Scene from Gov. Christie’s morning staff meeting? The pivotal moment from the classic 1957 film “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” in which British prisoner-of-war officer Alec Guinness comes face to face with his obsessive and misguided attempt to build his legacy on a bridge. The parallel to the current moment isn’t entirely perfect, other…
Besides throwing the Obama administration off its stride, the three scandals roiling Washington and the 24-hour cable news channels have one thing in common: They’re shrinking steadily as more information becomes available. The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein ably deconstructs them in his Wonkblog: the IRS-Tea Party scandal involves a group of employees in the IRS…
Senate Democrats filed a motion on Wednesday to end debate on the nomination of Chuck Hagel as President Barack Obama’s new secretary of defense after Republicans refused to allow a vote, setting up a showdown vote by Friday. Democrats are expected to muster the 60 votes needed in the 100-member chamber to clear a Republican…
A U.S. Senate panel approved Chuck Hagel as President Barack Obama’s new secretary of defense on Tuesday, setting the stage for a vote on his confirmation by the full Senate, possibly this week. After more than two hours of often intense debate, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted 14-11 along party lines to advance the…
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham on Sunday threatened to block votes on President Barack Obama’s nominees for CIA director and defense secretary until the administration gives more information about the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Graham and other Republican lawmakers have questioned Obama’s response to the Sept. 11, 2012, incident in which…
President Barack Obama scored a hit on Mitt Romney when the challenger stumbled over the attack in Benghazi, Libya in the second presidential debate, while the GOP candidate tried to use the topic to raise the issue of relations with Israel. Responding to Obama’s pledge to investigate the circumstances of an attack that killed four…
The United States must look past the violence and extremism that has erupted after the “Arab Spring” revolutions and boost support for the region’s young democracies to forge long-term security, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday. Clinton, seeking to reinforce the Obama administration’s Middle East policy following a wave of anti-American violence and…
Rachel Maddow opened her MSNBC show this evening with a fascinating piece about a small city just east of Benghazi called Derna, which was reported several years ago by the late Chris Stevens, then a junior U.S. diplomat in Libya to be a hotbed of Islamic radicals and Al Qaeda wannabes. According to a 2008…
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