By Mark Silva
Count Sen. Dick Durbin among those doubtful about the new deployment of troops in Afghanistan that President Barack Obama has ordered.
"I'm skeptical as to whether 30,000 more troops will make a difference,'' Durbin, the senior senator from Illinois, No. 2 Democratic leader in the Senate and mentor'" [...]
By Mark Silva
Count Sen. Dick Durbin among those doubtful about the new deployment of troops in Afghanistan that President Barack Obama has ordered.
"I'm skeptical as to whether 30,000 more troops will make a difference,'' Durbin, the senior senator from Illinois, No. 2 Democratic leader in the Senate and mentor'" [...]
by Mark Silva
It's a rite of passage for politicians in Washington:
Making fun of oneself.
And sometimes politicians do it on purpose - particularly when it's a matter of performing for the Gridiron Club.
That's what Sarah Palin, the Republican [...]
by Mark Silva
"Climategate,'' they call it.
What a joke.
As if the hacking of some email in England exposing some overzealous scientists with a political agenda undermines the world's collection of scientific data on climate change.
Suddenly, it's time for Al Gore to surrender his Nobel Prize.
"Poor [...]
by Mark Silva
On the heels of the best employment report of the year -- albeit one with continuing job losses -- President Barack Obama says additional steps will be needed to help a reviving economy produce more new jobs in the year ahead and insists that overhauling the [...]
by Mark Silva
Sarah Palin says she is no birther.
The author of Going Rogue insists that she has never suggested that President Barack Obama, a native of Hawaii, was not born in the United States.
Yet, in a radio interview this week, the Republican candidate for vice president [...]
by Mark Silva
Gov. Charlie Crist, the popular Florida governor running for Senate, got his numbers crossed, inadvertently directing parents to a sex phone line.
Callers to the governor's office heard an on-hold recording of Crist promoting the toll-free Florida KidCare line, a program of subsidized health care for [...]
by Mark Silva
President Barack Obama not long ago fielded a question from a high-schooler in Virginia about how one goes about getting the job that the president has.
"Let me give you some very practical tips,'' the president replied. "First of all, I want everybody here to be [...]
by Mark Silva
Americans only narrowly support the "new way forward'' that President Barack Obama has announced for the U.S. military in Afghanistan - with 51 percent supporting the strategy unveiled this week at West Point.
And the public is divided in its confidence that the plan - adding" [...]
by Mark Silva and updated
Americans only narrowly support the "new way forward'' that President Barack Obama has announced for the U.S. military in Afghanistan - with 51 percent supporting the strategy unveiled this week at West Point.
And the public is divided in its confidence that the plan" [...]
by Mark Silva
While President Obama seeks "a new era of engagement'' with the rest of the world, Americans are showing less interest in reaching outward than they have in a long time.
"For the first time in [...]
by Mark Silva
"We've seen significant turnaround in the economy,'' President Barack Obama said today. "Our economy was in a freefall.''
Yet, with unemployment running at over 10 percent, the White House opened a "jobs-summit'' today.
"Today, our economy is growing again for the first time in a year,'' the president said' [...]
by Mark Silva
Desiree Rogers came to Washington touting "the Obama brand.''
Now it's Rogers' brand of social management that some are questioning, with the White House Social Secretary at the center of congressional subpoena talk that in past times has been reserved for the likes of political architects" [...]
by Kathleen Hennessey and Mark Silva
With the House Homeland Security Committee holding a hearing today on the breach of White House security that enabled an uninvited Virginia couple access to a State Dinner, the ranking Republican is calling for subpoenas of both the couple and the White House social [...]
by Mark Silva
"We did not ask for this fight,'' President Barack Obama told the cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point this week in announcing an escalation -- and also the start of a troop drawdown -- of the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan.
"It's his [...]
by Mark Silva
Our friend and colleague Clarence Page notes that President Barack Obama has lost at least one old friend on one issue: Chicago's Bill Ayers, on the escalation of the war in Afghanistan.
Obama was criticized for "palin' around with terrorists'' during the presidential campaign by'" [...]
by Mark Silva
Sarah Palin was supposed to be drawing a pretty good crowd this evening on her Going Rogue tour at the College of the Ozarks.
But her appearance at the Mall of America is another story: Authorities there apologizing for suggesting that reporters covering the former Alaska governor's book-signing [...]
by Mark Silva
Who says FOX News doesn't like Barack Obama?
The first year of the Democratic president has been good for the nation's leading cable news channel - its viewership up 7 percent in prime-time hours so far in 2009, compared to the same time last year.
Make that 10 percent' [...]
by Mark Silva
It was Donald Rumsfeld, the former Secretary of Defense, who once told soldiers asking for more equipment: "You go to war with the Army you have.''
And it is Rumsfeld, who oversaw the Bush" [...]
by Mark Silva
"Pay grades'' may be quaking in Washington.
Vice President Joe Biden said today that the question of what sort of criminal penalties the Virginia couple who got into the White House during a State Dinner without authorization should face is "above my pay grade.''
But there are plenty of [...]
by Mark Silva
Tiger Woods is a pretty big golfer.
President Barack Obama is a pretty big golfer, too.
And it turns out that Woods, the golf champion, has some tips for Obama, the president -- 10 of them, in fact.
by Mark Silva and updated again at 9:05 pm EST
President Barack Obama, swiftly deploying an added 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan, told a national television audience tonight that Americans "have no interest in fighting an endless war'' and promised to begin withdrawing forces from the embattled nation" [...]
by Mark Silva and updated
President Barack Obama, who will explain a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan tonight in a nationally televised speech delivered from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, is deploying an additional 30,000 or more U.S. troops to the eight-year-old war, a spokesman says, [...]
by Mark Silva and updated
The couple who made their way into a White House State Dinner officially uninvited and met the president, vice president and other high-level officials there said today that they are not gate-crashers and have been "devastated'' by criticism.
Tareq Salahi, making his first television appearance" [...]
by Mark Silva
With just 24 online shopping days left before Christmas, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has opened "the GOP Store,'' an online mart offering "all things Republican.''
There's a white elephant for sale, "Peppermint,'' with a candy cane-striped cap, a GOP T-shirt and a Navy ladies' GOP'" [...]
by Mark Silva
All they want to do is light a tree.
But the Obamas will have plenty of help on Thursday for their first lighting of the National Christmas Tree erected between the White House and Washington [...]
by Mark Silva
Chelsea Clinton is engaged.
The only child of the former president and current secretary of state is engaged to be married to the son of a former congressman from Iowa and congresswoman from Pennsylvania: Investment banker Marc Mezvinsky.
The two were friends as teenagers and studied together [...]
by Mark Silva
Radio's Rush Limbaugh -- he of the "golden microphone'' and the potentially $400-million eight-year contract -- claims a listening audience of about 12 million.
Cable television's Glenn Beck -- he of the Communists-in-the-White House crusade on his" [...]
by Mark Silva
The Senate's post-Thanksgiving debate over health care gets underway this week against a backdrop of apparent deep public division and slight disapproval.
With the Senate poised to take up a health-care overhaul which the Democrats and independent allies have voted to advance to debate and which the [...]
