The New Republic

But many that are first shall be last, and the last shall be first. Never did Jesus' dictum seem truer than Wednesday night at the first Democratic presidential debate about Iraq at the Johns Hopkins University's School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Paul Wolfowitz once presided here for seven years as dean. READ MORE >>

I get to the House Judiciary Committee room 20 minutes before ex-Department of Justice White House liaison Monica Goodling's hearing is set to begin, and the place is already a madhouse. Frenzied cameramen climb over people's laps and sprawl prostrate on the floor beneath Goodling's witness table, and there are no seats left--not even for press. Amid the chaos, a committee aide shoves me into a standing-room slot beside a gleeful, obese television producer. He is bellowing into his BlackBerry. READ MORE >>

THE MORNING AFTER President Bush vetoed the Democrats’ Iraq supplemental bill, House Minority Leader READ MORE >>

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The morning after President Bush vetoed the Democrats' Iraq supplemental bill, House Minority Leader John Boehner was in a House press conference room, working himself into a fine lather. With his pinstriped suit, sherbet-orange tie, and deep tan, Boehner looked less like a congressman than a Miami kingpin's flamboyant defense lawyer--and he mimicked one in manner, peering down the mics at the journalists clustered before him with unconcealed hostility. READ MORE >>

One recent weekend, Michigan Senator Carl Levin traveled to AnnArbor to give a talk to a crowd of students. The brainy Levin isknown for his unabashed liberalism--he led the opposition in theSenate to authorizing the Iraq war in 2002--and, as CollegeDemocrats and antiwar protesters filed into the sunny room, itwould have been fair to assume he was only among friends. But, asLevin thanked a serviceman who had stood up in the audience, theprotesters held up their signs: aipac owns levin! READ MORE >>

Is there anything sorrier than the modern party boss? Once, bossespresided over Congress like emperors. They sealed who would live andwho would die, picking the incumbents who could face reelection andinstructing a few doomed souls to spend more time with theirfamilies. But that era is gone. Gunning to take the bosses' placeare blogger NZ Bear, talk-radio host Hugh Hewitt, and WashingtonTimes columnist Frank Gaffney. This trio helped start the newlyminted Victory Caucus--dedicated, in part, to defeating Republicanincumbents who have criticized George W. Bush's Baghdad surge. READ MORE >>

Maybe Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing would have gone better if he and the senators had worked out one major misunderstanding beforehand. In Gonzales's trial to keep his job today, the senators--seated in a giant hearing room filled with hot-pink-clad protesters waving pocket constitutions--clearly understood Gonzales to be the defendant. The attorney general, however, seemed to believe he had been called as an expert forensic witness. READ MORE >>

'I could go on all day about what I'm proud of," Tom DeLay exults into his microphone at a recent Oxonian Society-sponsored luncheon in New York to hawk his new memoir, No Retreat, No Surrender. A year after his downfall, DeLay's leathery skin and the loose,papery bags under his eyes make him look old. But the message he delivers to the crowd is energetic and unrepentant: "I'm ... proud of the K Street Strategy. I was proud of the Terri Schiavo incident," he says. And, without irony: "We changed the culture of Washington." READ MORE >>

Before yesterday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for D. Kyle Sampson, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's former chief of staff, veterans of the Libby trial press corps took a minute to wave around to each other: "It's like a reunion!", NPR's Nina Totenberg chuckled. The press' trial veterans were there because the hearings were Justice-related, but their presence illuminated the hearing's dark, criminal atmosphere. READ MORE >>