W
    Will Thomas

    Will Thomas

    Contributor

  • Hillary Clinton - Supreme Court Justice

    As Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign comes to a close, the chattering class is already speculating about what's next for her. Much of the buzz, of course, focuses on the pros and cons of becoming Barack Obama's running mate. But another long-shot possibility is beginning to get some ink: an appointment to the Supreme Court.

  • Pelosi Pushing For Rahm Emanuel To Replace Obama In Senate

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is reported to be privately talking about Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the House Democratic Caucus chairman, as the next senator from Illinois if Sen. Barack Obama wins the presidential election. Emanuel told this column he is not interested in the Senate and has not talked to Pelosi about it. He also suggested that Pelosi might be saying she would regret losing him from her leadership team.

  • Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, John Legend Join MoveOn For "Obama In 30 Seconds"

    MoveOn.org is teaming up with Hollywood to produce an ad for Barack Obama. Actually, there hoping that readers all over will submit their own pro-Obama slots for a chance at earning national airtime. From the press release: MoveOn.org joined forces today with Academy Award-winners Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Oliver Stone, multiple Grammy-winner John Legend and author Naomi Wolf to announce a new ad contest, "Obama in 30 Seconds."

  • Obama Vice President Picks: It's Biden!

    UPDATE 8/23/08 1:00 AM EASTERN: Obama has selected Joe Biden as his Vice Presidential running mate. Update - 8/22/08: As Obama's announcement draws closer, Democratic officials name a surprise shortlist candidate: Texas Rep. Chet Edwards. Meanwhile, the Politico reports that Hillary Clinton was never actually vetted for the position.

  • NYT Op-Ed: Cindy McCain Should Release Tax Returns

    Senator John McCain's wife, Cindy McCain, has decided not to release her tax returns -- not now and not in the future. In the interest of transparency and to support her husband's frequent calls for clean and open government, she should rethink that decision. Since their marriage in 1980, Mrs. McCain, the daughter of a multimillionaire Anheuser-Busch distributor, and her husband have filed separate tax returns.

  • Eliot Spitzer Campaign Funds Investigated By Feds

    Prosecutors have asked the governor's lawyers about the travel arrangements for three trips, including his Feb. 13 rendezvous with a prostitute at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. The governor's lawyers have begun consulting with a campaign finance expert who has long worked for Mr. Spitzer's political organization to see whether campaign money was spent on the trips, including some as recently as last month, a person briefed on the investigation said.... A person briefed on the inquiry said on Thursday that investigators pursuing the case discovered something last fall that raised suspicions that Mr. Spitzer may have used campaign money to pay for transportation or hotel rooms for trysts with prostitutes.

  • David Vitter: "Enormous Difference" Between My Case And Spitzer's

    Sen. David Vitter, R-La., has been mostly mum on the prostitution scandal that forced Democratic New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer to announce his resignation last week. Scott Jordan, editor of the Independent Weekly of Lafayette, said he was able to ask Vitter whether he would resign after his phone number was connected last year to a Washington, D.C., escort service that federal investigators say was a call-girl operation. "I have made a very serious mistake a long time ago and I have to live with that every day," Vitter said, according to Jordan's account.

  • America's Top 53 Political Sex Scandals

    Eliot Spitzer is just the latest in a long list of political sex scandals that goes back to the Continental Congress. Politicker.com has a list of America's Top 53 Political Sex Scandals that includes prostitutes, sex with minors, strippers, extramarital affairs, massages, nude swim parties, and even a murder. New Jersey gets three slots on the list.

  • Clinton Defends 'Obliterate Iran' Comment, Obama Calls It Bush-Style 'Cowboy Diplomacy'

    Sen. Hillary Clinton today defended her statement that the United States would "obliterate" Iran if it ever launched a nuclear strike on Israel. "Why would I have any regrets?" she told George Stephanopoulos and group of Indiana voters on ABC's This Week. "I think we have to be very clear about what we would do," Clinton said.

  • McCain Booed At Martin Luther King Speech: Watch The Video

    Senator John McCain, "who says he will court the African-American vote this year and campaign in places Republicans often shun," spoke in Memphis on Friday to mark the 40th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. McCain voted against the creation of a holiday honoring King in 1983, a vote which was supported by a large number of Republicans. McCain claimed this week that he was largely unaware on the importance of King's work at the time, due to his Vietnam-era service overseas.

  • Rush Limbaugh: 'Operation Chaos' A Success In Extending Nomination

    Did Rush Limbaugh disrupt the primaries today? At the Broad Ripple center, nearly 400 voters -- out of 1,800 registered had turned out in the first few hours of voting." Republicans crossing over to vote in the Democrat primary, Operation Chaos.

  • McCain Iraq Comments: Bringing Troops Home From Iraq "Not Too Important" (VIDEO)

    Sen. John McCain appeared on the Today Show this morning and continued to promote his idea of a long occupation in Iraq. Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. "McCain's statement today that withdrawing troops doesn't matter is a crystal clear indicator that he just doesn't get the grave national-security consequences of staying the course - Osama bin Laden is freely plotting attacks, our efforts in Afghanistan are undermanned, and our military readiness has been dangerously diminished.

  • Two Washington Post Reporters Criticize Paper For Obama Muslim Story

    Okay, there have been a few developments with regard to the widely-criticized Washington Post piece I posted about last week that recycled the Obama-is-a-Muslim rumors on its front page without declaring them to be false. First, two WaPo reporters have now come out and criticized their own paper for the story. And second, WaPo Ombud Deborah Howell has now told readers that she'll be weighing in on the story in her column next week.

  • Obama Fights Muslim Rumor On Google

    Carrie and I wrote today about the technical aspects of fighting a viral e-mail smear, and Tim Tagaris writes approvingly of an Obama campaign move we didn't mention: The campaign has bought Google ads on the searches "Obama muslim" "Obama Islam" and "Obama madrassa." They link to this page, which debunks the smear. It's an example of how effectively Internet ads can narrowcast a message, and not dissimilar to a strategy companies use to beat back bad news without inadvertently giving a rumor more energy.

  • Obama: If I'm Not Ready, Why Suggest Vice Presidency?

    Sen. Obama responded today to the Clinton's repeated suggestions of a joint "dream ticket." Said the senator at an afternoon rally: "I just want everybody to absolutely clear: I am not running for vice president. "I won twice as many states as Sen. Clinton.

  • NYT Op-Ed: 3AM Ad Sends Racist Message

    ON first watching Hillary Clinton's recent "It's 3 a.m." advertisement, I was left with an uneasy feeling that something was not quite right -- something that went beyond my disappointment that she had decided to go negative. Repeated watching of the ad on YouTube increased my unease. What bothers me is the difference between this and the Mondale ad.

  • Aides: Presidents Rarely Have To Make Snap Decisions At 3AM

    There is no dispute, as a dramatic campaign ad from Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign suggests, that presidents get plenty of phone calls at 3 a.m. A sleeping Ronald Reagan was alerted early in the morning to what turned out to be the accidental shoot-down of an Iranian passenger plane. George H.W. Bush was informed after he went to bed of an apparent coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

  • Clinton Ad Plays National Security Card

    "Entering a proud tradition of Democrats trying to scare the beejesus out of voters by implying the rival candidate may be responsible for a nuclear holocaust, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, began airing a new TV ad today," ABC's Jake Tapper reports. John McCain gave the wrong answer.

  • Clinton: McCain And I Have Passed "Commander-In-Chief Threshold"

    In a Cabinet-style setting, surrounded by retired military leaders, Sen. Hillary Clinton said the public should ask whether Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama has met the criteria needed to become the nation's commander in chief. "I think that since we now know Sen. (John) McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you'll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy," she said.

  • Bush Compares Obama To Nazi Appeasers

    President Bush has said repeatedly that he would not insert himself into the presidential race, but that stance changed dramatically today during his trip to Israel. "Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," said Bush, in what White House aides privately acknowledged was a reference to calls by Obama and other Democrats for the U.S. president to sit down for talks with leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.