Terence Samuel

TEL AVIV — In advance of his surprise trip to Iraq this week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates showed up here trailing a comet’s tail of bad news behind him. After a series of bombs on Wednesday killed more than 180 people in Iraq, Gates, appearing with Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz, tried to assure the […]

BILLINGS, MT — Democrat Jon Tester won election to the U.S. Senate last November by fewer than 3,000 votes in a state that George W. Bush won twice — by 20 percentage points in 2004, by 25 in 2000 — and where support for the GOP in presidential election years is as solid as the […]

Heading into the Easter/Passover congressional recess, Democratic talking points give the following advice to members: Be aggressive on Iraq, so that the administration’s line — the troops are being undermined; the war is being micro-managed; we’re all being set on a course for failure — does not take hold. After the Democrats’ legislative shock-and-awe campaign […]

Senator Webb is turning out to be more multi-dimensional — and more progressive — than anyone could have expected.

The over-under on the Alberto Gonzales resignation is now a matter of days. But whatever it is, take the under. He’s done. He may not make it through the weekend, as more damaging e-mails continue to emerge showing both the administration’s arrogance in removing U.S. attorneys and its deceit in covering up its reasons for […]

I am firmly in favor of a pardon for Scooter Libby; the sooner the better. It’s not that I think perjury and obstruction of justice are insignificant crimes, but clearly we have bigger fish to filet, and I am actually persuaded by the argument that at the bottom of this is a political confrontation that […]

This week we were reminded of exactly how far away November 2008 really is, and how radically different the political landscape could look by the time we get there. On Monday former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, in a satellite hook-up to Hong Kong, said that the U.S. economy could be headed for a recession […]

“The worst thing we can do is tear each other down. So what I’m proposing is that every Democratic candidate sign a pledge that we will not engage in any negative campaigning against each other.” –New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, at the first candidates’ forum in Nevada this week Whatever else he may be, […]

The field house at Iowa State University in Ames was jammed to the rafters with people, most of them white, who seemed genuinely excited to see Barack Obama. About 24 hours had passed since the junior senator from Illinois had told the world that he, too, was in it to win it, and to transform […]

Women are not going to vote for Hillary because they are not rational; they make decisions on impulse. Blacks are not necessarily going to vote for Obama since he’s not really African American — not in the way we have come to understand it anyway. Clinton and Obama are in a death struggle for the […]