Some have argued that the Senate does not have the right to reject embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s pick to replace Barack Obama. However, history clearly disagrees.
Getting a grip on the economic catastrophe that rocked the country during the fall of 2008 is no easy feat, what with so many players, back-room deals, bills, upswings and meltdowns to consider. Updated
After operating largely out of the spotlight for the last eight years, Vice President Dick Cheney continued his Sudden Visibility Press Tour on Sunday as he prepared to leave office. Here, he talks to CBS’ Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation” about how he thinks his administration fared in the Iraq war.
In this series of weekly addresses posted on Change.gov before news of the Bill Richardson scandal broke, the president-elect makes an appeal for an economic recovery strategy that would ideally prevent further job losses and spark a turnaround in Americans’ prospects as soon as possible.
The challenges of this new year, or at least its initial chapter, are already quite apparent—what with the dire situation in Gaza, the sputtering global economy and a major transition under way in the United States. Barack Obama, fresh off his Hawaiian holiday, has his work cut out for him, to say the very least.
Americans have always preferred Laura Bush to her husband, and now Scribner, an imprint of a division of a subsidiary of Sumner Redstone’s National Amusements, is hoping to capitalize on that appeal with an “intimate” new memoir set for 2010 release. There’s no telling how much the better Bush is getting paid, but “millions” is a safe bet.
There was a time when Russia was an economic power on the rise. Sean McMeekin’s new book, “History’s Greatest Heist: The Looting of Russia by the Bolsheviks,” explains what nipped that growth in the bud.
The fluidity of memory aside, this is getting a little strange: Following in the footsteps of James Frey, Misha Defonseca and Margaret Seltzer, yet another “memoirist,” Herman Rosenblat, has admitted that his supposedly true story, “Angel at the Fence,” is a bit lacking in the truth department.
I often visited Nizar Rayan, who was killed Thursday in a targeted assassination by Israel, at his house in the Jabaliya refugee camp when I was in Gaza. His four wives and 11 children also were killed. Rayan’s sons, according to their father, strove to be one thing: martyrs for Palestine.
As the dust settles from the feverish dances that greeted Barack Obama’s victory in the American elections, Africans wonder what “our son and brother” will be able to do for Africa in the face of daunting challenges in the United States and other parts of the world.
President-elect Obama will have more urgent matters to deal with after he takes the oath of office. But somewhere on his long to-do list, he should make a note to finally bring five decades of counterproductive American policy toward Cuba to a definitive end.
If you’re like me, you sometimes find yourself speechless when confronted with abject insanity, such as conservatives’ newest talking point—the one designed to stop Congress from passing an economic stimulus package.
“Virginity pledges” are one of the ways that government officials measure whether abstinence-only education is “working.” They count the pledges as proof that teens will abstain. It turns out that this is like counting New Year’s resolutions as proof that you lost 10 pounds.
So, why didn’t they give peace a chance? Why did the leaders of Hamas and Israel not wait for the incoming U.S. president’s inauguration before mutually escalating hostilities?
Social and political epochs rarely end precisely on schedules provided by calendars. The outcome of this year’s election means that 2009 will, finally, mark the beginning of the 21st century.
It’s hard to remember a time when so much was at stake during a presidential transition in America. Barack Obama is still two weeks shy of taking office, but even so, his silence about the current crisis in Gaza in particular has not gone unnoticed.
The president-elect has reportedly chosen Leon Panetta to head the CIA and retired Adm. Dennis Blair as director of national intelligence. Both men bring a mixed bag. Panetta is an experienced bureaucrat, but he’s no James Bond. Blair has been praised for his terrorist-fighting skills, but he was criticized for a supposed conflict of interest that benefited defense contractors.
Despite clear indications that not everyone on Capitol Hill is ready to acknowledge him as a U.S. senator, Roland W. Burris headed to Washington from Illinois on Monday, announcing that he was, in fact, the rightful new occupant of the seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.
After recounting 2.4 million ballots cast in the state’s U.S. Senate election, Minnesota officials are ready to name Al Franken the winner by a mere 225 votes. Franken’s rival, Sen. Norm Coleman, will likely fight the decision in the state Supreme Court. His campaign manager, meanwhile, is calling for a do-over. Updates after the jump.
Haaretz’s Gideon Levy recalls the mathematician whose dutiful students drew up plans for a “blood pipeline” without questioning why it should be built. With Gaza, he warns, Israel faces such a test and “when the time comes for reckoning, we will need to remember the damage this war did to Israel.”
As President-elect Barack Obama transferred to Washington, D.C., from his Chicago HQ this weekend, his first big political problem from within the ranks of his Cabinet choices began: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, nominated by Obama, withdrew from consideration as commerce secretary because a scandal is brewing in Richardson’s home state.
Dick Cheney on Iraq ‘Success’
