Month: October 2006
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Boston Globe fact-checks Frank smear
How to fact-check cable news bamboozlement — a case study from the Boston Globe: [I]n recent days several Republicans have raised the ethics committee inquiry of Frank, who is gay, as an example of a sex scandal involving a Democratic member of the House. On MSNBC this week, GOP strategist Brad Blakeman said Frank had
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Hilarious Christy Mihos ad — “Heads Up”
If you don’t follow Massachusetts politics, you may not have heard of Christy Mihos, an independent candidate for governor, but the ad he released a couple of weeks ago is destined for political immortality: If you watch it, you’ll see why it’s called “Heads Up.” Hilarious and effective.
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Better Post coverage of Bush straw man
After weakly fact-checking President Bush’s straw man rhetoric yesterday, the Washington Post’s Peter Baker did a much better job today: “One hundred and seventy-seven of the opposition party said, ‘You know, we don’t think we ought to be listening to the conversations of terrorists,’ ” Bush said at a fundraiser for Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.)
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WSJ calls Foley scandal a “wilding”
In an editorial this morning denouncing GOP elites for feeding the Mark Foley scandal, the Wall Street Journal refers to the controversy as the “Foley wilding”: And so with an election weeks away and its troops already at the edge of the cliff, the Republican elites decided to jump into the sea over Mr. Foley.
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NYT botches facts on Mel Reynolds pardon
Oops. The New York Times was forced to issue an embarassing correction to a story published yesterday on the Foley scandal: An article yesterday about more revelations in the scandal involving Mark Foley, who resigned from the House of Representatives after being confronted with sexually explicit e-mail he had sent to Congressional pages, misstated the
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How Bush manipulates counterfactuals
In writing my post about President Bush’s latest straw man rhetoric this morning, I was struck by an interesting similarity in the way that he dismisses criticism of his two signature initiatives — the tax cuts and the war in Iraq. In both cases, he manipulates the standard by which the policy is to be
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9/11 conspiracy nuts disrupt Kristol speech
It’s sad how easily Americans will believe that 9/11 was some sort of government or neoconservative conspiracy. A recent Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll found that “Thirty-six percent of respondents overall said it is ‘very likely’ or ‘somewhat likely’ that federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or
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Journalistic mind-reading is bad
The Daily Howler’s Bob Somerby makes a very important point about journalistic psychologizing in a recent column. The subject is this passage from Bob Woodward’s new book State of Denial: Cheney had suggested Rumsfeld to Bush in late December 2000. Rumsfeld was so impressive, Bush told Card at the time. He had had the job
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The search for Democrat page scandals
Newsweek’s Howard Fineman reports that Republicans are desperately scrambling to find a page scandal they can throw back at Democrats: It’s going to get uglier from here. The GOP will respond by unearthing old stories of sexual misconduct on Capitol Hill. I know that the search is on for complaints, however old, about unnamed Democrats
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Post fails to combat latest Bush straw man
The Washington Post quotes the latest absurd straw man argument from President Bush, which he made during a speech in California yesterday: “Time and time again, the Democrats want to have it both ways,” he told donors here. “They talk tough on terror, but when the votes are counted, their softer side comes out.” He