Month: December 2005
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Dateline Hollywood satire reported as fact
Via Mickey Kaus and Steve Bartin, here’s a story of how awful people are at getting their facts right. On December 18, the Los Angeles Times published an op-ed by a local rabbi that made this claim: We’ve all heard about the rise of the evangelical movement and about some of the excesses of its
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More bogus Wall Street Journal job statistics
The always reliable Wall Street Journal editorial page touts yet another misleading statistic: Remember the 2004 debate over the “jobless recovery” and “outsourcing”? Here’s the reality: The great American jobs machine has averaged a net increase of nearly 200,000 new jobs a month this year. Some 4.5 million more Americans are working today than in
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Spencer Ackerman and the ACLU on the wiretap debate
Spencer Ackerman has a useful article on TNR Online debunking the Bush administration’s deceptive claims about its lawless wiretapping program: If there’s one point the administration and its allies have labored to emphasize, it’s that the program only spied on people clearly connected to terrorism. In a press conference last week, President Bush insisted that
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The bin Laden satellite phone myth
President Bush’s claim that Osama bin Laden stopped using his satellite phone after a 1998 leak published in the Washington Times appears to be nonsense, as Jack Shafer and Glenn Kessler report. NPR’s On the Media ran a good segment on the issue over the weekend (Real Audio).
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Lessons for Kaus II: Parties elect presidentts
Mickey Kaus can’t let go of the idea that it’s easier to run for president as an independent rather than win a party nomination. Here’s what he wrote this time: Maybe she [Hillary Clinton] just can’t win in the Democratic primaries and needs to run as an independent! Of course, I’ve said the same thing
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McCain liberal hatred watch II
I have argued that liberals will grow to loathe John McCain as he increasingly preaches to the GOP faithful in preparation for his 2008 presidential campaign. In the first installment in this series, I noted that McCain endorsed George Wallace Jr., who has spoken four times to a racist hate group, and praised Trent Lott,
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People’s interview with President Bush
I got my wife a copy of People’s year-end issue for some trashy vacation reading, and it turned out to contain an interesting interview with President Bush. For one thing, Bush strangely segues to praising the debate over the war in Iraq: PEOPLE: Mr. President, when historians look back at 2005, how do you want
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Robert Novak says Frist ’08 is done
I’m no fan of Robert Novak, but he’s an influential conservative insider, so it’s important that he slams Bill Frist’s nascent presidential candidacy in today’s edition of the Evans-Novak Political Report, which covers the failure of the Republican Congress to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling or pass a long-term extension of the
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What does the FISC know that we don’t?
Via Drudge, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a remarkable story investigating a possible reason for President Bush’s decision to secretly wiretap Americans without a search warrant: Government records show that the administration was encountering unprecedented second-guessing by the secret federal surveillance court when President Bush decided to bypass the panel and order surveillance of U.S.-based terror
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Cry me a river, Deborah Pryce
In the New York Times today, Rep. Deborah Pryce, the fourth highest-ranking member of the House Republican leadership, bemoans the lack of Democratic support for GOP legislation: Congressional Republican leaders, while acknowledging the unsightliness of the last few days of all-night debate, floor fights and mop-up sessions, expressed satisfaction with what they accomplished if not