Colombia Free Trade

Writing in The Hill, pollster Mark Mellman took me to the cyber-woodshed yesterday, claiming that my post referencing his work on a 1999 poll commissioned by defense contractor Lockheed Martin provided an "inaccurate rendition of it" and reveals my "schizophrenic" relationship with polls.

I beg to differ.

To...

A little more than a year ago, Ari Berman penned an article for The Nation about the culture of corruption seething inside the Democratic Party. He focused in on Montana Sen. Max Baucus (D), who he labeled "K Street's favorite Democrat." Now the hometown papers in Montana have...

Hillary Clinton's "Bill Clinton Problem" is a joke that has become not so funny. In a debate earlier this year, Mitt Romney got a huge laugh line when he said, "The idea of Bill Clinton back in the White House with nothing to do is something I can't imagine." Hillary...

As progressives, we sometimes feel a bit uneasy about making declarative statements about the values people express in their actions. We hesitate, for instance, to call things "evil," not wanting to be like George "With Us, or Against Us" Bush. That's understandable -- absolutism can lead to bad places. However,...

Reporters got an interesting response when Senator Hillary Clinton was asked in Pittsburgh about Sam Stein's bang-up reporting that connected the dots in Bill Clinton's work to promote the Colombia Free Trade deal. Reports Newsweek, "First, Clinton giggled. Then she laughed. She waved her arms in the air....

A week ago, if you'd asked most people to say the first thing that popped into their heads when they heard the word "Colombia," you might have gotten: "Bogotá," "coffee," "cocaine," or maybe even "kidnappings."

Today that list would probably be led by "Clinton."

First came chief strategist Mark Penn's...

In the remote Nariño region of southwestern Colombia, one mother amongst many mourned her loss. "The paramilitaries said my son was a guerrilla," she told me last month. "They tortured him, tied him up ... and then shot him three times in the head in front of everybody."

If...

The economy is tanking. Gas is headed to $4.00 a gallon. One in ten homes are "under water," worth less than their mortgages. The IMF predicts up to $1 trillion in financial losses, meaning banks and securities firms that have written off abut $230 billion are still staring at the...

A Latin Country Asks for Our Help. Can We Rise Above Politics to Give It?

Trade legislation debates are usually about dry-as-dust topics like reciprocity and dumping. But sometimes they really matter. Take the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, which the Bush administration will send to Congress...

When I heard that some Bush administration dignitaries were planning to offer Congressmen junkets to Bogotá to win their votes for the proposed Colombian Free Trade Agreement, I began to daydream about the tours of my home country that I'd like to give lawmakers to explain why the pact is...

On Oct. 30, Sandra Suarez quit her job in Washington as Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's special envoy to get his Free Trade Agreement through Congress because, she told him in her letter, it won't pass, which might be news to some Bush administration officials who are still...