The trick’s as old as the five-day workweek. Dump your worst news on Friday afternoon after 5. It’ll end up in Saturday’s papers (the lowest readership of the week) and will get brief mention on the network newscasts (which have few viewers on Fridays — especially in the summer). Sadly the “we’re gonna change the way Washington works” Obama Administration knows the game too well.
And so at 5:18 Friday afternoon the Washington Post broke the story: The White House will decree by executive fiat that the President may hold terrorism suspects. …

What is it about sanctimonious, God-fearing Republicans?
They can’t just flame out with a simple extra-marital affair. Or a little problem with some pills. Oh no. It must be spectacular. So South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, late of the “rising Republican stars for 12″ team, has finished off his political career with a fabulous mess of lies, diversions, derelictions of duty, and…oh yeah…an Argentinian dominatrix.
OK I made that last part up for the sake of alliteration but who knows?
As we all know by now Sanford seemingly vanished off the face of the …

There are two somewhat competing storylines that have been floating around the edges of the news coming out of Iran and both demonstrate how little we learn from history — and how little we know about Iran.
Several prominent analysts have argued that the vote in Iran was NOT substantially rigged and that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the choice of the majority of Iranians voting last weekend. Their arguments come down to this: Westerners viewed this election through a narrow lens that fails to capture the ethnic and cultural dynamics of …

Ok so the easy mea culpa today would go to David Letterman for his apology in the case of his lame and insulting Sarah Palin joke. But we prefer to reward the truly brave: A journalist admitting she was the one who made news in an Albany courtroom this morning.
Daily News uber-blogger-reporter Liz Benjamin was in the courtroom today for yet another hearing with Supreme Court Justice Thomas McNamara on the “Who’s in Charge of the Senate” case. You’ll recall the Dems and Republicans have been in McNamara’s court seemingly …

There’s big news about Tom Golisano.
The formerly upstate billionaire (he’s still got the money but he moved to Florida) is dating former tennis star Monica Seles. So reports Page Six. Oh, and the three-time candidate for New York Governor  just loves the circus. How else to explain his recent quarterbacking of the quasi-Republican coup in Albany?
Golisano has always been an odd bird in New York politics. In his three runs for Governor as an independent (94, 98, 02) he always seemed to have it out for Republican George Pataki (who …

 
It’s damn tough to be a Republican in New York these days. 
First the party lost a slew of Congressional seats in 2006. Then they surrendered control of the State Senate for the first time in two generations. This past winter they failed to regain the “most Republican” House seat in the state. And now this: President Obama has picked one of New York’s last three Republican Congressmen to be Secretary of the Army.
John McHugh has represented much of the northern third of the state since 1992 but has accepted Obama’s …

 
The king has been brought to his knees. General Motors is officially bankrupt. Hindsight is 20/20.
 
So far this has been a year of hand-wringing among economic pontificators who have variously proclaimed that the wreckage around us proves capitalism’s fatal flaws or it’s remarkable resilience. What is not often discussed is the way capitalism — true, pure capitalism — is colored by conservative ideology. GM is a case in point.
When General Motors and the United Auto Workers (as well as the rest of the auto industry at the time) entered into a …