Liberal Talk Radio

If you haven’t been following the flap on the fired U.S. Attorneys (including one local Seattle guy, David McKay, who was fired for not turning his office into enough of a corrupt banana-republic-style apparatchik in the 2004 Gubernatorial recount), Josh Marshall has a good post (among many) on the reasons why it matters:
First, we now [...]

Congrats to Western WA’s Jay Inslee for being named to the “Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.” Inslee’s always been a good voice on environmental issues, and if his appearances at Drinking Liberally are any indication, a super nice guy.

Interesting article: in the NYT on the increasing role of contractors in the federal government.
Unlike some, I don’t have a knee-jerk opposition to the government using contractors. I’ve spent most of my adult life working for companies that contract out me and/or my colleagues to various public, private, and non-profit organizations. Sometimes it’s [...]

I didn’t know anything about the late Drinan, who was both a congressman from Boston and a Roman Catholic priest until Pope John Paull II made him step down (priests should be loyal to the Vatican and to God, the Pope reasonably argued).
This was of course, back in the 1970s, when priests like [...]

Labor unions are laying down with hunters in an effort to preserve game land.
Why would unions be interested in preserving land that’s conspicuously absent of… jobs? According to the Post, it’s a mad power struggle for the soul of blue-collar America:
The NRA in recent years has been strongly allied with the [...]

An insider’s account of why Spencer Ackerman was fired from the New Republic:
In what [TNR editor Franklin] Foer called the “proximate cause,” Mr. Ackerman had been using that personal blog — titled “Too Hot for TNR” — to disparage the magazine.
Again with the Web logs: On Sept. 1, senior editor Lee Siegel was suspended and [...]

Barack Obama is changing his tune– if only slightly. At the very least, he’s keeping his options open. The day after he handily won election to the Senate to represent the state of Illinois, Obama was clear about his presidential intentions:
“I am not running for president. I am not running for president in four years. [...]

A few days ago, I mentioned in a roundabout way that this week was supposed to be all-Woodward-all-the-time, since his devastating (to the Bushies) new book hit the shelves on Monday.
Well lemme tell you something– Woodward’s pissed. Woodward doesn’t give a shit about Mark Foley (cave dwellers– see here). Woodward’s got books to sell.
He’s still [...]

As George Allen’s unannoucned-but-widely-presumed candidacy for the GOP nomination for president of the United States rapidly implodes, James Carville (if he’s not in his native Louisiana watching the Saints whoop up on the Falcons) must be preparing a tactful, if slightly satisfying speech to his wife, Mary Matalin, the powerhouse GOP operative who signed on [...]

This should be somewhat frightening…
Everyone recognizes the irony of the Bush apparatus doing their damnedest to get Lincoln Chafee– the Senator who admitted he didn’t even vote for Bush in 2004*– renominated to run on the Republican ticket against Sheldon Whitehouse this fall. But in this typically incisive column, EJ Dionne adds another wrinkle:
The [...]