Month: April 2005
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Has Kansas become more conservative?
Writing on the blog Polysigh about Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas?, political scientist Philip Klinkner claims that Kansas has not become more conservative in recent years: Frank argues that the Sunflower State has, through conservative manipulation, shifted heavily to the right in recent decades. Again with my handy 1972 edition of the Almanac
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MoveOn PAC dissembles again on the nuclear option
From an April 20 MoveOn PAC email to supporters: This fight is about saving one of the last barriers standing between radical Republicans and total control of the American political system. That barrier, the filibuster, was created for this kind of situation: it’s designed to force the members of the Senate to find judicial candidates
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Up is down: No legislating from the bench (unless you’re conservative!)
RNC chairman Ken Mehlman in an email to supporters yesterday invokes Janice Rogers Brown after claiming that Bush’s nominees are being filibustered because they would not legislate from the bench: Democrats are obstructing President Bush’s nominees because they know that these nominees will strictly interpret the law — not legislate from the bench. Democrats have
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Bush vs. logic: Investing personal accounts in Treasury bonds
Finals blog outsourcing — Brad DeLong carries the ball on Bush’s plan to let you invest your personal account in Treasury bonds. From the press conference Thursday: I know some Americans have reservations about investing in the stock market, so I propose that one investment option consist entirely of treasury bonds, which are backed by
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When the Times attacks
Mickey Kaus catches the New York Times in the act. Here’s how a recent story on Education Secretary Margaret Spellings
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Understatement of the decade
Ed Crane of the Cato Institute speaking about Karl Rove: Crane, who has been pushing to privatize Social Security for decades, blamed Rove for focusing on convincing the country that the system was facing a financial crisis rather than advertising the benefits of personal ownership. ”If you focus on the green-eyeshade approach, people’s eyes are
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Review: Don’t see Kung Fu Hustle
A word of warning — don’t believe all the great reviews for Kung Fu Hustle. It isn’t funny and the action scenes are mostly boring CGI stuff. What a disappointment. I’m sending Stephen Chow a bill for $12.
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The Washington Post’s bad poll question on filibusters
I don’t say this often, but James Taranto is right — the much-touted Washington Post poll showing overwhelming opposition to getting rid of the filibuster for judicial nominations is deeply flawed: The Post’s Phony Poll “Filibuster Rule Change Opposed” is the headline of the lead story in today’s Washington Post. The paper reports on a
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Read Jay Hamilton!
Everyone who cares about the media should read Jay Hamilton’s All the News That’s Fit to Sell, which shows that many of the cultural/political explanations of press behavior that we toss around turn out to have deeper economic foundations. (Bonus: He’s a really nice guy.) Here Brad DeLong paraphrases a profound but depressing comment that
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Fun with RSS
I opened my trusty RSS reader just now and found an, uh, interesting ad inserted into Andrew Sullivan’s feed: Somehow, it seems appropriate…