Article

On Monday, the Bush campaign released its latest campaign ad, called “Intel.” Looking at its name, one would think the ad lays out the president’s plans for intelligence reform or touts his administration’s record on preventing terrorist attacks. But it doesn’t. Rather, the ad attacks John Kerry for allegedly missing 76 percent of the hearings […]

Last week’s Colorado primary determined the contenders in the race to fill the seat of retiring Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell: state Attorney General Ken Salazar, a polished, moderate Democrat who twice won statewide elections in very inhospitable political terrain, and Pete Coors, a political neophyte whose family just happens to be the legendary founding benefactor […]

Jack W. Germond, 76, has covered politics for half a century for The Baltimore Sun and other publications and is, arguably, the country’s most astute political reporter. These days he works in a Charles Town, West Virginia, home office with, as he says, “a huge triple window facing the Shenandoah River.” In other ways, too, […]

On the Web site of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, an organization that “identifies, trains and supports open lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender candidates and officials,” you can search by state to find openly gay officials in office. The names and positions on the list are almost exclusively local. City councils. Boards of education. […]

As oil prices hit a new high of $46.91 a barrel this week, you might have thought that John Kerry’s $30 billion initiative to end America’s dependence on oil would start to have real resonance with voters. After all, Kerry has identified one of the most important issues facing America today: Oil addiction is so […]

On August 5, speaking to the UNITY conference of minority journalists, John Kerry said, “I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history.” It seems […]

THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF HOUSTON Thanks to an unidentified source in the office of Justice Scalia, Tony Hendra has acquired a copy of the confidential 2001 energy report which Vice President Dick Cheney was at such pains to conceal and the Court so obligingly let him continue to conceal. Some highlights: […]

Ever since Sen. John McCain ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000 against then–Gov. George W. Bush, he’s been the Democrats’ favorite Republican. McCain championed campaign finance reform, an issue Democrats pushed into law over GOP objections. He was thought to be in the running for Sen. John Kerry’s vice-presidential nominee and defended Kerry […]

The past subjunctive “if clause” structure — mournful, a study in sepia, the fate of the main clause held hostage by an impossible conditional, its hope tethered to a sinking stone. “If I were a rich man…” runs one famous example, “All day long I’d biddy biddy bum.” (And who wouldn’t?) The problem is, “you […]