Prologue
By Robert Timberg
Last year at the dedication of the National Prisoner of War Museum in Andersonville, Georgia, former Attorney General Griffin Bell, a Democrat, introduced Senator John McCain, the featured speaker, with these words: “We often hear people now say, where are our heroes, where have all our heroes gone? Well, Senator McCain is an [...]
Sarah Palin speaks. We’ll look closely at the VP pick that has the whole country talking.
Comments [59]Our live coverage continues from St. Paul and the RNC with a close look at John McCain and the religious right.
Comments [46]Our live coverage continues from St Paul. We’ll sit down with Republican delegates from the frontlines of the McCain-Obama contest.
Comments [5]Our in-depth coverage from the Republican Convention in St Paul continues with a look at the party faithful and their fight over what the GOP stands for, post-George Bush.
Comments [159]Live from St. Paul, where President Bush was scheduled to speak to the party faithful until Hurricane Gustav intervened. We’ll get the latest, and look at what this moment means for Bush, McCain, and the GOP.
Comments [28]Live from the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. Hurricane Gustav has crashed the party. We’ll hear an update on the storm, and political analysis from top observers.
Comments [18]Democrats make history in Denver. Our news roundtable looks at how the Democrats made their case for the White House — and looks ahead to the GOP convention in St Paul.
Comments [25]Our coverage from Denver continues live from Invesco Field, the big stadium where Barack Obama makes his convention appeal to the nation.
Comments [3]Our coverage of the Democratic National Convention continues from Denver with top international journalists and a closer look at Obama on the world stage.
Comments [19]Our in-depth coverage continues from Denver. We’ll take a closer look at VP pick Joe Biden and what he brings to the ticket.
Comments [3]Our coverage continues from Denver. We’ll talk with Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, and Ishmael Reed about how they’re seeing this historic moment.
Comments [24]Our live coverage continues from Denver. We’ll hear from Democratic convention delegates from key battleground states.
Comments [4]Our live coverage from Denver continues with a look at progressives versus “Blue Dog” conservatives inside the Democratic Party.
Comments [17]It’s opening night for the Democratic Convention. We are in Denver as the party comes together to lay out its platform.
Comments [5]The curtain goes up on the Democratic Convention in Denver. We’ll be there with up-to-the minute coverage and fresh perspective.
Comments [23]Veepstakes fever. Bloody days in Kabul. And Russians commandeer American Humvees in Georgia. Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.
Comments [23]Russia relentless as Bush stands by Georgia. Inflation hits a new high. And the campaigns gear up for the conventions. Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.
Comments [16]As Russia rolled into Georgia, and the West struggled to respond, we looked at how the conflict exploded and what’s at stake in the Caucasus.
Comments [67]The Olympics open in Beijing. U.S. veepstakes in high gear. And more losses across the economy. Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.
Comments [24]The 2001 anthrax case may be drawing to a dramatic close. But plenty of questions remain about the government’s effort to counter bioterrorism. We look at the threats and the nation’s readiness.
Comments [8]McCain’s gloves come off, a giant deficit in Washington, and the CIA goes after Pakistan. Our weekly news roundtable dives into these stories, and much more.
Comments [20]We talk with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi about her rise to power, battles with Bush, an unpopular Congress, and the ‘08 elections.
Comments [7]Barack Obama is tacking too far right, say backers on the left. So, is the candidate betraying his base, playing smart politics, “refining” his message?
Comments [2]Two floods and a lot of news this week. The flood above all in the Midwest, as levee-topping waters now surge down the Mississippi with exhausted sandbaggers and destruction in their wake.
And the flood nationally at the gas pump, as gasoline prices climb higher and higher, swamping family budgets.
Then the news. Obama drops out [...]
It may be beautiful, but everybody knows marriage isn’t easy.
Who pays the bills? Who works or stays home? Who unloads the dishwasher?
So what about gay marriage? Gay partnerships?
Yesterday, California was ringing with gay wedding bells, on its first full day of legal gay marriage. But gay marriage is not new anymore. [...]
Talk about awkward.
The United States and Iraq are negotiating a new legal framework for U.S. military operations in Iraq. A new “status of forces agreement.”
And Iraq’s prime minister stands up and says the negotiations aren’t working. That they’re at an impasse. That Iraq’s demands are unacceptable to the U.S. and U.S. demands [...]
On the presidential campaign trail it is “veepstakes” season: John McCain and Barack Obama, being watched everyday now for any hint of who they’ll pick to complete their ticket.
McCain would be 72 on inauguration day — the oldest president ever sworn in. How old should his running mate be? And who?
Obama, first African-American [...]
Conservative columnist George Will’s career has traced the rise, and what many conservatives now fear is the fall, of the conservative movement in America.
His first column appeared in The Washington Post in 1974. In the Reagan years, his bow tie, polished wit, and penchant for quoting British lords, made him one of the most widely [...]
Suddenly, even for people who don’t follow oil futures and Saudi production estimates, the lid seems to have blown off energy prices.
Oil is at double its price of a year ago and still soaring. Some now predict $200 dollars a barrel. Many Americans remember when it was twenty.
Gasoline is heading over the four-dollar-a-gallon mark. Some [...]
Pity the Burmese — and the Chinese earthquake victims — this week. Nature struck both, but one government couldn’t, wouldn’t, help its own people.
At home, California gives a green light to gay marriage. West Virginia goes for Clinton. John Edwards goes for Obama. John McCain says he didn’t mean one hundred years in Iraq. He [...]
Hillary Clinton won in a romp in West Virginia, and says she will go on. Barack Obama’s camp points to the Democratic primary numbers and says he’s got it sewn up.
Meanwhile, John McCain just keeps campaigning.
Nationally, Republicans face some daunting realities and poll numbers heading toward November. But few deny John McCain’s got a real [...]
Disaster and a junta in Myanmar this week. Putin out but not out in Russia. The brink of civil war in Lebanon.
And at home — maybe the political end game in the Democrats’ long primary battle.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign, hanging in and fighting for its life at the same time. Senator Clinton publicly and plainly pinning [...]
Global big thinker Fareed Zakaria is out with his latest big book, and the title almost says it all: It’s “The Post-American World.”
Take a look at the world and it’s not hard to see: the world’s tallest buildings, biggest airplane, biggest investment fund, biggest movie industry, biggest refinery, biggest casino — heck, the world’s biggest [...]
Barack Obama stepped out of the worst weeks of his campaign yesterday and turned in a big win in North Carolina.
Hillary Clinton took those same weeks, and a stretch of high Clinton camp spirits, and turned in a squeaker victory — a two-point win — in Indiana.
Everybody’s vowing to battle on, but the raw numbers [...]
If you want a story of coming up gritty in America, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s got it.
A hardscrabble youth in Searchlight, Nevada. Mom doing laundry for brothels. Dad an alcoholic miner. Young Harry hitchhiking forty miles across the desert to high school.
If you want gritty politics, Harry Reid’s got that, too. An in-your-face bad [...]
Hillary Clinton and John McCain say they want to drop federal gas taxes for the summer. Barack Obama says no.
If you’re strapped for cash and struggling with higher food and energy prices, it can sound like a good idea. But step back just half an inch from presidential campaign follies, and the idea can look [...]
Former U.S. Secretary of State — and Treasury, and Labor — George Shultz has been mixing it up with the great powers of Washington and the world since the Eisenhower administration.
As Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state he became a hero to conservatives and more for his role in ending the Cold War. Now, at 87, [...]
A week of soaring prices and a huge primary win. Hillary Clinton hung in, and the campaign moved on to Indiana and North Carolina. General Petraeus got the nod to ship out to a higher post.
The U.S. made striking claims about Syrian-North Korean nuclear ties. President Bush set the table for more Mid-East peace talks.
Rupert [...]
China’s big road to the Olympics is turning into a hard course in global pushback and big power comeuppance. The image of the Olympic torch being hustled through a rolling hail of protest over Tibet and human rights is clearly excruciating for Beijing.
But while the torch gets hustled, Chinese wealth and power continues to mount. [...]
In this American presidential election year — like none in a long time — the whole world is watching. Really watching. And no zone is watching more closely what Americans decide than Europe.
Forever Europeans were understood as our closest strategic and cultural allies. Then came Bush unilateralism, and the taunt of “cheese-eating surrender monkeys.”
Now, the [...]
Chuck Hagel, the outspoken Republican senator from Nebraska, is a decorated Vietnam veteran and a leading GOP critic of the Iraq war.
Not so long ago, he was also viewed as an ‘08 presidential contender. But he’s set aside whatever White House ambitions he may have had, and he’s even announced that he won’t be running [...]
Mike Huckabee joins us. We’ll get the Huckabee view of the GOP now, and the Republican Party in the Obama era.
After the terror in Mumbai, we look at what the bloody attacks mean for India, Pakistan, and the United States.
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British actor Michael Palin on how Monty Python came to be.
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Helene Cooper and her amazing story of privilege and flight from Africa in “The House at Sugar Beach.”
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