Washington Babylon

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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“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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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