Washington Babylon

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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