Washington Babylon

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

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

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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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“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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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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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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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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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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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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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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