Momentum builds for Ogden, Utah to buck the recent trend of cities buying their own aerial surveillance drones and instead purchase an unmanned surveillance blimp.
President Obama met last month with former Bush advisor/campaign strategist Matthew Dowd.
Don’t expect Google to shift on Net Neutrality when co-founder Larry Page takes over as CEO this spring.
Former Sen. George Allen (R-VA) announces plan to recapture the Senate seat he lost to Jim Webb in 2006, calls it “American Comeback”.
We’ve gotten news that Rahm Emanuel has gotten tossed off the mayoral ballot by an appellate court in Illinois. We don’t have a sense yet of whether this is something his team has a good shot of reversing or not. But I must confess I find the whole issue sort of perplexing. I’m not particularly invested in the result one way or another. But election eligibility laws generally have very big exceptions for service in the federal government. And Rahm was first a congressman from Chicago and then the White House chief of staff. It really seems open and shut. The fact that he was leasing his Chicago home doesn’t seriously suggest he wasn’t planning on returning. If anything, the opposite.
Again, I don’t know the caselaw involved. And this is really an issue for Chicagoans. But I’m genuinely surprised this is even an issue.
Lieberman says he would have won but decided to retire anyway.
Everybody who’s got the ego to run for president has to think they’re a man or woman of destiny. And I bet even Tim Pawlenty does.
But it’s still not great to make your tv ads based on man of destiny imagery and edits. I’d defer to any students of film — maybe Roger Ebert can help us — but it seems to be part of the ‘sci-fi-archival-footage-jet-fighter-heroic’ genre, with perhaps an homage to Minority Report worked in.
You simply must watch this Tim Pawlenty ad.
TPM Reader MO thinks Pawlenty’s gambit for a primary campaign personality cult may not be such a bad play after all …
Just watched the clip and wanted to make the comment that, sure, it’s bombastic. That’s the whole point, I think. Previously, what was Pawlenty known for? Boring, milquetoast candidate. I actually find it a bit refreshing for a Republican to try to get some buzz with something that is over-the-top without talking about “Second Amendment remedies”, recalling the tragedy of 9/11 (note that he smartly doesn’t put the Towers in the video when he talked about what adversity this country has faced), or pandering to the rabid back through race, ethnic, or religious-baiting. If a Republican were to be our next President, I would take Pawlenty over the likes of Romney or Guiliani, et. all any day.
I take the point. And I guess like Demon Sheep there are points for originality and thinking outside the box. And yes, points for Pawlenty for not having the disempowered masses defending themselves against Orwellian bureaucrats with their AKs and Glocks. But still, I just feel like precisely because Pawlenty seems like such a soft soap, this sort of man of destiny stuff just comes off a little farcical. Read More
The federal office charged with investigating improper political activity within the federal government comes out this evening with a report — more than fours years later — finding that the Bush White House violated the law in the 2006 election campaign.