It's been a good week so far for Mitt Romney. On Monday, new polls showed him leading the pack in both Iowa and New Hampshire. And if his growing attacks on Romney are any indication, John McCain is clearly answering yes to the Washington Post's question today, "Is Romney Moving Up?" But despite his improving […]

On Sunday, Pennsylvania Republican Senator Arlen Specter repeated his familiar pattern of feigned independence from the Bush White House. Appearing on CBS' Face the Nation, Specter announced his expectation that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would resign in the face of a looming no-confidence vote in the Senate. But as I wrote in February, whether the […]

New polls just released by the Des Moines Register show John Edwards and Mitt Romney leading the Democratic and Republican Iowa caucus fields respectively. While Edwards (29%) holds a six-point lead over Barack Obama (23%) and national front-runner Hillary Clinton (21%), former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney enjoys a surprising 13% over John McCain (18%) and […]

The past week was a bittersweet time of garbled goodbyes and failed farewells for President Bush and his amen corner on the right. In Washington, Paul Wolfowitz resigned in disgrace, Tony Blair bid adieu to both President and his own legacy, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales faced new charges of malpractice over his Ashcroft bedside […]

The past week produced another torrent of conservative outrages. The revelations of Alberto Gonzales' hospital visit to browbeat John Ashcroft, the celebration of the late Jerry Falwell, and the implosion of Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank were just some of the developments that made me barking mad. Alberto Gonzales continued to dissemble over the […]

Fresh off his Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," former Vice President Al Gore has authored a new book, The Assault on Reason. Excerpted in Time as part of a feature on Gore, the book is a jeremiad against the crippled state of American political discourse and democracy itself. But as prescient as Gore is on […]

While Jerry Falwell has passed from the scene, many of his fellow End-of-Times evangelical allies still enjoy unfettered access to and dangerous influence over President Bush, especially when it comes to Iran. As Focus on the Family head James Dobson reported on his radio show on Monday, he and a group of evangelical leaders met […]

While likely GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich in April called for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign over his "mishandling" of the U.S. prosecutors purge, it turns out the two men have a lot in common. As we learned on Tuesday, when it comes to pressuring the gravely ill, Gonzales and Gingrich share the same […]

Back in February, I slammed the Washington Post for its reporting on Bill Clinton's speaking fees and the implication that his new-found wealth would unfairly fuel his wife's 2008 presidential campaign. In contrast, the Post was largely silent on the million in speaking and consulting fees reaped by former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. Until […]

Beginning this Friday, Perrspectives is introducing a new feature, Barking Mad. While others offer Friday cat blogging (for example, here and here), Barking Mad combines a quick survey of the outrages of the week with photos of my ill-tempered Corgi, Zoe. These are just some of the people and issues that, well, pissed me off […]