Lou Dubose

Karl Rove is a brilliant (and brutal) political tactician. Whether or not you accept that Bush won the 2000 election, it was Rove who made a mediocre governor with a second-rate policy mind president of the United States. Rove is also a self-taught American-history scholar (he never finished college). He......

Illustration by Mr. FishGeorge Bush’s attorney Harriet Miers will almost certainly provide the swing vote to overturn Roe v. Wade and end a woman’s right to choose an abortion. If, that is, the Senate confirms her to serve on the Supreme Court. Because journalists are advised to avoid reporting the......

“I have done nothing wrong.” Log that one in the book that includes Richard Nixon’s “I’m not a crook.” And Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Beyond that, Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay also told the Capitol press corps that he did nothing “unethical”......

Illustration by Mr. Fish With larger margins in the House and Senate, President Bush, Co-President Rove and Vice President Cheney have more than a governing majority. They have absolute dominance — or so they believe. They intend to use it. "I earned capital in the campaign, political capital," Bush said......

IN 2000, TEXAS SUPREME COURT Justice Alberto Gonzales wrote an opinion supporting a minor’s right to abortion without the consent of her parents. The court was defining an untested statute intended to allow pregnant minors to avoid abusive parents and, in some cases, avoid confronting fathers responsible for the pregnancies......

In the early ’90s, before we learned Governor Ann Richards was a lesbian, only the political cognoscenti in Texas knew Karl Rove’s name. Richards lost to George W. Bush in 1994, though before the race began, she had approval ratings in the 70s. She made the mistake of underestimating Bush,......

To understand President Bush’s recent visit to the Vatican, you have to go back to the moment when George Bush and Karl Rove came to Jesus. Not in a religious, born-again sense. That happened to Bush shortly after his 40th birthday, when he and his Midland oil-field buddy Donnie Evans......

Remember Ken Lay? He’s the former Enron CEO whom state Attorney General Bill Lockyer told The Wall Street Journal he wanted locked in a prison cell with a tattooed inmate named “Spike.” He’s not there yet. At least, the lights were on last week at his 33rd-floor, $7 million condo......

“Three Texans run this town, Karl Rove, George Bush and Tom DeLay.” This wasn’t Texas Republican swagger. I was sitting in the office of a veteran public-interest lobbyist who had been here since the ’60s, when he arrived with a young reformer named Ralph Nader. Rove, Bush and DeLay, he......

The former mayor of a small Texas town lies on his deathbed when his son’s cell phone rings. “Brian, this is George Bush. How’s your dad?” The president was calling out of genuine concern for a genuinely decent man. David McCall was mayor of Plano when it was a place......