Washington Babylon

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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“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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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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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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