In his press conference this afternoon, President Bush attacked Congress for not moving faster on the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey for Attorney General. In a baffling statement, President Bush reportedly said that it was improper for Congress to ask the nominee how he feels about interrogation methods on which the nominee has not [...]

Ah, welcome to an unfriendly Congress, Mr. President.  During the Clinton presidency, we were regaled with scandal after scandal.  Congress seemed to like to do nothing better than to accuse the President, or his advisers, of withholding information, of being evasive, etc.  And, as you might expect, Clinton made every effort to shield himself from [...]

Among other things, Judge Samuel Alito is getting in trouble (at least with the left) because of his ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The basic issue in that case was the extent to which a state can place restrictions on a woman’s right to an abortion, and Judge Alito essentially thought that he [...]

There has been a lot of discussion on leftfielder about what sorts of things are fair game when considering whether or not to confirm Alito to the Supreme Court. Most of this has dealt with the notion of judicial philosophy. The argument is that he should not be confirmed or rejected on the [...]

Hey, folks — believe it or not, I’m one of the authors associated with this site, though I haven’t actually, y’know, posted here for quite some time. You can find me at my main haunt, CardNilly, where I talk about baseball, and particularly the Cardinals. But in my actual real life, I’m a [...]

As the Supreme Court confirmation of Judge Alito moves forward over the next few weeks, you are likely to hear a lot of misused and abused judicial terms floating around, such as “original intent”, “strict constructionist”, “legislating from the bench”, and “judicial activism”. With that in mind, I thought it might be useful to talk [...]

As you probably heard, President Bush announced today that Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr. is his next nominee to fill O’Connor’s seat on the Supreme Court. I am reserving judgement on the Judge Alito until we know more about his record, although at first glance he seems like a reasonable nominee. He’s been [...]

The Republican Party is eating its own young. For those of us liberal “true-believers” this is not terribly surprising. A lot of us have been saying for years that the Iraq War and the Bush tax-cuts were monumentally bad ideas and that Bush was a poor leader when it actually came to getting [...]

Many on the Christian right are justifiably nervous about the nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. Supreme court behavior is incredibly hard to predict, and the best way is to pick a known quantity; a lifelong, vocal, pro-life advocate who has already sacrificed for the cause is unlikely to change stances once shielded [...]

And now, time for some good, old-fashioned, political analysis. First, was the recent revelation by Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, that he was Judith Miller’s source on the whole Valerie Plame situation. This set the stage for Ms. Miller’s release from jail, where she was being held in contempt of [...]