably…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congressman Vern Buchanan: Would you buy a used car from this man?

From a complaint filed today by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, against Congressman Vern Buchanan (R., Fl.): Rep. Buchanan owns several car dealerships in Florida. In September 2005,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Olympic Protests: Another Triumph for Jacques Rogge’s “Silent Diplomacy”

Ever since Beijing was awarded the right to host the Olympic Games, the International Olympic Committee has been talking about the beneficial impact this would have on human rights in…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Bipartisan Policy Center’s Two Party System

Is there a more boring organization in America than the corporate-sponsored Bipartisan Policy Center, which is hosting big ticket events to both the Democratic and Republican conventions? The Center was…

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[Washington Babylon]

I’ll Have My Tie, With a Side Order of Fries

As the crisis in the Caucasus grows, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili enjoys a snack. This does not inspire a great deal of confidence in the Georgian leader’s ability to hold…

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[Washington Babylon]

Alan Greenspan: The maestro has no wand

From today’s Washington Post: It’s been nearly a decade since Greenspan’s stock hit its all-time high with the now-famous Time magazine cover during the Asian financial crisis — the one…

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[Washington Babylon]

Change We Can Believe In? Democratic keynoter biggest recipient of lobbying money

From the Sunlight Foundation: Mark Warner, who’s running for Virginia’s open seat to the U.S. Senate and will serve as the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention in Denver,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Travel Advisory for Pakistan: Don’t carry your satellite phone

From Doug Frantz at the Washington Independent: Al Qaeda and the Taliban are executing suspected U.S. informants in Pakistan in a campaign to terrorize potential spies and reinforce the authority…

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[Washington Babylon]

In New Interview, John Edwards Reveals All

Finally, John Edwards gives a candid interview about his extramarital affair.

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[Washington Babylon]

Good Georgia vs. Fascist Russia? Maybe it’s not that simple

From Mark Ames in The Nation: Up until now, this war was framed as a simple tale of Good Helpless Democratic Guy Georgia versus Bad Savage Fascist Guy Russia. In…

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[Washington Babylon]

More Hot Air From David Broder on Speaking Fees

David Broder answered questions from Washington Post readers today during an online chat, and was asked about his acceptance of speaking fees from private groups, a topic I first raised…

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[Washington Babylon]

NBC: Nothing Bad about China

From the Washington Post: Political protests? Not on this channel; no sir. Beijing’s fearful pollution? Maybe, but only if a marathoner coughs up a lung or it spoils a beauty…

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[Washington Babylon]

What Was Putin Thinking?

Note from a reader: Where on earth did Putin get the idea that he could just manufacture a non-existent crisis, invade a sovereign nation and overthrow its government just because…

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[Washington Babylon]

John Edwards Ends Fling With Anti-Poverty Center

Once upon a time John Edwards wanted to be president. “Poverty,” he said back then, “is the great moral issue of our century,” he told a group of students at…

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[Washington Babylon]

NBC’s Olympics, Brought to You By Henry Kissinger

“Through NBC, GE has paid hundreds of million of dollars to broadcast the Olympics,” Arvind Ganesan of Human Rights Watch said in an interview here recently. “Will we see tough…

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[Washington Babylon]

How Low Can Jacques Rogge Sink? Beijing and the spirit of ’36

In an editorial last week the New York Times suggested that the International Olympic Committee, in its ceaseless shilling for China in the run-up to the games, had proven itself…

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[Washington Babylon]

National Enquirer Publishes John Edwards Pix

This has not yet been authenticated but the National Enquirer must be pretty confident about this story on John Edwards and his alleged “lovechild.” After all, Edwards is a trial…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama’s Money: Will his big donors top Bush’s Pioneers and Rangers?

I posted an item last week noting that Barack Obama’s presidential campaign liked to talk about all the money it has raised from small donors, but that it was raking…

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[Washington Babylon]

Silent Armey: Former House majority leader lobbies for defense contractor

Whenever the cry goes up in Washington for lobbying reform, lobbyists insist that there’s really no need for any serious change. After all, they’ll say, we are already required to…

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[Washington Babylon]

Hard Times for the G.O.P.: Leaked letter reveals pathetic financial conditions at party’s private club

Earlier this year I described my night at the Capitol Hill Club, the exclusive private watering hole for Republican elected officials and their supporters, primarily lobbyists. The club boasts a…

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[Washington Babylon]

Will Bush Administration Let Oil Companies Skate on Money Paid to African Dictator?

Exxon Mobil is quietly commemorating the biggest operating profit in U.S. corporate history, announcing last week that it had earned $11.7 billion during the second quarter. Here’s something else that…

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[Washington Babylon]

David Broder Tears Up Over Senator Stevens

In his Washington Post column today–one of thousands he has written over his career that end with a cry to end “partisan gridlock”–David Broder gets misty-eyed over the indictment of…

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[Article]

The mandarins

American foreign policy, brought to you by China

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[Washington Babylon]

So Long Ted Stevens, It’s Been Good to Know You: The Pork King’s finest moments

From Taxpayers for Common Sense: Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) earned his status as longest-serving member of the U.S. Senate by keeping not only his home renovator well-fed from the pork…

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[Washington Babylon]

New York Governor: I’ve got a bridge to sell you — literally

From the New York Post: Warning of an approaching economic calamity, Gov. Paterson yesterday called an emergency session of the state Legislature – and raised the specter that New York…

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[Washington Babylon]

Senator Ted Stevens: A trip down memory lane

You can read all you want elsewhere about today’s indictment of Senator Ted Stevens. The only thing I want to note here is the news in the indictment that Stevens…

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[Washington Babylon]

McCain Advisor’s Track Record on Iraq Unblemished by Success

From TPMMuckraker: It’s kind of astonishing that McCain continues to be taken seriously on Iraq when his closest adviser has a track record on the issue as atrocious as [Randy]…

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[Washington Babylon]

Richard Perle: War for fun and profit

From the Wall Street Journal: Influential former Pentagon official Richard Perle has been exploring going into the oil business in Iraq and Kazakhstan, according to people with knowledge of the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama’s Money: Not all of it coming from those beloved small donors

Much has been made of Barack Obama’s success in raising large sums of money from many small donors. But when you’ve already raised at least $340 million (well above the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Tax Shirkers for McCain/Lieberman?

“Peter Lowy, the son of Australian billionaire Frank Lowy, appeared early Friday before a U.S. Senate subcommittee investigating ways the ultra-wealthy use tax havens to avoid paying taxes,” Forbes reported…

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[Washington Babylon]

Los Angeles Times to be Written Entirely by Computer

According to one extremely reputable source, things are even worse at the Times than previously thought: For the 23rd time in 18 months, the Los Angeles Times is losing its…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congressman Roscoe Bartlett: Practicing what he preaches

Congressman Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland hates taxes. A few years back, he signed on to a Republican Liberty Caucus Position Statement that called for a total overhaul of the tax…

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[Washington Babylon]

Performance Bonus? Top Officials at Bailed out Fannie and Freddie Rake in Millions

Today the Washington Post published its annual survey of executive compensation, and reported that while the Washington, D.C., area’s “growing financial sector was one of the first to feel the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Orange County’s Little Sheriff

From the Washington Post, in a story about Michael S. Carona, who during his glory days “appeared to personify the righteous virtue of Orange County, the famously conservative bastion that…

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[Washington Babylon]

Feeling John McCain

A picture really is, sometimes, worth a thousand words.

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[Washington Babylon]

Curt Weldon Pal Pleads Guilty

From the Philadelphia Inquirer: A close friend of former U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon pleaded guilty today to destroying records soon after the FBI interviewed her about the congressman. Cecelia M.…

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[Washington Babylon]

More on Dow 36,000

Reader William Young comments: Regarding your article about the Dow, the more relevant numbers to quote would be from about 9 months later when the peak of the tech stock…

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[Washington Babylon]

Dow 11,349.28

James Glassman and Kevin Hassett published Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock Market on September 20, 1999, an event which almost immediately…

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[Washington Babylon]

Slate’s Guide to Administration Lawbreaking and Future Prosecutions

Slate has produced a very handy interactive guide for people trying to keep track of Bush Administration scandals and potential future prosecutions: What kind of lawbreaking has happened on President…

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[Washington Babylon]

Why You Don’t Like David Brooks, Explained

From Jim Sleeper: Brooks, a self-described conservative and sometime practitioner of “comic sociology,” author of On Paradise Drive and inventor of the all-American working-class type “patio man,” knows he has…

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[Washington Babylon]

Another Reason to Be Skeptical of the Sierra Club

If you missed it Monday night, check out Stephen Colbert’s interview with Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope. Pope really does hug trees — and talk to polar bears. And…

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[Washington Babylon]

Another Reason to Be Skeptical of Yoga

Via Laura Rozen: A link to Radovan Karadzic’s website, under his alias of Dragan Dabic. After Russia, Dr. Dabic travelled around India and Japan, after which he settled in China…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congress to Look at Price Gouging on Drugs Used to Treat Children

From Portfolio: Trevor Foltz was six months old last fall, fresh off a visit to Disney World in Orlando, when the spasms first began. Healthy until that point in his…

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[Washington Babylon]

Corruption in Kazakhstan? My last illusions are shattered

The Wall Street Journal has been running a terrific series of articles about corruption and human rights abuses in Kazakhstan, which the newspaper describes as “a strategic U.S. friend and…

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[Washington Babylon]

Vital Strategic Debate at Air Force: What color leather for our comfort capsules?

From the Project on Government Oversight (POGO): While elements of the Air Force brass were bickering about color coordination for their new comfort capsules, troops have sat for hours on…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congress and Menthols

From a reader: “This might be the sickest, slickest thing to come out of Congress since the Dems took over, and, I think, something that Henry Waxman is losing a…

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[Washington Babylon]

Gary Condit: All I did was lie about my affair with a murdered woman and the media won’t leave me alone

The Washington Post is running a 12-part series on the unsolved 2001 murder of Chandra Levy. Then-Congressman Gary Condit became a suspect in the case, in part because after she…

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[Washington Babylon]

Waterboarding and the Waverly Inn

Leon Wieseltier on Hitchens and waterboarding: Just some weeks ago Christopher Hitchens and his camera-ready conscience went and got themselves waterboarded for the pages of Vanity Fair, which are anyway…

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[Washington Babylon]

Olympic Sponsors “Cheer for China”:

In an interview here about a week ago, Arvind Ganesan of Human Rights Watch criticized the twelve corporate “super-sponsors” of the Beijing Olympics, companies that include McDonald’s, Coke, and GE.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Will Obama Speak Out for Constituent’s Kids? Or Will Choreography Prevail on Foreign Trip?

For months an Illinois woman, Colleen Davis Bargouthi, has been petitioning Barack Obama’s campaign and Senate offices to help her four American-born daughters, who, she says, are being held incommunicado…

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[Washington Babylon]

Ukrainian Press Calls Conference Attended by Karl Rove “Nauseating”

As I noted earlier today, Karl Rove can’t be bothered to honor a congressional subpoena, but he’s got time to fly off to Yalta to appear at a panel sponsored…

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[Washington Babylon]

Sweet Dreams: Official Predicts “Chaos” and “Panic” if Washington, D.C., Attacked

From Jeff Stein at CQ: Darrell Darnell, director of the District of Columbia’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, says there would be “a lot of panic, a lot of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Rove, Yalta, and Contempt of Congress

Karl Rove does not have the time or inclination to testify before Congress but he did manage to fly off to the Ukraine last week to appear as a panelist…

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[Washington Babylon]

Wolcott: “The raven caw of Laura Ingraham’s voice”

From James Wolcott at Vanity Fair: The raven caw of Laura Ingraham’s voice on the radio has never been one of nature’s nobler mating calls, and her on-air personality has…

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[Washington Babylon]

Russian and Serb Interests Paid for Congressman Weldon’s Family Vacation to Europe

Back in January of 2007, the House Ethics Committee (“Press 1 if you are a member of Congress covering up a criminal offense. Press 2 if…”) released a statement saying…

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[Washington Babylon]

Charges Against Two SIGIR Employees Dropped

More than a year ago I reported on an ongoing investigation into two top employees at the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), Stuart Bowen Jr. and Ginger…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Daily Show on the New Yorker Cover

Brilliant dissection of the media reaction to the New Yorker cover: Via Charles Kaiser at Radar. Yes, out of context, Wolf Blitzer just might be a Hitler-lover.

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[Washington Babylon]

Video from Guantánamo: Interrogation of Canadian teenager

From The Guardian: The first footage showing an interrogation at Guantánamo Bay was released today by the lawyers of Omar Khadr, a Canadian teenager detained by US forces. The video…

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[Washington Babylon]

Where is the Curt Weldon Investigation Heading?

Plea deal with lobbyist friend likely imminent… The federal investigation into former Congressman Curt Weldon has been going on for nearly two years now. The original investigation stemmed from an…

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[Washington Babylon]

That New Yorker Cover

Many readers disliked yesterday’s item “WhineOn.org,” about the hysteria over The New Yorker‘s cover illustration on Barack and Michelle Obama. Indeed, the item generated more negative mail than an earlier…

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[Washington Babylon]

Lobbyist-arranged Op-eds?

Following up on that Sunday Times of London story about its sting on lobbyist Stephen Payne, regarding the former administration official caught seeking to sell access to the White House,…

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[Washington Babylon]

WhineOn.org: It’s true, liberals really have no sense of humor

Right-wingers like to paint liberals as a bunch of humorless, whining ninnies, and the hysterical reaction to the New Yorker‘s cover on Barack Obama proves there is more than a…

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[Washington Babylon]

Worldwide Strategic Shakedown Partners

Make sure to read through all of the documents posted by the Sunday Times relating to the journalism sting it pulled on lobbyist Stephen Payne, which I linked to yesterday.…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Professor of Repression and China

Two years ago, I wrote a story about Professor S. Frederick Starr of Johns Hopkins University’s Central Asia Caucasus Institute and his indecently close ties to dictators in that region.…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Arvind Ganesan on the Beijing Olympics, the Media and Human Rights

Arvind Ganesan has been at Human Rights Watch as the Director of the Business and Human Rights Program and is involved in research, advocacy, and policy development. His program has…

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[Washington Babylon]

Sunday Times Video Catches Lobbyist Selling White House Access

The Sunday Times carried out an undercover sting, in which lobbyist and former Bush administration official Stephen Payne thought he was meeting “Eric Dos,” a man seeking to arrange meetings…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama’s Reaganesque Foreign Policy?

From Eli Lake: Of course, the Obama counterterrorism policy is still a work in progress. As his recent zigzags illustrate, he still hasn’t figured out his stance on some of…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Manchurian Men’s Convention

From Jeff Stein at CQ: My friend said his patients described training with drugs and other mind-control techniques to perform the mission — then forget them, like the Manchurian Candidate.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Zzzzzzzz: Get Ready for CNN’s Exciting Convention Coverage

From Lisa de Moraes of The Washington Post: Blitzer stays up nights wondering whether Clinton will be introduced by her daughter, Chelsea, and when, if at all, her husband, former…

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[Washington Babylon]

Iran’s Culpability Conclusively Established: Country Guilty of Bad Photoshopping

From the New York Times: As news spread across the world of Iran’s provocative missile tests, so did an image of four missiles heading skyward in unison. Unfortunately, it appeared…

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[Washington Babylon]

Is Fareed Zakaria the $75,000 Man?

Soon after posting my recent articles about the large speaking fees commanded by top journalists and pundits, I was contacted by someone who had once hoped to book Newsweek’s Fareed…

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[Washington Babylon]

And the Nobel Prize for Best Swiss Bank Accounts Goes To…

From ABC News: “Two U.S. lawmakers are pushing for a Nobel Peace Prize to go to a politician accused of taking bribes, abusing human rights, and profiting from widespread and…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congress and Soils Professionals: A Very Dirty Relationship

Taxpayers for Common Sense has released a list of the “Top 10 Congressional Resolutions of the 110th Congress.” These include: —A resolution recognizing soil as an essential natural resource, and…

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[Washington Babylon]

Oregon Fraudster Backing McCain

From Willamette Week: Former Oregon Republican Party chairman and one-time gubernatorial candidate Craig Berkman owes millions to some of Portland’s wealthiest investors—but that hasn’t stopped him from making generous political…

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[Washington Babylon]

Uzbek Dictator’s Daughter: Harvard grad’s “wishes are orders”

Northern Italy’s leading daily, La Stampa of Turin, reports on the “Unavoidable Rise of the Beautiful Gulnara,” on Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of Uzbekistan’s autocrat-for-life Islam Karimov. When daddy rules…

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[Washington Babylon]

Laurie Coleman’s “Blo & Go”: The “whole key is suction”

The Washington Post reports that Laurie Coleman, wife of Republican Senator Norm Coleman, has invented a tool for hands-free hair drying called the “Blo & Go.”: Against the backdrop of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Senator Cornyn’s Friend at the Scooter Store

A reader notes: It’s really convenient to have a Leadership PAC when the CEO of a company that’s recently reached a $4 million dollar settlement with the Justice Department for…

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[Washington Babylon]

Thomas Powers on the Iran Threat

Good piece from the New York Review of Books: At a moment of serious challenge, battered by two wars, ballooning debt, and a faltering economy, the United States appears to…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Washington Post, After Watergate

From Alexander Cockburn: My dry-eyed remarks about Tim Russert here last week elicited a large number of enthusiastic letters from CounterPunchers astounded at the commotion at his passing. In a…

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[Washington Babylon]

Rick Renzi, American

A reader sends in this heartwarming patriotic moment, just in time for the July 4th holiday: Just before school let out, students at Alpine Elementary were thrilled to see a…

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[Washington Babylon]

Will the Bush Administration Strike Iran?

Laura Rozen has been running an interesting forum on Iran at Mother Jones, which asks: “How likely is a scenario in which the United States or Israel strikes Iran before…

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[Washington Babylon]

After Losing in Court, Government Keeps Al-Arian Jailed With “Contempt” Charges

From IPS: Palestinian activist and former university professor Sami Al-Arian was arraigned Monday in U.S. federal court on two counts of criminal contempt for his refusal to testify in a…

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[Washington Babylon]

James Wolcott on Bob Kerrey’s “Recipe for Loserdom”

I’ve been away for the past week so over the next few days I’m going to catch up by posting some of the best stories and items I read on…

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[Washington Babylon]

Parental Warning: Obscene David Broder video follows

I’m on vacation for a week, but before taking off I wanted to do a final column on the journalists’ speakers circuit I’ve been reporting on recently. The most surprising…

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[Washington Babylon]

Alhurra’s Paid Commentators

From ProPublica: Alhurra, the U.S. government-funded Arabic news channel, paid former Bush and Clinton administration officials, lobbyists and high-profile Washington journalists tens of thousands of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money…

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[Washington Babylon]

Thar She Blows: The joys of offshore drilling

From American Prospect: According to the NYT, the Energy Information Agency estimates that the total amount of oil in the offshore zone in question is about 16 billion barrels. If…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama and Ethanol, BFF

From the New York Times: Mr. Obama is running as a reformer who is seeking to reduce the influence of special interests. But like any other politician, he has powerful…

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[Washington Babylon]

Waiting for Kurtz

I’ve been mildly surprised that Howard Kurtz, the Post’s journalism ethics guru and a man always willing to critically examine his own employers, hasn’t discussed the cases of David Broder…

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[Washington Babylon]

David Broder’s and Bob Woodward’s Lame Alibis

Washington Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell’s column on Bob Woodward’s and David Broder’s ethics was not as disappointing as I had feared. It’s a sign that the Post is at least…

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[Washington Babylon]

More on the New Buckraking

Plus: How Bob Woodward and Tim Russert Stack Up Deborah Howell, the Post’s ombudsman (or “permanent cheerleader,” as mediabistro.com calls her) has confirmed to me that she will this weekend…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bob Woodward: On the inside looking out

From Politico: Roberta McCain, the candidate’s Mom, was among those congratulating campaign manager Rick Davis and his wife, Karen, last night at the historic home of Lea and Wayne Berman.…

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[Washington Babylon]

New and Improved Rice

From Jonathan Schwarz: Here are some statements by Ms. Rice in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq: “I think he [then Secretary of State Colin Powell] has proved…

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[Washington Babylon]

A Fair and Balanced Tim Russert Obit

Via the Daytona Beach News-Journal: My sympathies go to Tim Russert’s family. My father died the same way: massive heart attack in the middle of the day, in the prime…

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[Washington Babylon]

Change We Can Believe In?

Via Kevin Alexander Gray: Obama campaign announces “Senior Working Group on National Security” –Secretary of State Madeleine Albright –Senator David Boren, former Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence…

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[Washington Babylon]

Graveyard of Empires?

The situation in Afghanistan continues to worsen, with Asia Times reporting, “The battle for Kandahar, the city in the southern province of the same name where the Taliban rose to…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Bush Legacy, As Seen From London

From The Independent: So perhaps Mr. Bush’s most significant legacy, as far as Britain is concerned, will be the destruction of the instinctive trust of America and its leaders that…

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[Washington Babylon]

Post Rules Appear at Odds with David Broder/Bob Woodward Speaking Gigs

As I reported this morning, the Post’s ombudsman Deborah Howell told me in a phone conversation that she was not sure whether the Post had official, written guidelines regarding journalist…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bob Woodward’s “Charity”: Follow the Money, If You Can Find It

Plus: Post Ombudsman to Weigh In, Expect Heavy Hand on Scale The Chronicle of Philanthropy has picked up and advanced my story last week about Bob Woodward’s speaking engagements with…

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[Washington Babylon]

Greta Van Susteren on Journalists and Speaking Fees

In my Friday story “Bob Woodward, Sponsored by Citibank,” I noted that Woodward’s speaking gigs included a stop at an event sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association. I also said…

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[Washington Babylon]

Former NPR Ombudsman On Journalists and Speaking Gigs

Jeffrey Dvorkin, Executive Director of Journalism at The Real News Network and a former NPR Ombudsman, writes about my recent stories on David Broder and Bob Woodward: Good point on…

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[Washington Babylon]

New Cheney Videotape Surfaces

A shocking new report from America’s leading investigative publication: Reports surfaced Tuesday that the New York–based Fox News Channel has obtained a tape which purportedly features another cryptic video message…

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[Washington Babylon]

Countrywide Financial’s “Friends”

Terrific piece from Portfolio: Two U.S. senators, two former Cabinet members, and a former ambassador to the United Nations received loans from Countrywide Financial through a little-known program that waived…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bob Woodward, Sponsored by Citibank

I reported yesterday on the public speaking arrangements of David Broder and Bob Woodward, neither of whom has thus far replied to requests for comment. Here’s more on Woodward. As…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congressman Weldon and that Murky Russian Non-Profit

Good read from Wired: The U.S. military’s Missile Defense Agency signed a $97 million contract with a Kremlin-connected nonprofit, to help secure Russia’s aid in anti-missile projects. Pentagon higher-ups ultimately…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bob Woodward’s Moonlighting

I closed my item earlier today regarding David Broder’s speaking gigs with a 1995 quote from Ben Bradlee about journalists making big bucks for public speaking: I wish it would…

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[Washington Babylon]

David Broder’s Moonlighting: Post columnist benefits from corporate speaking deals

Back in the mid-1990s, the fact that some big-name Washington reporters were receiving huge speaking fees created a scandal within the journalism world. No one was tougher in criticizing the…

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[Washington Babylon]

More on Obama and AIPAC

A number of people wrote with comments about the item I posted last week, “Obama Wins Coveted Hamas Un-endorsement with AIPAC Speech”. Here are two different takes, both that make…

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[Washington Babylon]

WSJ: Controversial Russian Tied to Congressional Scandal

I’ve been writing about Vladimir Petrosyan, an important but little known figure involved in the ex-Congressman Curt Weldon scandal, since late-2006. Today, the Wall Street Journal ran a story which…

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[Washington Babylon]

David “Huey” Broder Condemns Obama for Breaking with Reverend Wright

“Over the past two months, Obama has in slow stages backed away from his 20-year association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, first criticizing some of his statements but clinging to…

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[Washington Babylon]

Reason Makes Hash of Larry Johnson on Michelle Obama Story

For anyone tracking the infamous Michelle Obama/whitey videotape, check out the latest from David Weigel of Reason, who has now completely exposed Larry Johnson: In his peddling of this story,…

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[Washington Babylon]

McCain on the Everglades: I was against it before I was for it

From the Miami Herald: John McCain will venture into the Everglades for the first time as a presidential candidate Friday, an obligatory rite of passage for politicians shoring up their…

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[Washington Babylon]

Next Year in Jerusalem: Obama Not Waiting to Win Presidency to Start Flip-Flopping

Referring to Obama’s speech yesterday to AIPAC, reader Ed Moloney comments by email: “Not only a cynical shift but perhaps one of the fastest flip-flops in presidential campaign history.” Moloney…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama Wins Coveted Hamas Un-endorsement with AIPAC Speech

Well, Barack Obama achieved his goal with his speech today to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC): he has officially been unendorsed by Hamas. “I will bring to the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Michelle Obama and Uncle Joe: Forthcoming scoop from Larry Johnson

Larry Johnson, the man who has been pushing the story of a mysterious tape that supposedly features Michelle Obama ranting about “whitey” with Louis Farrakhan, formerly worked for the CIA…

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[Washington Babylon]

Michelle Obama and Larry Johnson: Seeing is Believing

The rumor sweeping the Internet, which I’m sure you’ve heard by now, is that there’s an explosive tape of Michelle Obama ranting about “whitey.” The rumor is being spread most…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Way Washington Works, Cuban-Style

From the Miami Herald: A Maryland prosthetics company pushing a new federal bill that would broaden insurance coverage for its products — and boost its bottom line — has enlisted…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bob Dole: King of erectile dysfunction hits McClellan for selling out

Politico reports that former Senator Bob Dole “sent a scalding email to Scott McClellan, excoriating the former White House spokesman as a ‘miserable creature’.” Dole, said the story, used his…

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[Washington Babylon]

Worst Shill of Year? Six Flags and high gas prices

Not long after the 9/11 attacks, lobbyist Howard Marlowe sought help for the American Shore & Beach Preservation Association (ASBPA). A letter to Congress his firm helped prepare said that…

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[Washington Babylon]

Waxman, Uncensored: What’s a steroid?

Congressman Henry Waxman of California has been the mastermind behind congressional investigations into steroid use among baseball players. However, based on this promotional clip from the new movie Bigger Stronger…

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[Washington Babylon]

Let Them Eat Biofuels: Bush Official Sees Hope in Hunger

From the Baltimore Sun: U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer, who travels to a world food security conference in Rome next week, laid out the Bush administration’s strategy today for meeting…

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[Washington Babylon]

High Priest of Journalism Ethics Knee-Deep in Moral Quicksand, Again

From the New York Times: When Howard Kurtz invited Kimberly Dozier, the CBS journalist wounded in Iraq, onto his program, “Reliable Sources,” on CNN on Sunday, he was not a…

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[Washington Babylon]

A Clinton Reader Catches Obama’s Shifting Views on Ethanol

The lavishly-subsidized federal ethanol program is one of the biggest corporate boondoggles of recent times. Eileen O’Connor, a Clinton-supporter based in California, wrote a letter (published below) which charts Obama’s…

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[Washington Babylon]

Explained: Why McCain favors long presence in Iraq

From MSNBC: A little-noticed civil lawsuit in Florida is shining a light on an unusual but hugely profitable Pentagon contract to ship millions of gallons of aviation fuel to U.S.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Are Politicians Failing Our Lobbyists?

The Onion reports.

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[Washington Babylon]

Curt Weldon Transfers Campaign Money to Legal Defense Fund

Remember former Congressman Curt Weldon? He’s the one currently under federal investigation for allegedly steering business to a lobbying firm headed by his daughter. And now running an international consulting…

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[Washington Babylon]

Cindy McCain: Like Hubby, Not So Charitable

Senator John McCain’s charitable works don’t appear to be terribly impressive. As I reported here a few months back, he has essentially been the sole contributor to the John and…

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[Washington Babylon]

Media Makes Shocking Discovery: McCain Surrounded by Lobbyists

Over the past few weeks, the media has finally begun reporting the fairly obvious fact that there are a whole bunch of lobbyists working closely with the campaign of Senator…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Case for Political Rudeness

Mark Slouka has a terrific piece in the June issue of the magazine that convincingly argues against political politeness. “In the long term, it is [the] tilt toward deference, this…

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[Washington Babylon]

Did McCain Camp Receive Illegal Contribution?

Very interesting story in National Journal: John McCain’s presidential campaign has finally paid off its debt to 3eDC, a private Web company linked to campaign manager Rick Davis and his…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Clintons: It’s only just beginning

From CNN’s website: Is politics in Chelsea Clinton’s future? Bill Clinton says maybe. In an interview with People Magazine, the former president said he thinks his daughter is a natural…

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[Washington Babylon]

Lebanon: Another Bush foreign policy defeat

Augustus Richard Norton, a professor at Boston University and expert on the Middle East, sends this note about the latest developments from Lebanon: Lebanese politicians reached agreement last night in…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Colbertian Guide to Foreign Policy Coverage

“Here’s how it works,” said Stephen Colbert during his famous appearance at the White House Correspondents Dinner, describing the rules for covering the President. “The President makes decisions. He’s the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Let them eat dirt: Multinationals reap benefits of commodity crisis

The soaring price of commodities worldwide has been a disaster for the poor, with reports coming out of Haiti that some people don’t have enough money to pay for food…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congressman Rangel Clarifies

In a recent story about Hillary Clinton, I stated that Congressman Charles Rangel had, like Clinton, accepted political contributions from attorney Melvyn Weiss, who recently pleaded guilty to paying kickbacks…

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[Washington Babylon]

Blogger Roundtable Coordinator: Let’s find people to “carry our water”

Once more I’m going to return to the topic of those blogger roundtables organized by the Pentagon, which I have discussed several times since last summer and most recently last…

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[Washington Babylon]

The G.O.P.’s Summer Collection

From the Star-Tribune: What would prompt Bloomington mayor Gene Winstead to vogue down a Mall of America runway modeling a t-shirt and Zubaz? Nothing short of the unveiling of the…

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[Washington Babylon]

McDonald’s: Baku Hot Spot

A few weeks back I posted an item about a 2005 Senate trip Barack Obama made to Azerbaijan during which he lobbied dictator Ilham Aliyev on behalf of McDonald’s and…

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[Washington Babylon]

Disturbing Sex Scandal Involves Swift Boat Family

Will Perry is the son of Bob Perry, a major funder of the Swift Boat Vets and the G.O.P. Will is also a G.O.P. donor, although he gives less than…

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[Washington Babylon]

On That Hillary–Hitler Video: The verdict is in

A number of readers complained to me or to Harper’s about that delightful Hillary-as-Hitler video I posted the other day, which was created by comedian James Adomian. But the public…

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[Washington Babylon]

Was U.S. Private Security Firm Spying for Kazakh Government?

That’s the question raised by this terrific Wall Street Journal story. The firm is GlobalOptions, an extremely well-connected company run by, among others, former FBI and CIA officials. The Kazakh…

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[Washington Babylon]

Convicted Scammer is Donor to Clinton Campaign

I know Hillary Clinton is hard up for dough, but should her campaign really have taken money from a suspected (and subsequently convicted) kickback conspirator? In June of 2007, attorney…

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[Washington Babylon]

Major G.O.P. and Democratic Donor Questioned in Israeli Corruption Probe

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that Sheldon Adlelson, a major donor to the G.O.P., has been questioned by police as part of a corruption probe. S. Daniel Abraham of Slim-Fast,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Tip to McCain: To promote reform, bag your national finance co-chair

The Washington Post reports today that Barack Obama and John McCain are both working to freeze out “527” groups—named after a provision in the tax code—which are not allowed to…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama, Hamas, and “Nuance”

Barack Obama recently severed all links with Robert Malley, an informal Middle East policy adviser, after the latter “confessed” that he had met with the Palestinian group Hamas. And in…

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[Washington Babylon]

Exclusive Video: Hillary in the Führerbunker

Well, I may be soft on Hillary, but this is very funny. (Not safe for work or for the easily offended.)…

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[Washington Babylon]

McCain’s Burma Connection

Doug Goodyear, who had been picked by John McCain’s campaign to run the G.O.P. convention this summer, resigned over the weekend after Newsweek reported that a lobbying firm he heads…

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[Washington Babylon]

More on Hillary the Bloodthirsty Monster

A number of readers emailed about yesterday’s post on why, for reasons I myself find baffling, I’ve started feeling sympathetic toward Hillary Clinton. None of the emails were friendly, but…

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[Washington Babylon]

Why I Like Hillary: She’s a bloodthirsty monster

I’ve received quite a few complaints in recent months from readers who think I’m pro–Hillary Clinton and anti–Barack Obama. In fact, I believe Obama has better politics than Clinton, is…

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[Washington Babylon]

Kurt Andersen and the Media’s Obama Crush

The most honest and insightful piece yet on the media’s love affair with Obama: But of course, I don’t know many of those fierce Clinton supporters, because most of my…

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[Washington Babylon]

Africa’s Worst Dictator: No, it’s not Mugabe

The situation in Zimbabwe is an outrage and I can understand why the Bush administration, and the entire Western world, is appalled by President Robert Mugabe’s anti-democratic depredations. As has…

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[Washington Babylon]

San Diego G.O.P. Headed by Co-founder of Piracy Group

From Raw Story: Any job applicant knows that background checks are routine – especially for jobs involving authority or oversight of money. So why didn’t the San Diego Republican Party…

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[Washington Babylon]

Hillary Shoots From the Left, Hits Foot

From Politico: Sen. Hillary Clinton’s mailing attacking Sen. Barack Obama’s record on guns appears to include a striking visual gaffe: The image of the gun pictured on the face of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Palestinians Responsible for Israeli Killing of Palestinians: Post Op-Ed columnist hits new low

It’s always a mistake to read the Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl during breakfast (or at all for that matter), but his column today was particularly gag-inducing: Last Tuesday, Israel faced…

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[Washington Babylon]

Heckuva Job, Palfrey Prosecutors

So, the trial of Deborah Palfrey ends with her apparent suicide, the public outing and humiliation of a number of the women who worked for her, and her company’s list…

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[Washington Babylon]

Goldberg’s Online Mugging

From Gawker: When the New York Observer’s media blogger Matt Haber (the forgotten Gawker Alum!) devoted a post yesterday to basically announcing the existence of Goldberg’s blog and needling Goldberg…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bolton and “Conservatism”

I mentioned the other day that I was taking part in a debate/conversation at TPM Book Club about Peter Scoblic’s new book, “U.S. Versus Them: How a Half-Century of Conservatism…

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[Washington Babylon]

North Carolina “Robo-callers” Exposed

From Facing South: Who’s behind the mysterious “robo-calls” that have spread misleading voter information and sown confusion and frustration among North Carolina residents over the last week? Facing South has…

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[Washington Babylon]

Journalism Ethics Lessons from the Iraqi War’s Chief Salesman

In his new blog, Jeffrey Goldberg complains that he recently was insulted by Matt Haber of the New York Observer. Haber cited an old item I wrote which said that…

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[Article]

My Lobby, Myself

How John McCain’s hypocrisy is laundered as reform

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama Roundup: Reverend Wright and Robert Blackwell

I don’t have a lot to add to the uproar over Barack Obama and his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, other than to state that it’s clearly going to hurt…

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[Washington Babylon]

Book Debate at TPM Cafe

Peter Scoblic, executive editor of the New Republic, has written a provocative new book called “U.S. Versus Them: How a Half-Century of Conservatism Has Undermined America’s Security.” It’s the topic…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Patricia Gossman on Afghanistan

Patricia Gossman is an independent consultant on human rights and rule of law issues in South Asia, Afghanistan in particular. She is currently a grantee of the United States Institute…

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[Washington Babylon]

Headline of the Week

From Thursday’s Politico, print version: “Pelosi Wants Stimulus Before Trade.” Still not as good as TPM Muckraker’s headline back in 2006 after then-House Speaker Denny Hastert voiced support for an…

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[Washington Babylon]

Hold the Presses! Journalist Challenges Karl Rove for Lying

I missed this when I was traveling, but two weeks back The Week magazine invited journalists, think-tankers and politicos to a Georgetown hotel to hand out its Opinion Awards. For…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama to Azeri Dictator: Set Our Big Macs Free

A reader recently called to my attention to a 2005 Chicago Tribune story detailing a trip to Eastern Europe that Obama took early in his Senate career. At the time,…

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[Washington Babylon]

The “Stupidest Guy on the Face of the Earth” Points Fingers

General Tommy Franks was complaining about his job one day, and said: “I have to deal with the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth almost every day.”…

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[Washington Babylon]

Ethics Reform Marches On

Remember all those how important political reforms Congress passed after the Democrats took over? Like the new rules meant to stamp out the influence of lobbyists and special interest groups…

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[Washington Babylon]

Campaign ’08 and Howard Dean’s Tears

There are a lot of people who still think that presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama essentially can’t lose the November presidential election (or, more to the point, that John McCain…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Pentagon and the Weekly Standard: Cutting Out the Middleman

I was on NPR’s Talk of the Nation yesterday to discuss the recent New York Times story about the Pentagon’s use of retired military officials “to generate favorable news coverage…

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[Washington Babylon]

Wal-Mart Political Videos: The ABCs of Buying Influence

From the Center for Public Integrity: Another video segment from 2001 shows Norm Lezy, a retired Air Force lieutenant general who’d opened Wal-Mart’s first Washington office in 1999, making the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Need Stock Advice? Congressman Peter Hoekstra May Have Some Tips

A few weeks back Roll Call had a story (not available online) reporting that Congressman Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, had recently reported…

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[Washington Babylon]

Hillary: We’ll “totally obliterate” Iran

A reader from England called my attention to this item from today’s Haaretz, in which Hillary Clinton–seeking to outdo Barack Obama in the candidates’ frenzied bidding war to be the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Army Granting More “Waivers” for Criminals, Drug Abusers

“The Army admitted about one-fourth more recruits last year with a record of legal problems ranging from felony convictions and serious misdemeanors to drug crimes and traffic offenses, as pressure…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bloggers and the Middle East, Continued

I complained recently that liberal media outlets, including those in the blogosphere, tend to be almost as narrow-minded in analyzing the Middle East (read: uncritically pro-Israeli) as the mainstream media.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Ten Issues That Will Decide the McCain-Obama Election

There’s no reason that the Democratic nominee for president shouldn’t win the November election. “[John] McCain is a candidate of pronounced and glaring weaknesses,” New York magazine recently noted: A…

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[Washington Babylon]

Return of the Pentagon’s Media Surrogates

The New York Times has a terrific piece today called “Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand, which focused on how a Defense Department program worked with retired military officials and…

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[Washington Babylon]

McCain’s Tax Returns and Charity

From the New York Times: Over the past two years, Senator and Mrs. McCain donated about $340,320 from their community assets to charity, the campaign said. Most of Senator McCain’s…

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[Washington Babylon]

Top Democratic Strategist Ensnared in Scandal (Not Really)

I’m just kidding with that headline–if it had been true–if, say, one of Barack Obama’s senior advisors had sought help for a failed brothel owner and convicted felon, you would…

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[Washington Babylon]

When You Hear the Word “Freedom,” Reach For your Wallet

Now here’s a sweet deal: Step 1: Set up your own Political Action Committee. Step 2: Raise a million dollars in $20 contributions from little old ladies. Step 3: Pay…

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[Washington Babylon]

Deep Throats: A Compilation of Debate Porn

This compilation from TPM captures the full horror of last night’s Democratic debate. It’s worth watching for the grim amusement value. Incidentally, last night Hillary Clinton criticized Barack Obama–prompted by…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Jefferson Morley on Our Man in Mexico

How many Mexican presidents did the CIA have on the payroll? A veteran Washington journalist, Jefferson Morley is the national editorial director of the non-profit Center for Independent Media in…

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[Washington Babylon]

A Reader Notes: Israel and Hamas Already Talking

In response to yesterday’s post, a smart note from a reader that jibes with what I have been told by people on the ground in the region: It would be…

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[Washington Babylon]

Charlie and George at ABC: Lame and Lamer

Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos have been broadly panned for their work during last night’s Democratic debate. The best commentary comes from Tom Shales of the Washington Post, who said…

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[Washington Babylon]

Jimmy Carter, Hamas, and the Media

Jimmy Carter is, predictably, being savaged for meeting with officials from Hamas during his current visit to the Middle East. “It’s bad enough that Carter…will be putting a stamp of…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Best Bias Money Can Buy

From Jonathan Schwarz at Mother Jones: What would it look like if Fox News produced a segment about bias in the media? Certainly it would follow the standard Fox format:…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bloggers and Double Standards

I agree that Barack Obama’s remarks about Pennsylvania voters, however badly stated, have been hyped out of proportion by the media, the G.O.P., and Hillary Clinton. The Daily Show explains…

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[Washington Babylon]

McCain’s “Courtly Southerner”

Old Spy magazine story on Charles Black not nearly as admiring as New York Times profile A few days ago the New York Times ran a generally flattering profile of…

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[Washington Babylon]

How McCain Promotes “Reform” Through Non-Profit Institute

As noted here last week, Senator John McCain’s ties to the supposedly independent Reform Institute have recently attracted well-deserved media scrutiny. In 2001, McCain helped found the Institute, a non-profit…

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[Washington Babylon]

McCain and the “Reform” Institute

The Huffington Post has reported that Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign has sent out a fundraising letter attacking Democratic mega-donor George Soros even though the Reform Institute, a non-profit group…

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[Washington Babylon]

Administrative Note

Ken Silverstein is away and will return to Washington Babylon April 12.

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[Washington Babylon]

Military Report Looked at Co-opting Bloggers

Via Wired: A study, written for U.S. Special Operations Command, suggested “clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers.”…

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[Washington Babylon]

Murky InterOil

Last October, I reported here on the strange case of Interoil, a small firm that bought an Alaskan oil refinery from Chevron and shipped it 6,000 miles away to Papua…

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[Washington Babylon]

Reverend Wright’s Remarkable Letter

On March 11 of last year Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. wrote a remarkable letter to reporter Jodi Kantor at the New York Times, responding to an article by Kantor…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Matt Bai on Campaign ‘08

Matt Bai covers national politics for the New York Times Magazine and is the author of The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics, which chronicles the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Before You Write That Next Check to the Sierra Club

Before you write that next check to the Sierra Club, check out this story: The Sierra Club’s national board voted March 25 to remove the leaders of the Club’s 35,000-member…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Surge is Not Sustainable: Augustus Richard Norton explains why

Augustus Richard Norton, a combat veteran and retired Army colonel, taught at West Point for more than 12 years and is now a professor of anthropology and international relations at…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama: Liberal Madman!

If Barack Obama does win the Democratic nomination, he’s going to be subjected to intensified charges from the G.O.P. that he’s a closet Islamist, Black nationalist, anti-Semite and, most menacing…

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[Washington Babylon]

Target Terror: Buckeye, Arizona

From the Arizona Republic: Buckeye is either at the forefront of homeland-security readiness or under the spell of private-security consultants promising “hands-on” anti-terrorism training in a war zone. The town…

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[Washington Babylon]

Who, Us? Derivatives traders shocked that fingers point at them

“Who Created This Monster?” was the title of a mammoth New York Times piece yesterday about the nation’s unfolding economic crisis. The answer to the question–mostly financial speculators as well…

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[Washington Babylon]

Meet Janice Enright, Hillary’s Lobbyist Friend and Fundraiser

Here’s a story from CQ that deserves more play: A small number of lobbyists are super insiders. They don’t just donate money to their favorite congressional causes — they serve…

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[Washington Babylon]

I Thought the Banks Were Broke?

Plenty still on hand to buy lawmakers The American financial industry seems to be teetering on the brink of collapse. The feds have stepped in to save Bear Stearns. Other…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Company They Keep

John McCain is on a world tour, and after flunking Middle East Politics 101 on the Jordan leg of his trip, he’s now on his way to London, where his…

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[Washington Babylon]

Good News for Freedom Agenda: Pro-American dictator not a cannibal

For years it has been rumored that Brigadier General Teodoro Obiang, the long-time dictator of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, is a cannibal. “In similar fashion to Idi Amin, Obiang has also…

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[Washington Babylon]

America at Its Best: Spitzer Scandal Brings Out Good Old-Fashioned Entrepreneurialism

If you’re planning to cash in on the Eliot Spitzer scandal, it may already be too late. “When the chips are down for the Governor of New York, the people…

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[Washington Babylon]

Gaga Over Geagea

As previously noted here, the Bush administration has welcomed a host of controversial foreign rulers and officials to the White House . The latest: Samir Geagea (pronounced Jaja) of the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Aventum President Says Her Firm Totally Separate from Former NRCC Treasurer

I posted an article Wednesday on the unfolding scandal at the National Republican Congressional Committee, in which a former Committee treasurer named Christopher Ward is the central figure. I noted…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Rise and Decline of American Newspapers

Gannett, by far the greediest newspaper chain in America and one that typically seeks to obtain profit margins otherwise available only to crack dealers, is cracking down on perks for…

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[Washington Babylon]

Spitzer Set Up?

I hate to argue with my colleague Scott Horton, but I’m not sold on the notion that Eliot Spitzer was targeted by the feds. Scott wrote earlier today: Today’s Times…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bowling and the G.O.P.

Remember that financial scandal at the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC)? The one that involves all sorts of apparent financial improprieties and lots of money missing from the NRCC’s coffers?…

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[Washington Babylon]

Spitzer Leak Update

Yesterday I posted a note from a reader wondering why Eliot Spitzer’s name leaked out of the Justice Department so quickly, while Senator David Vitter’s didn’t leak after the arrest…

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[Washington Babylon]

Spitzer: Political Leak?

A reader emails with an interesting observation: Amazing how Senator David Vitter’s name never leaked out of the Justice Department after the arrest of the D.C. Madam, but Eliot Spitzer’s…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Trials of Sami al-Arian

When Sami Al-Arian was arrested in 2003, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft declared a major victory in the “war against terrorism.” Two years later, after the Justice Department had spent an…

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[Washington Babylon]

Should Clinton Withdraw? Let voters, not pundits, answer the question

I’ve been assuming, like most everyone else, that Barack Obama has a far better chance of defeating John McCain in November than Hillary Clinton. Obama has broader appeal to independents…

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[Washington Babylon]

Castro Departs but Engel Still Wields Power

With Fidel Castro giving up power in Cuba, might there be a change in American policy towards Havana, such as scrapping the ancient, spectacularly unsuccessful trade embargo? Probably not as…

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[Washington Babylon]

More Failure for “Sensible” American Middle East Policy

Former CIA official: concessions by Israel cannot be discussed ”rationally” in United States The week opens with President Bush’s “peace plan” for the Middle East in shambles, more than 100…

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[Report]

Beltway Bacchanal

Congress lives high on the contributor’s dime

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[Washington Babylon]

President Bush, Without Irony, “Assails Democratic Candidates’ Foreign Policy Views”

Meeting with dictators sends the wrong signal, he says From “Bush Assails Democratic Candidates’ Foreign Policy Views,” published today in the Washington Post, with links added for clarification: “Sitting down…

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[Washington Babylon]

John McCain’s Charitable Contributions

His kids’ private schools are prime beneficiaries The charitable contributions of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have received a fair amount of press scrutiny. The same is not true of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Tom Ridge for McCain’s Veep?

Last week, the Washington Post’s “In the Loop” column asked readers to predict who John McCain and Barack Obama would pick as their vice presidential nominees. The Obama contest is…

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[Washington Babylon]

Meanwhile, Turkey Invades Iraq

“The bombings are continuing by land and by air; the clashes are becoming heavier.” This was a Turkish military source quoted in a story today in the Guardian, referring to…

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[Washington Babylon]

Media Alert: To the Point

Today I’ll be on To the Point, the NPR show hosted by Warren Olney, to discuss Barack Obama’s campaign for a segment on “Money and Influence on the Campaign Trail.”…

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[Washington Babylon]

Rumors of McCain-Iseman Relationship Go Back At Least a Year

There’s been a lot of speculation in the media and in the blogosphere about the origins of the New York Times story on Senator John McCain’s murky relationship with lobbyist…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Glenn Greenwald on Campaign Coverage

Glenn Greenwald, Salon’s popular media critic, is a former constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He has authored three books, including Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big…

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[Washington Babylon]

John Boehner Tees Off

House Minority Leader John Boehner frequently portrays himself as a no-nonsense fiscal hawk and friend of the little guy and gal. “While families struggle with rising costs of living, politicians…

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[Washington Babylon]

Former Mossad Chief Argues for Talks with Hamas: Halevy’s views beyond the pale of American politics

Last year, I published a story (“Parties of God: The Bush doctrine and the rise of Islamic democracy”), that discussed whether or not it was desirable for the U.S. government…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for A.J. Rossmiller on the Politics of Intelligence

A.J. Rossmiller, a fellow at the National Security Network, served with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for nearly two years. He was awarded the Joint Civilian Service Achievement Award and…

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[Washington Babylon]

SEIU Replies to Rosselli Resignation Letter

A few months I reported on internal disputes at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), where critics allege that President Andy Stern has been conducting a power grab. Ever since,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Inside the Capitol Hill Club: Private “home away from home” for Republican lawmakers

“I’m here three or four times a week,” Congressman Tom Price of Georgia told a small crowd last Thursday at the Capitol Hill Club, a private establishment for Republicans and…

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[Washington Babylon]

Department of Irony: United States backs Iran in lawsuit over murdered American

The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) makes it difficult to sue foreign governments in U.S. courts for crimes committed against American citizens, including murder and torture. The U.S. government has…

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[Washington Babylon]

More Pork for Trident

In 2006, Harper’s and TPM Muckraker reported extensively on Trident Systems Incorporated, a Fairfax, Virginia-based firm that had an excellent record of winning federal earmarks with the help of Representative…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Great Alterman Speaks: Thompson wraps up G.O.P. nomination as Edwards sweeps early Democratic primaries

In an item yesterday, Eric Alterman rated me as “America’s worst pundit” due to a line I wrote in the fall of 2006 which said that Barack Obama was already…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Cathy Allen on How the Democrats Will Run Against McCain

Cathy Allen is a Democratic political consultant and president of The Connections Group, based in Seattle, Washington. Her firm has worked for hundreds of successful political campaigns around the world,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Internal Dispute at SEIU Deepens

Read top official’s resignation letter A few months back I reported on internal fighting at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), describing what looked to be a power grab by…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions on How the G.O.P. Will Run Against Obama for John Brabender

Barack Obama doesn’t have the Democratic presidential nomination sewn up, but barring some very unexpected results tonight the odds seem to be moving in his favor. Obama has proved to…

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[Washington Babylon]

More on the Scandal at the National Republican Congressional Committee

Christopher Ward, the man at the center of the scandal brewing at the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), has resigned from Political Compliance Services, the firm announced yesterday. Meanwhile Politico…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Meaning of Mitt’s Tears

Mitt Romney reportedly teared up during his withdrawal speech yesterday but so far the pundits aren’t analyzing his moist eyes. Did he really get choked up? Was it merely a…

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[Washington Babylon]

Curt Weldon: Back in business

Plus: News on the federal investigation Former Republican Congressman Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania is currently under federal investigation due to charges that he steered business to a lobbying firm headed…

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[Washington Babylon]

NRCC Financial Scandal Looks Like an Inside Job

Politico has shed some light upon the mysterious scandal brewing at the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). “Top House Republicans were told in recent days that a former employee of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Yes We Can’t: Pundits fail, flail

Yesterday I planned to write a post about the likely outcome of the Super Tuesday voting, but gave up when I saw the glut of over-excited punditry filling the newspapers…

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[Washington Babylon]

War in Chad: World Bank-backed oil project hasn’t created promised “model” of development

Back in 2000 construction began on a $3.7 billion pipeline running from oil fields in southern Chad to the Atlantic coast of Cameroon. An international consortium led by ExxonMobil and…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bookmark This

Take a look at the website of the brand new Washington Independent, which offers terrific original political reporting and analysis. Good pieces recently posted include Spencer Ackerman’s story on CIA…

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[Washington Babylon]

What is 8433, LLC, and Why is it Contributing Money to Congressman Connie Mack?

Last July, a Florida entity called 8433, LLC contributed $5,000 to Congressman Connie Mack’s personal Leadership PAC. Since corporations aren’t allowed to make political contributions, the Federal Election Commission sent…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Giuliani Campaign Spent at Least $142.83 For Each Vote

Rudy Giuliani’s campaign released its 4th quarter fundraising figures today, which show that Mr. 9/11 spent $48.9 million through last December 31. In light of that figure (which of course…

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[Washington Babylon]

F-22 Ready for Action, Sort Of

Make sure to read the terrific op-ed in Sunday’s Fort Worth Star-Telegram on the massive boondoggle otherwise known as the F-22 fighter. The article is co-authored by James Stevenson, Winslow…

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[Washington Babylon]

Ethics Reform Recap: Pelosi follows in Gingrich’s footsteps

I recently came across an interesting New York Times story from January 1997 that reported on a tough new lobbying reform package then shaking up Washington. The legislation fulfilled a…

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[Washington Babylon]

Chavez Family Folds Up Fundraising Operations

On January 8, I reported on the formation of “Republicans for Traditional Conservative Values,” a fundraising operation headquartered in the home of Linda Chavez, the conservative commentator and once George…

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[Washington Babylon]

Note to Obama: Stop whining and fight back

“Some in Party Bristle At Clintons’ Attacks,” ran the headline on a story in yesterday’s Washington Post, “Anti-Obama Ad Heightens Unity Fears.” The story said that a Hillary Clinton radio…

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[Washington Babylon]

Twofer: How Congressman Kline helped UPS and raised money for his new PAC

On July 24, 2007 a new entity called the Freedom & Security PAC registered with the Federal Election Commission. The PAC was based in Minnesota and its treasurer was named…

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[Washington Babylon]

Mitt Romney’s Worst Nightmare

Associated Press, January 8, 2007: Republican Mitt Romney and 400 of his strongest supporters raised over $6.5 million on Monday in a glitzy fundraising blitz aimed not only at financing…

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[Washington Babylon]

Steak vs. Organic Chicken: The Clinton-Obama fault line?

In dissecting the Democratic presidential primaries so far, Hillary Clinton seems to be attracting a higher share of working class and older voters, while Obama polls higher with higher-income and…

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[Washington Babylon]

Romney’s Endorsement by National Review

Andrews Sullivan posted an item today noting National Review’s endorsement of Mitt Romney. He cited an article of mine that said Romney had previously given money to the magazine. The…

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[Washington Babylon]

Worst Analogy of the Day: is “Campaign Auschwitz” coming next?

“The fight for the nomination ‘is going to be like the Bataan Death March,’ said Ron Kaufman, a top adviser to Mr. Romney.” – in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. From…

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[Washington Babylon]

Richard Cohen: The decider

Here’s an old but interesting story that combines two things I’ve discussed before: press bias on the presidential trail and Richard Cohen’s lamentable hatchet job on Barack Obama. Washington Post…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bob Woodward: Political weathervane

Bob Woodward is planning a fourth book on the Bush Administration to be published later this year, Editor & Publisher reported today. Woodward declined to discuss the contents of the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Romney Consultant: McCain Supports Legal Protections for Terrorists

South Carolina GOP campaign percolating nicely I just posted an item in which I wrote that I thought it would be tough for Mitt Romney to replicate his success in…

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[Washington Babylon]

Romney Survives Last Stand in Michigan: Can Rudy, with right-wing Cuban help, do the same in Florida?

I admit I didn’t see Mitt Romney winning the Michigan primary over John McCain, certainly not by as comfortable a margin as 9 percent. Still, it’s hard to see how…

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[Washington Babylon]

Would Louis Farrakhan Exist Without Richard Cohen?

When was the last time you read anything about Louis Farrakhan? My guess is that it was in a column by Richard Cohen of the Washington Post. Cohen has been…

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[Washington Babylon]

New Hampshire: Media Fallout Continues

All week long reporters and pundits have been issuing apologies for the coverage from New Hampshire, during which it was almost universally declared that Barack Obama would emerge as the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Tom DeLay: Get this man a dictionary

The Democratic Party and other leftist rabble are in big trouble. Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s new Coalition for a Conservative Majority (CCM) is raising money from conservative donors…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Post-New Hampshire Road

Plus: Media Stockholm Syndrome It was amusing to watch the news last night and see so many pundits explain why they had essentially been right all along about the New…

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[Washington Babylon]

Linda Chavez: Fundraising, Anew, for “Conservative Values”

Last summer the Washington Post exposed the very dubious fund-raising operations of Linda Chavez, the conservative commentator and former Reagan Administration official. Chavez—who withdrew as George W. Bush’s choice for…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Press and the Campaign: Boosting Obama and McCain

Plus: Hillary Loses Key Endorsement If the campaign polls are to be trusted, and they seem to be uniformly in agreement, Barack Obama will beat Hillary Clinton by a comfortable…

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[Washington Babylon]

Obama vs. Huckabee?

A few hundred thousand Iowans have voted and — along with the national news media — they have anointed Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee as the strong frontrunners for their…

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[Washington Babylon]

Support for Taliban Missing from Bhutto Obits

As the American media continues to grant Benazir Bhutto sainthood status, it’s worth looking at a few sections from Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Who Killed Bhutto: Alternative theories

I’ve already said that I believe the most likely suspects in the killing of Benazir Bhutto are Islamic militants. The government in Pakistan is blaming an “an Al Qaeda linked…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bhutto: A short break from the hagiography

“I’m all in favor of Benazir Bhutto’s return to Pakistan, but the fawning over the former Prime Minister by American political leaders and the media is way out of control,”…

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[Washington Babylon]

Who Killed Bhutto? Conspiracy Theories Already Thriving

All sorts of theories are going to be tossed around concerning the questions of who killed Benazir Bhutto, and I suppose anything is possible at this point. But the most…

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[Washington Babylon]

Pakistan: First Reaction from Wayne White

At this early stage it’s hard to gauge the fallout and implications of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, but the impact will clearly be huge both in Pakistan and in…

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[Washington Babylon]

Christmas Special on GOP Influence

“The 2008 Senate races are in full swing,” begins a recent letter to GOP sympathizers from North Carolina Senator Richard Burr. “With Republicans defending twice as many seats as the…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Apocalypse PAC: Congressman McCotter leads crusade against Islam, Commies, and Democrats

The apocalypse is nigh and though you might not be able to save yourself, you can get to heaven by giving, generously, to Congressman Thaddeus G. McCotter’s newly established Champions…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bush Investigations Overload

Under normal circumstances, a criminal investigation of a Cabinet Secretary would be a big deal. But with all the political scandals now swirling about, there’s been virtually no media attention…

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[Washington Babylon]

On the Hunt: Bush backer seeks $1 billion for Peru project

Beginning tomorrow and over the next few weeks, the World Bank and other lenders will be voting, apparently in favor, on a package worth more than $1 billion to support…

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[Washington Babylon]

How Much American Support for Turkish Air Strike?

“Turkey yesterday launched the biggest attack on Iraq since the US invasion in 2003, sending more than 50 warplanes to bomb suspected Kurdish insurgent bases inside Iraqi territory,” the Guardian…

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[Washington Babylon]

Washington Post: Four Government Probes of Iraq Special Inspector

Last May, I filed a story saying that Stuart Bowen Jr., the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), was under investigation himself. Bowen is charged with uncovering misspending…

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[Washington Babylon]

Alert to Charities and Political Campaigns: Watch Out for CDG

Presidential campaigns raise tens and sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars from a vast pool of donors. Campaigns are supposed to vet contributors but the endless flow of checks makes…

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[Washington Babylon]

Where is Jose Rodriguez? [CORRECTION]

CORRECTION, DECEMBER 9, 2007 This story, which originally appeared under the title “Where is Jose Rodriguez? Apparently in business with the brother of top Democrat on Intel Panel,” describes Jose…

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[Washington Babylon]

Commerce Department: Creationism book display a decorating error, not an endorsement

I reported yesterday about my surprise upon learning that The Atlas of Creation, which offers an Islamic version of creationism and blames Charles Darwin for the 9/11 attacks, was prominently…

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[Washington Babylon]

What’s driving the movement for Ron Paul? A conversation with Republican consultant Tom Edmonds

Though he receives very little media attention and is frequently dismissed as a crackpot by mainstream observers, Ron Paul’s presidential campaign has been extraordinary by any measure. Even as Mike…

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[Washington Babylon]

New Theory Uncovered in Commerce Secretary Gutierrez’s waiting room: Darwin, not Saddam, behind 9/11

I’m not sure if Secretary of the Commerce Carlos Gutierrez is cheap or cuckoo, but it comes as something of a shock to learn that the controversial book The Atlas…

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[Washington Babylon]

Troubles Mount for Former Congressman Weldon: Are feds examining Weldon’s ties to shady Russians?

As my colleague Scott Horton noted yesterday, former Congressman Curt Weldon appears to be in a heap of trouble. Yesterday, the Washington Post has reported, his ex-chief of staff, Russ…

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[Washington Babylon]

More From Allbritton

On Sunday, I received a copy of an email that reporter Chris Allbritton had sent to National Review Online last October. In the email, which I posted here, Allbritton called…

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[Washington Babylon]

More on SEIU’s Stern Gang

I posted an item on Friday about what looks to be a power grab at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) by president Andy Stern and his allies. At the…

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[Washington Babylon]

NRO and TNR’s Bogus Bloggers

Last night, I posted an email that Chris Allbritton, an American reporter based in Beirut, had sent to National Review Online in early October. In it, Allbritton called W. Thomas…

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[Washington Babylon]

Fascist Dictator Chavez Wins Sham Vote Extending Powers!

Actually, scratch that headline. Chavez lost, in a close vote. What will Roger Cohen and Jackson Diehl write about now? “Fascist dictator loses sham vote” just doesn’t have the proper…

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[Washington Babylon]

“He’s a Liar”: October email to National Review Exposed Smith’s fictional writing from Lebanon

Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Sullivan, and the Huffington Post have been following the case of W. Thomas Smith Jr. and the idiotic stories out of Lebanon he’s written for National Review…

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[Washington Babylon]

Questions for Pollster John Zogby About the 2008 Campaign

John Zogby, president and CEO of Zogby International, is one of the country’s best-known pollsters. I recently interviewed him at his Washington office about next year’s elections. What is current…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Stern Gang and the SEIU

No labor leader in America gets better press than Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which according to its website “is the fastest-growing union in North…

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[Washington Babylon]

Roger Cohen: Viva Mubarak, Fuera Chavez!

Hugo Chavez has done a lot of good things in Venezuela, like empowering the poor, redistributing wealth, and spending billions of dollars in oil revenues on health and education. Despite…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Chris Whalen on our speculation-based economy and the 2008 elections

Richard Christopher Whalen, a Senior Vice President and a Managing Director of Institutional Risk Analytics, has worked as an investment banker and research analyst for more than two decades. Whalen,…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Douglas Macgregor on Iraq and the “Surge”

Douglas Macgregor is a retired Army colonel and a decorated Persian Gulf War combat veteran who was an active duty officer (and Pentagon advisor) until 2004. He has authored three…

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[Washington Babylon]

A Pandering Obama on Social Security

Last week, Paul Krugman of the New York Times wrote a much-commented upon op-ed that criticized Barack Obama for claiming as of late that there’s a “crisis” in Social Security.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Animal Welfare Institute Replies to Horse Slaughter Story

I received an outpouring of critical e-mails in reply to my recent post about a bill called the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act (AHSPA), which would ban the killing of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Jarch Capital’s Sudanese Gambit

Paris-based Africa Energy Intelligence (AEI) recently carried a fairly alarming article on Jarch Capital, an investment fund headed by a former Salomon Brothers trader named Phil Heilberg. Jarch has big…

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[Washington Babylon]

“Family Values” Keller Skirts Questions, Smears Messenger

Last week, I repeatedly contacted staffers working for Congressman Ric Keller of Florida, by phone and email, to ask them for comment for a story I was working on. In…

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[Washington Babylon]

Karl Rove’s Insight Penetrates Newsweek

Newsweek, many readers surely know, has made the bold move of hiring both blogger Markos Moulitsas and former Bush Administration Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove as columnists to cover…

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[Washington Babylon]

Ex-Congressman John Sweeney Cleared of Some Wrongdoing

It seems that former New York Congressman John Sweeney, a Republican who lost his re-election bid last fall, has been treated unfairly by the press. Earlier this week it was…

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[Washington Babylon]

Voting “Neigh” on the Horsemeat Ban

Question: Is it okay to eat Arnold Ziffel but morally wrong to eat Mr. Ed? Bo Derek, Willie Nelson, the Barbi twins, the American Welfare Institute, and the Humane Society…

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[Washington Babylon]

Menendez Case Heats Up

I recently noted here the investigation involving Democratic Senator Bob Menendez and his former staffer (and, based on published accounts and recollections from informed sources, paramour) Kay LiCausi. The feds…

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[Washington Babylon]

When it Comes to Hillary, People Have No Sense of Huma

Turns out everything–and I mean everything–you’ve heard about Hillary is true. I received a stream of emails in reply to my item yesterday about rumors of an affair between Hillary…

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[Washington Babylon]

Not Just Republicans Spreading Rumors About Hillary’s Lesbian Affair

It’s not just Republicans who play rough in South Carolina. Rumors have been circulating in the Palmetto State, and elsewhere, that Hillary Clinton is having a lesbian affair. Her alleged…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Washington Post and the “Freedom Agenda”

Those ever-observant Washington Post editorial writers have spotted the demise of President George W. Bush’s “freedom agenda” in Pakistan. In an editorial yesterday, the Post bewailed President Pervez Musharraf’s suspension…

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[Washington Babylon]

A Surge in Plagiarism?

Remember the hoopla surrounding the publication late last year of The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual? In one of a wave of favorable reviews, the Chicago Tribune called the…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Southern Poverty Business Model

Many of you out there have no doubt received in the mail desperate cries for help from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the do-gooder group that does very little…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Hughes Effect: They hate us more than ever

Karen Hughes’s tenure as undersecretary of State for public diplomacy has come to a close, and not a moment too soon. She was named to the job in 2005 with…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Press Squeezes Blood From a (Campaign) Stone

“After a rare night of fumbles by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination rushed to maximize the damage yesterday, even as her advisers argued that…

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[Report]

Making Mitt Romney

How to fabricate a conservative

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[Washington Babylon]

History Rewritten at the Washington Post

Robert Samuelson is stumped. “One of the big debates of our time involves the causes of economic growth,” he writes today in the Washington Post. “Why is North America richer…

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[Washington Babylon]

More on Giuliani’s Advisors

I reported in late August that hardliner Daniel Pipes was advising Rudy Giuliani’s campaign. Since then, a number of other outlets, including the New York Times last week, have identified…

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[Washington Babylon]

South Carolina as Ground Zero

Check out Michael Crowley’s amusing story in the New Republic on the GOP campaign in South Carolina (via talkingpointsmemo.com): As the 2008 Republicans trudge toward this political Mordor, they do…

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[Washington Babylon]

Selling Toothpaste and Candidates

Last June, when I was researching my story on Mitt Romney’s political consultants, I attended a conference sponsored by Campaigns & Elections magazine and held at a Marriott Hotel in…

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[Washington Babylon]

Rummy in Paris: Democracy is like riding a bike

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is in Paris today and he’s as upbeat as ever about the forward march of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rummy spoke this morning at…

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[Washington Babylon]

Enron Haunts Taxpayers from Beyond the Grave

Back in 1997, when Enron was still a stock market darling, one of its subsidiaries bought a big stake in a curious little firm called InterOil. That latter company bought…

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[Washington Babylon]

Alert: A mega-scandal in the making

There’s a new scandal unraveling that has a great cast of characters and sounds like it should be fun to watch unravel. Here’s what’s up: Yesterday, the Feds raided WellCare,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bob Menendez and Larry Craig: A tale of two senators

In September, Kay LiCausi, a lobbyist, political consultant and former senior aide to New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, was named as one of the “top forty business people under the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Mea Culpa: Haste Makes Mistake

I recently posted an item about the lobby firm APCO’s representation of the government of Kazakhstan and congressional hearings about Kazakhstan’s desire to chair the Organization for Security and Cooperation…

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[Washington Babylon]

Mo’ Bhutto Blues

I’m all in favor of Benazir Bhutto’s return to Pakistan, but the fawning over the former Prime Minister by American political leaders and the media is way out of control.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Mitt Romney Buys Some Love

The New York Times reported yesterday that some “movement conservatives are buzzing this week” about my November magazine story that showed that Mitt Romney had “made some strategic donations to…

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[Washington Babylon]

Romney, Giuliani, and Bob Jones

As of yet Mitt Romney has failed to demonstrate any significant level of national support–yet he has as good a chance as anyone to emerge as the Republican presidential nominee…

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[Washington Babylon]

Event Alert: God talk

For those interested in the subject, I’ll be on a panel tomorrow morning to talk about “Parties of God”, my piece in the March issue of the magazine that argues…

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[Washington Babylon]

Don’t Mess with Darfur’s Defenders

I received a fair amount of critical mail in response to my recent post on Darfur, which questioned some information and data used by advocacy groups. For the record, I’m…

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[Washington Babylon]

Mine’s Bigger: How do you measure up against Paul Allen?

Thanks to the untold riches he made by co-inflicting the scourge that is Microsoft upon the world, Paul Allen leads a lavish lifestyle that can be imagined by few outside…

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[Washington Babylon]

Report: Kurtz Blog Induces Coma-Like State

Doctors hail discovery; believe reading media critic’s blog could replace more dangerous anesthetics Not only is Howard Kurtz promoting his new book Reality Show on TV and in the pages…

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[Washington Babylon]

Homeland Security, Death Cab for Cutie, Fuzzy Llamas, and the Square Root of Stupidity

At times it’s hard to fathom exactly how stupid our nation has become. And then there’s this: though only reported thus far by MTV News, the U.S. Department of Homeland…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bonker’s for APCO

As I reported here yesterday, the lobbying firm APCO was well-represented at Congressional hearings concerning Kazakhstan’s bid to chair the 56-member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). A…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Will Folks on South Carolina Politics and Dirty Tricks

Will Folks is president of Viewpolitik, LLC, a political consulting firm based in Columbia, South Carolina. He is also the founding editor of FITSNews.com, a widely-read political blog. Folks previously…

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[Washington Babylon]

APCO, Paragon of Ethics, Representing Kazakh Regime: Can Turkmenistan be far behind?

Update Thursday, October 25, 2007: This story was correct in identifying APCO as Kazakhstan’s lobbying firm, and the firm did dispatch several lobbyists to the hearings. But I have no…

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[Washington Babylon]

Rod Shealy: South Carolina’s shrewdest political consultant?

My piece in the November issue of Harper’s, already on newsstands, takes a look at the Republican presidential race in South Carolina, focusing on the role of Mitt Romney’s handlers…

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[Washington Babylon]

Media Alert

Ken Silverstein will take part in a panel discussion today on the KCRW radio program To the Point, hosted by Warren Olney. The topic will be the CIA’s investigation of…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Bob Drogin on Curveball and the Iraq War

Bob Drogin is the author of the newly released book Curveball, the code name for the Iraqi defector whose pre-war claims about Saddam Hussein’s alleged mobile germ-warfare labs were seized…

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[Washington Babylon]

Beating a Dead Kurtz

I was out Thursday night and missed Howard Kurtz’s appearance on the Daily Show to promote his new cure for insomnia, Reality Show: Inside the Last Great Television News War.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Sources: CIA legal official quit in protest over “enhanced interrogations”

Well over a year ago I reported on a brewing revolt within the CIA over the Bush Administration’s use of renditions, “enhanced interrogation” techniques (otherwise known as torture) and other…

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[Washington Babylon]

A Lobbyist Downsizes: Jeffrey Shockey goes from insider to soccer dad

Remember Jeffrey Shockey? He’s the former top aide to Republican Congressman Jerry Lewis, a powerhouse on the House Appropriations Committee. Shockey left the Hill in 1999 to become a lobbyist…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bipartisan Stenography: David Broder Strikes Again

The National Republican Congressional Committee is technically insolvent, with millions more in debt than it has in the bank. The GOP can’t raise money–Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama each brought…

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[Washington Babylon]

Facts and Darfur

When I lived in Brazil in the early 1990s and worked for Associated Press, I filed a short item on a study by a pro-choice group that revealed the staggering…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Hitler Beetle, and Other Lessons from the British Press

I gave a radio interview yesterday during which I extolled the British press for being far more open about the political views of reporters than we are in the States,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Liberal-loathing Partisan Joins “Neutral” Blogger Outreach Program

Turns out there’s more on those supposedly neutral public servants in charge of the Pentagon’s blogger outreach program that I’ve been discussing over the last few months. The Washington Post…

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[Washington Babylon]

Still the E Street Band

As expected, Bruce Springsteen had no idea that a Democratic congressional campaign was using him as bait for big donors. I reported yesterday that Congressman Ed Towns of New York…

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[Washington Babylon]

Meet the New Boss: Bruce Springsteen & the K Street Band?

I just posted an item about Washington lobbyists raising money for Republican members of Congress. I should also note here an upcoming fund-raiser being planned for Congressman Ed Towns, the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Washington, Post-Ethics Reform: Come out and party tonight

Just three weeks ago, President Bush signed into law a new bill into law that he said marked progress towards strengthening “ethical standards that govern lobbying activities.” Congress had passed…

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[Washington Babylon]

Britney Spears and the Holocaust

Below is a press release I just received that manages to combine Britney Spears and genocide in a tidy self-help PR package. Hanala Stadner, the daughter of holocaust survivors and…

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[Washington Babylon]

The JIN Debacle: Still a few kinks to work out

Earlier this year I wrote a story about the Joint IED Neutralizer (JIN), a device intended to destroy roadside bombs. The JIN is built by an Arizona-based company called Ionatron—a…

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[Washington Babylon]

Burma, Gay Republicans, and Google: the DCI connection

President Bush recently called for an end to the “reign of fear” in Burma and announced new sanctions against the military dictatorship in that country, telling the United Nations it…

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[Washington Babylon]

El Pais on Bush, Aznar, and Iraq

It’s not as dramatic as the Downing Street Memo but El Pais, the Madrid daily, has obtained a revealing transcript of a pre-Iraq War meeting between President Bush and Spain’s…

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[Washington Babylon]

Congress: The most dangerous neighborhood in America

A new FBI report shows a sharp rise in crime in the United States, with robberies up more than 7 percent and homicides up 2 percent. According to a story…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bogus Human Rights Group Objects to Being Called Bogus Human Rights Group

A few days ago I wrote about a visit to Washington, D.C., by what I described as a bogus human rights group from Azerbaijan. The group, called the Association for…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Case of Monsieur Debat: Scammer was working on Pentagon report

Andrew Marshall, head of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA), has been working at the Defense Department for more than three decades and has never met a threat to…

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[Washington Babylon]

New Media Gets the Message

“President Reaches Out to a Friendly Circle in New Media,” ran a Washington Post headline above a Sunday story about a White House meeting between Bush and a group of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Video of the Day: Skull, Bones and Electricity

Andrew Meyer, a student at the University of Florida, wanted to ask Senator John Kerry a question during a forum held on Monday: was he, like President Bush, a member…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bogus Azeri ‘Human Rights Group’ Comes to Washington

When I wrote in the July magazine about Washington lobbyists offering to whitewash the regime in Turkmenistan, I noted that the firms with whom I spoke told me they could…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Kim Long on the History of Political Sleaze

Kim Long is the author of the new book The Almanac of Political Corruption, Scandals & Dirty Politics, which chronicles several centuries of American political bribery, mudslinging, influence peddling, and…

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[Washington Babylon]

Giuliani Advisor: Raze Palestinian Villages

On September 11, staffers for Barack Obama had a campaign ad taken down that had appeared as a “sponsored link” on Amazon.com’s web page for The Israel Lobby and U.S.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Dave Petraeus is God (Or Merely a White House Flunky)

Don’t bother reading any of the media reviews regarding the congressional testimony of General David Petraeus. Once again turn to the Daily Show for far and away the best analysis.…

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[Washington Babylon]

Jerry Burke on Iraq’s Corrupt Police Force

Yesterday General David Petraeus spoke before Congress. “Iraq’s armed forces are improving,” the Washington Post said in summarizing Petraeus’s remarks. “Overall violence is down. Sunnis are turning against Al Qaeda…

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[Washington Babylon]

Something Other Than Democracy (Updated)

Update: Several readers have emailed to say that I was unkind to Kessler, and that his book is more nuanced in its discussion of Hamas and Hezbollah than what ran…

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[Washington Babylon]

Speaking From Experience, Part II: Former CIA official expects war with Iran

Until recently, I thought the odds that the United States would attack Iran were less than fifty-fifty, but the chances of a military confrontation are clearly growing (as my colleague…

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[Washington Babylon]

Speaking from Experience: a former CIA official on the Sunni alliance

The newspapers are full of stories about the successful alliance struck between the American military and Sunni tribes in Iraq, and how said alliance augurs well for the future. “In…

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[Washington Babylon]

On Assignment

Ken Silverstein is on assignment and will return soon.

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[Washington Babylon]

Pipes Joins Up With Giuliani

Add another neoconservative adviser on the Middle East to an already impressive roster–Daniel Pipes signed on with Rudy Giuliani’s campaign today. I’d heard Pipes was advising Giuliani and asked him…

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[Washington Babylon]

Laurie Mylroie’s Song of Saddam

It’s the dog days of summer and my colleague Scott Horton is all over the Fredo Gonzales story, and I’d prefer not to write much about the sordid bathroom antics…

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[Washington Babylon]

Meet Giuliani’s Advisors: AIPAC’s Dream Team

“The Republican Party is in desperate straits. How else to explain that Rudy Giuliani–a former mayor with no foreign policy experience–is the Republican front-runner, largely based on his supposed foreign…

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[Washington Babylon]

Siegman on Israel

Check out this article by Henry Siegman, former head of the American Jewish Congress, in the current London Review of Books. Excerpt: The Middle East peace process may well be…

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[Washington Babylon]

Don’t Forget Egypt

According to a Reuters story from earlier this month: A Middle East tour by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has confirmed to democracy activists in the Middle East what…

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[Washington Babylon]

Boeing and the Coast Guard Reply

Boeing and the Coast Guard have sent letters in response to my post last week, “Confessions of a Defense Junketeer.” In that piece I reported on a junket Boeing recently…

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[Washington Babylon]

Benjamin Barber: Qaddafi’s Riefenstahl

Marc Lynch has brought to my attention Benjamin Barber’s astonishing op-ed in the Washington Post about Libya and Colonel Qaddafi. Barber, the author of “Jihad vs. McWorld,” has found a…

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[Washington Babylon]

A Balancing Act at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs

If you haven’t heard, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs has canceled a talk scheduled for next month by Professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, co-authors of the now-famous study…

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[Washington Babylon]

EPIC: Biometric Identification in Iraq Could Become a Tool for Ethnic Cleansing

I recently spoke with Marc Rotenberg, Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center EPIC, who told me about a story that has not received enough attention. It involves the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Confessions of a Defense Junketeer

Yesterday I posted an item regarding writer David Axe’s reflections on the Pentagon’s blogger outreach program. I’ll follow up today with his observations about a recent Boeing-sponsored junket for journalists,…

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[Washington Babylon]

Dissent from the Pentagon’s Blogger Roundtables: David Axe has second thoughts about DoD effort

Last month, I wrote about (1 2 3) the Pentagon’s “Surrogates” program, which works with selected military analysts, bloggers, former defense officials, opinion-makers, and others who are almost all highly…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Cost of Caving

A few days ago, I took issue with a Washington Post op-ed by Michael Tomasky that argued against publicly discussing the possible impeachment of President Bush on the grounds that…

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[Washington Babylon]

Keep Your Politics Out of My Impeachment

I came late to the piece by Michael Tomasky in last Sunday’s Washington Post that argues against the impeachment of President Bush or Vice President Cheney–or even discussion of the…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions (Without Answers) for Congressman John Conyers on Impeachment and Alberto Gonzales

Back in May, I requested an interview with Congressman John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and received a quick “yes” from his office. I was told that conducting…

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[Washington Babylon]

Doonesbury Frames Evil

Make sure to check out Doonesbury this week for a series about lobbying on behalf of dictators–a topic dear to my own heart. “Dad, the billings from our new Rogue…

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[Washington Babylon]

Democrats Back at the Trough

I regularly receive press releases from one of the two major political parties lambasting the other, and I generally don’t pay them much mind. But the National Republican Congressional Committee…

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[Washington Babylon]

Radioactive Hysteria: G-men raid home, seize smoke detectors

Some years ago I wrote an article for Harper’s entitled “The Radioactive Boy Scout” (which became a book of the same name) about a Detroit-area teenager who conducted remarkable experiments…

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[Washington Babylon]

Not Out of the Danger Room Yet

I’m on assignment, technically on break from blogging, but wanted to briefly comment on a post Wednesday by Noah Schactman at Danger Room. In it, Schactman said it took him…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Steve Braun on Gunrunner Viktor Bout

Steve Braun is a national correspondent with the Los Angeles Times, currently covering the 2008 presidential campaign. He has covered national affairs since 1993, based first in Chicago and then…

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[Washington Babylon]

Bipartisan Duo of Ex-Congressional Heavyweights Blocking Action Against Ethiopia

There have been a series of accounts out of Ethiopia recently that describe a nasty situation there, including a Human Rights Watch report earlier this month that said the Ethiopian…

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[Washington Babylon]

Not “Terribly Compelling”: Pentagon surrogates reply to criticism

A number of the bloggers who participate in conference calls organized by the Pentagon’s public affairs office have objected to recent stories I’ve posted about the project. “There is, Black…

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[Washington Babylon]

An Exchange on Georgia

Randy Scheunemann, a lobbyist for the government of Georgia, has sent a letter criticizing my recent story on the trial of Maia Topuria. The letter appears below. I asked Lawrence…

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[Washington Babylon]

How the Pentagon’s “Surrogates Operation” Feeds Stories to Administration-Friendly Media and Pundits

Earlier this week I wrote a story about a program run by the Pentagon’s Office of Public Affairs. This program seeks to bypass the mainstream press by working directly with…

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[Washington Babylon]

Kazakhstan Recruits American Supporters to “Monitor” Its Election

The Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan will be holding parliamentary elections this August and is hoping to make a positive impression with the international community about its progress towards democracy. If…

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[Washington Babylon]

As North Korea Gives Up Reactor, Kazakhstan Seeks a Nuclear Edge

North Korea may have just shut down its reactor, but here’s something new to worry about: Kazakhstan, the Caspian country ruled by a man who has just effectively declared himself…

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[Washington Babylon]

Meet the Pentagon’s New Spin Unit: Bush Administration hacks court bloggers, talk radio

The Bush Administration has installed hacks across the federal bureaucracy, with Michael Brown, the man who helped destroy New Orleans while director of FEMA, as only the most notorious example.…

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[Washington Babylon]

John McCain Makes His Own Laws

I just received an interesting email from a reader of this blog, who prefers to remain anonymous, and who writes: Yesterday’s New York Times ran an article about John McCain…

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[Washington Babylon]

Journalism Ethics: A wrap-up

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post has faithfully parroted the talking points of the two lobbying firms I embarrassed in this month’s Harper’s, but APCO and Cassidy & Associates have…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Seth Hettena on the Brent Wilkes Trials

Seth Hettena spent nine years with the Associated Press, where he broke stories about a terrorist suspect who was tortured to death by the CIA, revealed photos of Navy SEALs…

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[Washington Babylon]

Dorrance Smith’s Department of Propaganda: Meet the American “Baghdad Bob”

Dorrance Smith, a former ABC News producer, has been close to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld since the Ford Administration. Which probably explains why the Bush administration picked him to…

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[Washington Babylon]

Georgia Provides Troops for Iraq; Gets a Free Pass on Human Rights?

Guess which Eastern European country will soon have the third largest military force in Iraq? That same country is strongly pro-NATO and has on retainer a Washington lobbyist who was…

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[Washington Babylon]

“Freedom” Scholar Michael Ledeen’s African Friend

A majority of people in the Republic of Congo get by on less than $1 a day, but money is no object for Denis Christel Sassou-Nguesso, the 24-year-old son of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Sneak Preview: Video from upcoming Reliable Sources leaked to Harper’s

This Sunday, Reliable Sources, the CNN show hosted by the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz, will be discussing my story on lobbying for dictators that appeared in the July issue of…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Joost Hiltermann on Blowback from the Iraq–Iran War

Joost Hiltermann, is deputy program director for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, based in Amman. Prior to that he was director of the Arms…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Beltway Press Needs a Good PR Firm

I knew that there was a fair amount of hostility towards the high-end Washington press corps, but until Saturday, when the Los Angeles Times ran my op-ed, I had no…

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[Report]

Their Men in Washington

Undercover with D.C.'s lobbyists for hire

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[Washington Babylon]

A “Grassroots” Anecdote

I’ve received a large number of tips in response to my story about Washington lobbyists and their plans to sell the Stalinist regime of Turkmenistan, which appears in the July…

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[Washington Babylon]

Kurtz on Undercover Journalism: “The horror!”

Earlier this year, when I was working with my editors to plan out a story about lobbyists willing to work for the Stalinist regime in Turkmenistan, I predicted that after…

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[Washington Babylon]

Lobby Shops for Turkmenistan: Will lie for money

My story in the July issue of the magazine details how two beltway lobby shops I approached, on the pretense that I represented a shady London-based energy firm with a…

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[Washington Babylon]

Media Alert–Bill Moyers Journal

I’ll be appearing on Bill Moyers Journal tonight, Friday, June 22, to discuss lobbying in general and “Their Men in Washington”, my article in the July Harper’s, in particular. You…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for David Ignatius about Body of Lies

David Ignatius is a columnist for the Washington Post and co-hosts, PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues at washingtonpost.com. He is the author of six novels, including Agents of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Media Alert–NPR’s Talk of the Nation

Tomorrow, Tuesday, June 19, 2007 at 3PM EST, I will appear on NPR’s Talk of the Nation to talk about the “dictator lobby” with a representative of the D.C. lobbying…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Mark Perry on the Conflict in Palestine

Mark Perry is a military, intelligence and foreign affairs analyst and the co-director of Conflicts Forum, a private group that calls for increased dialogue between Western countries and Islamic movements…

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[Washington Babylon]

About that CIA Rumor

It appears there’s some confusion about yesterday’s story, so let me clear things up: I don’t think that the CIA is bribing Iraqi parliamentarians to vote the U.S. out of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Is “Smothers Brothers” Diplomacy the Way Out of Iraq?

As the news goes from bad to worse in Iraq, some in Congress are looking for new ways to bring an end to the American occupation. I’ve learned today that…

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[Washington Babylon]

One Lump or Two? Uzbek dictator’s daughter wipes out competing tea firm with “brain” and “muscle”

I reported last month on how Washington insiders at a firm called GlobalOptions were working on behalf of Gulnara Karimova, daughter of Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov and subject of an…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Fall of “Dollar” Bill Jefferson

For those looking for a good summer read I highly recommend yesterday’s indictment of Congressman William Jefferson of Louisiana. It’s a genre-busting saga with something for everyone: mystery lovers will…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Martyr of Manchester

Rosa Parks. Martin Luther King. Nelson Mandela. Now it’s time to add another name to the pantheon of civil rights heroes: liberal columnist Eric Alterman, who was arrested in New…

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[Article]

3. Civil Service

From the Forum “Undoing Bush” In January of 2005, top Justice Department officials began making plans to remove up to 20 percent of the nation’s U.S. attorneys—those deemed not to…

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[Washington Babylon]

How Gregory Nickerson Parlayed House Job Into Lavish Estate (Illustrated)

In mid April, I reported on the case of Gregory Nickerson, the former top staffer at the House Ways and Means Committee who in 2004 helped shepherd through Congress a…

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[Washington Babylon]

Blogger of the Brotherhood

Egyptian bloggers have received a fair mount of press attention lately for their calls for greater democracy under Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled the country for the past quarter-century and…

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[Washington Babylon]

Black Helped Frum Stay in the Black

I recently obtained financial records that showed that in late 2000 David Frum, the former speechwriter for President Bush, received monthly payments of $16,667 from Conrad Black’s Hollinger International. Black,…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Marcus Stern on Duke Cunningham

Marcus Stern and his colleagues Jerry Kammer, Dean Calbreath, and George E. Condon Jr. are the authors of the newly released book, The Wrong Stuff: The Extraordinary Saga of Randy…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Marc Lynch on Iraq, the “Surge,” and Al Qaeda

Marc Lynch is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at George Washington University and the Elliott School of International Affairs. He is the author of Voices of…

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[Washington Babylon]

Donor Scorecard: Tom Loeffler

Senator John McCain raised a paltry, humiliating $13 million during the first quarter of this year—placing him far behind Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani in the race to buy the…

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[Washington Babylon]

Washington Insiders Lend Helping Hand to “Princess of Uzbeks”

On its website, GlobalOptions, a Washington-based corporate security and investigations firm, describes itself as a “private CIA, Defense Department, Justice Department, and FBI, all rolled into one,” and says it…

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[Six Questions]

Six Questions for Tara McKelvey on Detainee Abuse

Tara McKelvey is the author of the new book Monstering: Inside America’s Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War, which tells the story of the Abu Ghraib…

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[Washington Babylon]

Missed Connection

A very important phone call regarding Shirlington Limousine came through the Harper’s offices today, and unfortunately the person who called was not provided with my phone number. Could that person…

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[Washington Babylon]

Alleged Plotter in Rainbow Warrior Bombing Selling Weapons to U.S. Government

In 1985, the Rainbow Warrior, a vessel operated by Greenpeace, was blown up in Auckland harbor. It had been sent there to protest French nuclear testing in the Pacific. It…

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[Washington Babylon]

The Question of Balance: Revisiting the Missouri Election Scandal of 2004

“Missouri’s election was ground zero for GOP,” was the headline of a terrific story by Greg Gordon for McClatchy Newspapers: Accusations about voter fraud seemed to fly from every direction…

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[Washington Babylon]

SIGIR Roast

I reported last week that Stuart Bowen Jr., the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), who has issued reports about the misuse of Iraqi reconstruction funds, is now…

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[Article]

Parties of God

The Bush doctrine and the rise of Islamic democracy

by ,
[Article]

Barack Obama Inc.

The birth of a Washington machine

by ,
[Article]

The minister of civil war

Bayan Jabr, Paul Bremer, and the rise of the Iraqi death squads

by ,
[Article]

The great American pork barrel

Washington streamlines the means of corruption

by ,
[Article]

Smitten with a club

Your AAA dues fuel pollution and sprawl

by ,
[Article]

Nasdaq’s continental drift

by ,
[Article]

A crude likeness

How the oil tanker Condoleezza Rice lived up to its name

by ,
[Article]

The church of Morris Dees

How the Southern Poverty Law Center profits from intolerance

by ,
[Article]

Licensed to kill

Shadowing our government's favorite arms dealer

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[Article]

The Radioactive Boy Scout

When a teenager attempts to build a breeder reactor

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[Annotation]

The Boeing Formation

A squadron of seventy lobbyists prepares for total air superiority

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[Article]

K Street schadenfreude

One lobbyist's attempt to transmute despair into dollars

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[Article]

Flacking for despots

A Washington lobbyist agrees to buff the image of another repressive regime

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[Article]

The demands of capital

Amid Mexico's crisis, Chase Manhattan calls for political repression

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[Readings]

Gorilla warfare

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[Readings]

All the president’s handouts

by , ,
[Article]

The System That Brought Down Flight 655

Zeroing in on a Pentagon boondoggle

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September 1988

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