John Edwards made a fine speech in New Orleans yesterday announcing the end of his presidential campaign. He said that he would continue working toward his goal of ending poverty in the United States, and that both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton personally promised him they would make that goal an integral part of their […]

Former Texas Senator Phil Gramm has long held the record for spending the most money to the least effect in a presidential primary campaign. Gramm raised and spent about $20 million in 1995 and early 1996, more than all but eventual GOP nominee Bob Dole, but dropped out of the race before the New Hampshire […]

Sometimes I resent not owning a television, but at least once a year for the past eight years I’ve been grateful for the lack.
I read the various State of the Union speech press releases from the White House yesterday, including the morning press gaggle with Dana Perino during which she noted repeatedly that last […]

The Bush administration probably didn’t actively intend to turn Aghanistan into the very model of a narco-terrorist state, but they clearly had no plan to avoid doing so.
In 2001, opium was a non-factor in Afghanistan’s economy, after the Taliban banned the crop the previous year in a failed effort to improve diplomatic relations with other […]

All the fuss about Barack Obama’s comments on Ronald Reagan appears to have gotten under the candidate’s skin. At the Democratic candidates’ debate in South Carolina, Hillary Clinton attacked Obama’s comments on the GOP being the party of ideas during the Clinton presidency by thoroughly mischaracterizing what he said. Obama defended himself by thoroughly mischaracterizing […]

Regular readers of BTC News may recall that we were early supporters of Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo’s long-shot bid for the Republican presidential nomination, primarily on the strength of, as we said at the time, his willingness “to demystify the deployment of nuclear weapons against the civilian populations of religiously significant cities.” We later renewed […]

Note to regular patrons: you’re not hallucinating. This piece is an updated and greatly expanded version of the previous one.
Nancy Pelosi is at it again. On Friday, she reiterated her opposition to impeaching George Bush and Dick Cheney, saying that impeachment “would be very divisive in our country” and that despite increasing heat from constituents […]

Nancy Pelosi has reiterated her opposition to impeaching president Bush, saying that doing so “would be very divisive in our country” and that despite increasing heat from constituents and fellow lawmakers, impeachment remains off the table.
She also appears to think the issue is all about her, saying that “I go through airports, and people have […]

Lots of headlines are claiming that Hillary Clinton is attacking Barack Obama’s remarks about Ronald Reagan. When one reads the stories, though, Clinton doesn’t mention Reagan; she targets Obama’s assertion, from the same session with the Reno Gazette-Journal, that Republicans have been the “party of ideas” for the past decade-plus.
Why hasn’t she joined the Reagan […]

Ronald Reagan killed people, and he killed ideals. He began his campaign for the presidency with a paean to states’ rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where that cause—the right to trample the rights of others—had claimed the lives of three civil rights activists barely more than fifteen years earlier. In Central America, he painted nun-raping, dope […]