Terence Samuel

It is not difficult to read Russ Feingold’s intentions. With his call for a countdown to a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, he has made clear that he plans to seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2008. And when he told David Gregory on Meet the Press that, “Yes, I am going to work real […]

It’s hot in Texas these days, but judging by the guy who ran over Cindy Sheehan’s crosses outside the Crawford White House or the guy who fired off his shotgun nearby, the thing to worry about is not the heat — it’s the stupidity. The president needs Sheehan like he needs another pretzel in his […]

Once again, George W. Bush is having a bad August and, again, the question on the table is whether a bad August for the president translates into a good one for Democrats. Last summer, Democrats believed there was a chance that John Kerry could take Bush down. The news out of Iraq was bad; Kerry […]

I bought the argument that John Bolton’s nomination to the United was a dead issue because the White House had bigger fish to fry. After the “nuclear option” smackdown, the White House seemed less in the mood to fight, and when administration officials called more than 60 senators to chitchat about the Supreme Court nomination, […]

Democrats on Capitol Hill don’t need any more evidence that they have not been winning enough elections of late because they are constantly being reminded of their losses, and that losing carries consequences. But this has to be an especially difficult period. First, the anticipated battle royal over the direction of the Supreme Court looks […]

Where have you gone, Lightning-Bolt Bolton? It was not so long ago that he was the most important man in town. He was the right man at the right time, going to New York to rescue the United Nations from its slide into historical obsolescence. Or he was going to further ruin America’s reputation in […]

Washington is a city in waiting — waiting to see what happens with and to Karl Rove, with John Bolton, with Judy Miller; waiting to see whose military bases get closed and whose doesn’t; waiting for Scott McClellan to simply lose it; and, most of all, waiting to see whom George W. Bush wants to […]

ROUND POND, Maine — At noon on the Fourth of July, I find myself sitting a little grassy embankment along Lower Round Pond Road with two 4-year-olds using my stomach as a trampoline. The sky is a stark, cloudless blue. The temperature is an almost criminally mild 75 degrees, and the smell of the sea […]

These are tough days for the president of the United States. When you consider the speech on Iraq that had the feel of a force play with two outs, the slumping poll numbers that provoked the speech, the ugly reality of the facts on the ground, and the lack of good options to respond in […]

By the time George W. Bush arrives in the “Highlands Riviera” of Scotland just after the Fourth of July for this year’s G8 summit, John Bolton may already be the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. This will require a presidential recess appointment, a constitutional flip-off to the Senate that may not improve the […]