According to ABC News, the White House and the Secret Service "quietly signed an agreement last spring in the midst of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal declaring that records identifying visitors to the White House are not open to the public." The agreement is in the form of a five-page…
I didn't know much about Dan Burton until I read today's story with this headline: "House Bans Lobbyist Gifts, Business-Sponsored Travel." Now I know that he's morally obtuse. Here's the gist of the article: The U.S. House of Representatives, after installing its new Democratic leadership, voted to ban lawmakers from flying…
I was recently discussing the Iraq war with a political lobbyist friend of mine when he mentioned something I had not previously considered: neocons and other law-and-order conservatives try to justify the Iraq invasion by saying that even though Saddam didn't have WMDs, he was defying UN-mandated inspections of Iraqi…
According to this salon.com post by Bill Maher, the worst menace isn't Mark Foley. Not by a long shot. Focus, instead on legions of corporate and government predators. Though this was written in October 2006, I didn't notice it until today. As always, Maher doesn't pull any punches: [Foley] was…
If the American Congress has no interest in investigating the Bush administration's abuses of power, we can always rely on the Germans to lend a hand. As reported on NPR this morning, and also in Time and elsewhere on the internet, Germany's chief prosecutor is seeking a criminal investigation and…