Brendan Nyhan

Month: April 2006

  • Cynthia McKinney is shameless

    The latest grandstanding from Cynthia McKinney: The Capitol Police said Monday that they were seeking a warrant to arrest Representative Cynthia A. McKinney for an altercation with a police officer last week. In addition to the rarity of a member of Congress facing such an arrest, the case has also attracted national attention because Ms.

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  • The supposed “War on Christians”

    Nathan Gonzales, the political editor of the Rothenberg Political Report, has written a disturbing report on the victim mentality of conservative Christians: If you listen to some conservative evangelicals these days, we are all standing in the middle of the battlefield of a great war. The War on Terrorism you say? Nope. Bigger. It’s the

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  • Mark Shields can’t read

    In the spirit of Ted “it turns my brains to mush” Koppel, syndicated columnist/commentator Mark Shields is embarrassing the nation’s press corps. Bob Somerby skewers Shields for a ridiculous misinterpretation of a Pew poll question: Prepare to avert your gaze in shame as Shields completely misreports the results of this familiar type of question [on

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  • Deaths in Iraq: A per-capita comparison

    Kevin Drum offers a staggering statistic: Right now, nearly a thousand Iraqis are dying every month, the per capita equivalent of about 100,000 deaths per year if this were taking place in the United States. If sectarian strife was leading to the violent deaths of 100,000 people per year in the US, do you think

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  • Charlie Cook: Frist “a man of no talent”

    Apparently, Charlie Cook doesn’t think much of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist: Charlie Cook, an independent political analyst, in an interview derided [Frist] as a neophyte. “The most classic case of the Peter Principle I’ve ever seen in American politics,” Mr. Cook said, in an uncharacteristically brutal assessment. “In a business where eloquence and rhetoric

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  • Duke lacrosse accuser inconsistency

    Commenter John points out that the woman who has claimed she was raped at a Duke lacrosse party has an inconsistency in her story: when she told her father about the attack. According to a March 25 News and Observer story, the alleged victim said, “My father came to see me in the hospital,” adding,

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  • Rothenberg: McCain is the GOP frontrunner

    Election analyst Stuart Rothenberg thinks John McCain is in good shape for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination: It’s still a long time until the Iowa caucuses formally kick off the 2008 race for the White House. But it’s hard not to conclude that events are lining up perfectly for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), should he

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  • Howard Dean’s bogus attack on Bush

    Why is Howard Dean accusing President Bush of scapegoating immigrants? He’s been predicting that Bush would do so since last year, but the fact is that Bush is taking major flak within his party for not supporting a punitive, enforcement-only approach. Nonetheless, Dean is doing his best to blur the line between Bush and House

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  • Duke lacrosse: Gang threats, new timeline

    Tensions continue to rise here in Durham, where a Duke administrator sent an all-campus email about a possible gang threat to students in the neighborhood where the alleged rape occurred. The student newspaper report begins as follows: Durham Police Department officers approached residents outside houses on N. Buchanan Boulevard shortly after 6 p.m. Friday night,

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  • More attacks on dissent in censure debate

    Yesterday, in a move timed to coincide with Senate hearings on Russ Feingold’s proposal to censure President Bush for illegal domestic wiretapping, GOP chairman Ken Mehlman sent an email to supporters that read as follows (PDF): Terrorists are at war with our country. And we have a choice. Either we use every tool available to

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