Month: April 2006
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Newsweek on Duke lacrosse
The Duke lacrosse controversy is on the cover of Newsweek. While the story doesn’t break any news, it includes a couple of bits of new information. First, as Chris Lawrence points out, it notes that “defense lawyer Bill Thomas told NEWSWEEK that in the first round some DNA showed up under the woman’s fingernails, though
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Duke lacrosse: ID, cab driver questions
While I’m at a conference ignoring the Duke lacrosse case, Chris Lawrence is back home and on the ball. The big news since I left is that questions have been raised about key aspects of the case for both sides. First, the identification of the two suspects was made using a suspect technique in which
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Academic blogging roundtable
At the Midwest Political Science Association meeting in Chicago yesterday, I took part in a roundtable on academic blogs with Tom Schaller, Phil Klinkner, and Dante Scala. A big issue we talked about is whether blogging hurts your prospects for tenure by making people think that you’re not a serious scholar. Unfortunately, they all have
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Rothenberg says House in play
Election expert Stuart Rothenberg has updated his forecast for the November election, suggesting that Democrats have a shot at taking back the House: While Democrats have failed to recruit the top tier candidates that they would like in places such as Arizona 1, Pennsylvania 15, Missouri 6 and Iowa 2, they have broadened the playing
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Howard Dean: I don’t want to be partisan but…
I love when politicians disavow partisanship before being partisan — here’s a great example from Howard Dean: In one of those odd political moments that combine a poignant message with somewhat opportunistic maneuvering, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean took part in a cleanup effort in flood-ravaged New Orleans and used the moment to take
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Cab driver describes second passenger
The cab driver who has bolstered Reade Seligmann’s alibi in the Duke lacrosse case is now suggesting that a second passenger he picked up from the party later was acting in a more disturbing manner: A cab driver called to take a Duke University lacrosse player home from a team party says his passenger, now
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Jon Chait on Fred Barnes
Jon Chait, one of my favorite writers, flags Weekly Standard columnist Fred Barnes reaching new heights of obsequiousness: What gives today’s piece its special status, perhaps marking it as the best Barnes piece ever, is the twist at the end. Barnes congratulates Bush for ignoring the advice that he, Fred Barnes, had given him. A
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More awful Fox News coverage of Duke case
Yesterday I wrote about a report on FoxNews.com that was remarkably unfair to the accuser in the Duke lacrosse rape case, claiming that “[d]efense attorneys have refuted most points made by the accuser” while providing almost no evidence to substantiate the claim. Today a reader points me to a transcript from last night’s “Special Report
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N&O withholding Duke lacrosse accuser claims?
A reader points me to another excellent Chris Lawrence post on the Duke lacrosse case — this time he’s flagging a News and Observer public editor column from April 2 noting that the newspaper didn’t publish statements made by the accuser: [N&O deputy managing editor Linda] Williams said editors and the reporter discussed the fairness
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Duke lacrosse update for April 19
Here’s the latest from Duke, where supporters of the players are wearing shirts that say “Innocent” around campus: -WRAL says the players may have been identified using shirtless pictures that revealed scratches on their bodies: An exotic dancer who says three Duke lacrosse players raped her may have identified two of them based on photographs