Don’t miss David Von Drehle’s account of the proceedings:
But if you’ve heard one disgraced politician backed to the wall, you’ve pretty much heard them all. Blagojevich touched all the ritual bases. He recalled the sacrifices of a sainted parent; recounted the struggles of the humble voters for whom he has worked night and day;
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By unanimous vote, and removed from office “effective immediately.”
Barack Obama has been starting his days in the Oval Office much later than his predecessor, a pattern that allows him to workout and read the papers before he sends his daughters off to school. This morning, during this routine, he got peeved by the New York Times. Not by the newspaper itself, but by a story in the middle of the front …
In the ArenaUncategorized
The President of the United States, this afternoon, on Wall Street bonuses:
One point I want to make is that all of us are going to have responsibilities to get this economy moving again. And when I saw an article today indicating that Wall Street bankers had given themselves $20 billion worth of bonuses — the same amount of
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There’s been a lot of huffing and puffing this week about a provision to expand access to Medicaid-covered family planning services. First it was Republicans, who grew faint at the idea of voting for a stimulus package that contained such a provision (not that they rushed to vote for it without the provision). Then it was Democrats, who …
Turn on your televisions. Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is defending himself in his impeachment trial. He just called for the impeachment of the governor of Wisconsin, expelling Ted Kennedy and firing Rahm Emanuel, saying he is just as guilty as they are. (Which is to say, not that guilty.) His logic had something to do with importing …
In the ArenaUncategorized
Three thoughts:
1. This is not unprecedented. Republicans did not give Bill Clinton’s 1993 economic plan a single vote–and you remember how the Clinton Plan led to the Great Depression of 1993…oh, wait a minute, no–it led to the Great Expansion of the 1990s. The point is, Republican economic thinking–with its tax cut …
In the ArenaUncategorized
Bibi Netanyahu had a whole lot to say about Iran at Davos, and all of it was bellicose. This part, especially:
“I think we are going to have to deal with neutralizing the power of the mother regime,” he said. “The Hamas stronghold would be about as important, if Iranian power was neutralized, as Cuba was when the Soviet Union became
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They train us journalists to grab the reader’s attention in the first couple paragraphs of a story–the so-called lede. It’s tough to do it much better than today’s dispatch on Time.com from Portland, Oregon.
The cast of the scandal in Portland, Ore., has a certain ring to it: Sam Adams. Bob Ball. Beau Breedlove and his dog Lolita …
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In the ArenaUncategorized
On Obama’s first week.
