Month: December 2005
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“Snoopgate”: Is the timing political?
Via Josh Marshall, Jonathan Alter discloses that President Bush called New York Times executive editor Bill Keller and publisher Arthur Sulzberger to the White House and attempted to persuade them not to run the blockbuster story that the administration authorized a vast, lawless expansion of the government’s surveillance powers. Alter gets this exactly right: Bush
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Bush “understands” your outrage
Besides President Bush’s reference to Osama bin Laden as “Saddam,” the most grating trope of today’s press conference was his insistence that he “understands” every disagreement and criticism that has been levelled at him. In a wonderful example of the practice of feigned responsiveness, Bush would say “I understand” or “I fully understand” various concerns
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The Republican War on Science breaks through
Congratulations to my friend Chris Mooney. His book The Republican War on Science received a very favorable review in the New York Times Book Review yesterday, and Morgan Spurlock of “Super Size Me” has optioned the movie rights. Here’s an excerpt from my review of the book: I want to recommend that everyone pick up
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Deborah Solomon is harsh, part 4
Deboarah Solomon, the Simon Cowell of newspaper magazine journalism, went for the jugular again during an interview with author Peter Watson in last week’s New York Times Magazine: WATSON: I do not believe in the inner world. I think that the inner world comes from the exploration of the outer world – reading, traveling, talking.
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Missing posts
As some of you noticed, some posts disappeared on Friday when Typepad had technical difficulties, but everything is now back up to date.
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Will 2006 be the year of Wilfredo Horton?
Here’s a lesson in how party elites try to placate their base. With grassroots conservatives increasingly angry about President Bush’s failure to address illegal immigration to their satisfaction, the National Republican Senatorial Committee is on pander patrol. It just sent out a faux survey/fundraising email (PDF) under the name of its chair, Elizabeth Dole, which
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Peter Feaver: From Duke to the White House
My weekly political science department basketball game is in the news: A central figure behind President Bush’s new victory-in-Iraq strategy is a charismatic conservative sprung from Duke University’s left-leaning political science department. Peter D. Feaver, 43, is open-minded but a tough debate foe, his colleagues say. Students pack his classes. His international policy lectures earned
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John Dickerson unspins the RNC “white flag” video
Slate’s John Dickerson exposes two misleading quotations in the RNC’s demagogic “white flag” web video: It goes almost without saying that some of the quotes from Democrats are taken out of context in a way that completely distorts their meanings. In the statement excerpted in the video, Kerry was not accusing U.S. soldiers of war
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Unintentionally funny White House transcript
As Dan Froomkin noted a couple of weeks ago, President Bush has spoken exclusively to heavily screened audiences for months, and almost never answers questions from other citizens. So the news that he took questions yesterday after his speech to the World Affairs Council about Iraq was somewhat shocking — I shared the audience’s reaction
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Wavy Gravy and the “World Can’t Wait” petition
Yesterday, the anti-Bush “World Can’t Wait” group ran an ad in the New York Times with the usual list of lefty petition signers. But one stood out: Wavy Gravy. Amused by the idea that I would care what Wavy Gravy thinks, I went to the group’s website and found this drivel: Your government is moving