Michael Tomasky's Blog, page 68

Gingrich says US should be more like Saudi Arabia|Michael Tomasky

The other day when we were discussing the lower Manhattan mosque proposal, a couple of commenters said something like no mosque near ground zero until we can build a church in Saudi Arabia. I found this line of argument pretty hard to take seriously, as did a few other commenters, who noted, uh, well, that America has a history of religious tolerance that Saudi Arabia does not, so they're pretty different places, and holding up Saudi Arabia as a standard to which the US should hew maybe...

More on Shirley Sherrod|Michael Tomasky

Now the Obama administration has offered an official apology to Shirley Sherrod, and agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack has offered her back her job, which she says she's not ready to take.

Vilsack, who was credible at his press conference yesterday in that he seemed genuinely shaken and remorseful, continued to insist that he'd had no pressure from the White House, but that's one of those denials of the sort that we get so often from government, the kind no one really believes. At the very...

A moment to appreciate a fine American | Michael Tomasky

A friend from West Virginia emailed me a little earlier to say "Capito is out, Hechler is in."

Meaning that Shelly Moore Capito, whom I speculated yesterday would seek the Bob Byrd Senate seat, is in fact not running. Seems she had second thoughts about seeking both a House and Senate seat at the same time.

As to the second part of the message, I wrote back: you mean Kenny Hechler has an heir who's a Republican???

No, my friend wrote back. It's Ken Hechler himself who is running.

Why is this...

A moment to appreciate a fine American|Michael Tomasky

A friend from West Virginia emailed me a little earlier to say "Capito is out, Hechler is in."

Meaning that Shelly Moore Capito, whom I speculated yesterday would seek the Bob Byrd Senate seat, is in fact not running. Seems she had second thoughts about seeking both a House and Senate seat at the same time.

As to the second part of the message, I wrote back: you mean Kenny Hechler has an heir who's a Republican???

No, my friend wrote back. It's Ken Hechler himself who is running.

Why is this...

David Cameron and Barack Obama: a picture of chumminess | Michael Tomasky

Never mind the ideological differences, this transatlantic encounter was all cool art and warm banter

I was watching the Barack Obama-David Cameron press conference, but about 10 minutes into it, the phone rang; so I didn't get to hear much. But it didn't matter. You didn't need to hear anything. It was all there in the body language. The special relationship is special again.

These guys were like old college chums. They traded what, among politicians, passes for witty repartee, with the...

Michael Tomasky: Shirley Sherrod and the times we live in

We often use metaphors to describe the sometimes surreal twisting of facts in the interest of advancing a partisan point. We talk of a hall of mirrors, things like that. But it's hard to think of another case in which something has so explicitly and precisely been twisted into its opposite.

You probably know the Shirley Sherrod story by now. She was giving a talk describing an episode of many years ago in which she, a black woman and agricultural agent, wasn't as fully helpful as she could...

Michael Tomasky: Interesting wrinkle from the old home state

Joe Manchin, the governor of the old home state, announced today to no one's surprise that he's running this fall for Robert Byrd's seat. Republicans wanted to put up Shelly Moore Capito against him. She's a member of the House and the state's highest-profile Republican, the only one who could give Joe a race.

But as an incumbent House member, she has to choose between seeking reelection and trying to go for the Senate. Right? Usually. But not in this case. What gives?

Because Byrd died, the...

Michael Tomasky: The Elizabeth Warren story

As you do know, Obama will sign the finreg bill tomorrow. As you might know, a central feature of that bill is the newly created consumer financial protection agency, which basically does for financial instruments what the Consumer Product Safety Commission does for toasters and children's toys. Does it seem surprising that there wasn't such a thing in the first place? Well, the financial lobby is a little more powerful than the toaster lobby.

As you almost certainly don't know, the idea for t...

Michael Tomasky: More mosque madness

One thing I always gave George Bush credit for was the way he usually took pains to say after 9-11 that we weren't at war with an entire religion. Of course, other people on the right said or implied it, and Bush didn't go out of his way to distance himself from all that, at least as I recall. But the fact that a conservative president took that posture served to define the terms of the debate in a way about the practice of Islam in America.

Now that there's no conservative president, and...

Michael Tomasky: Tea party comes to Congress

So Michele Bachmann is starting an official tea party caucus in the House of Representatives. The House has all kinds of, well, I guess they're cauci, aren't they? The black caucus, the coal caucus, the diabetes caucus, you name it. So now there will be a tea party caucus.

As Politico notes, it will make Republicans, most of whom have preferred playing footsie with the movement but also kind of keeping it at arms' length, declare:

Minnesota's Bachmann, a favorite of the tea party movement...