Washington Babylon

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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“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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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