Month: April 2005
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The hypocrisy of Tom DeLay
Tom DeLay is crying crocodile tears about the criticism he’s facing: It is unfortunate in our electoral system, exacerbated by our adversarial media culture, that political discourse has to get so overheated that it’s not just arguments, but motives are questioned. There’s no question that the trend is unfortunate. But it is breathtaking for DeLay
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The Pirate Captain wins!
You may remember the Pirate Captain, whose, uh, innovative campaign for NC State student body president had put him in first place going into a runoff election. Well, Ken Waight at Lying in Ponds, my go-to guy for all things Captain, reports that the Pirate won the runoff — here’s the report from the campus
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The latest innovation in leftist protest tactics
Via Best of the Web comes this disturbing dispatch from a Harvard panel: At 3 p.m. yesterday, the Harvard Office of Career Services hosted a counterterrorism career panel that included representatives from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, and two non-partisan security think tanks. Joining the panelists were two distinct groups of
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No taxation without representation!
Whatever your politics, the disenfranchisement of DC is just unconscionable. I lived there for almost three years, and having one non-voting Congresswoman and no senators sucked. So please make a pledge to rename RFK “Taxation Without Representation Stadium.” It’s a brilliant PR ploy, and they won’t ask for money unless and until someone takes them
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The paradox of representing a poli sci dept.
I’m one of the two representatives from political science to GPSC, the graduate student council here at Duke. It’s a strange job given our disciplinary views on politics. Everyone knows that investing the time necessary to learn about politics is irrational in an economic sense, so no one cares what we do and there are
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When the Ultimate Warrior attacks
Also via QandO, someone is being threatened with a lawsuit by the Ultimate Warrior of old-time WWF fame after calling the Warrior a racist. The UW is apparently giving conservative political speeches at colleges now, though why anyone cares what he thinks is beyond me. The reason you have to read the post linked above,
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Media Matters hackery on Kerry story
This Media Matters article on the alleged leaking of a CIA operative’s name during a Senate committee hearing bothered me for downplaying the fact that many media outlets reported the matter virtually the same way as Drudge. Via QandO’s Jon Henke, here’s Kevin at Wizbang explaining what’s wrong with the Media Matters “analysis”: Liberal watchdog
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The DLC gets tough on estate tax repeal
Finally! The DLC is showing some backbone on estate tax repeal — part of an encouraging trend where they stop acting like wimps. I’m a DLC type myself on policy, but their weak-kneed tendencies make me nuts. So this is good news. Here’s the conclusion to the article: [F]or Democrats, opposing this proposal is as
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George Lakoff: False prophet
I’ve been meaning to write more about George Lakoff, the linguistic guru who’s all the rage among Democrats in DC. We criticized Lakoff and his Rockridge Institute in All the President’s Spin (here’s the Amazon Inside The Book link) for trying to win the debate with linguistic manipulation rather than better ideas. Since then, he’s
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Craziest letter to the editor ever
The new issue of The Atlantic features a remarkable letter from one J. Russell Tyldesley, which ends as follows: There is a great intellectual divide in America, and people inclined to think deeply about contemporary issues are increasingly turned off by both major parties. In fact, many see little hope in electoral solutions so long