Month: February 2007
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Defining bipartisanship down
Here’s the saddest commentary I’ve seen recently on the state of bipartisanship in Washington. In a NPR report on President Bush’s visit to a House Democratic retreat, reporter Andrea Seabrook said this: The President brought a very cordial tone to his relations. As I said, he extended all of these olive branches and some that
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SI’s Rick Reilly turns against the war
Is Rick Reilly the Walter Cronkite of the war in Iraq? The popular Sports Illustrated columnist departed from the scrupulously non-political tone of his magazine to write about former athletes who died in Iraq recently, concluding with a question about whether the war is doomed to failure: Athletes love teams, and when they run out
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Economist: Equality everywhere
The Economist’s Democracy for America blog gets this exactly right: A NEW Harris poll shows that 55% of Americans believe gays and lesbians should be able to serve openly in the military, the Wall Street Journal reports. Support for "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is waning, even among Republicans, who have long been the policy's biggest
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How soft is Giuliani’s GOP support?
Even as “Team Rudy” touts his national poll numbers, Pollster.com’s Mark Blumenthal notes that Republicans know nothing about him, quoting USA Today: Barely one in five Republicans knew that he supports abortion rights and civil unions for same-sex couples, the USA TODAY poll found. Nearly as many thought he was “pro-life” as said he was
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CNN jumps on treason bandwagon
Not content to let the GOP attack dissent as treasonous, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer has apparently decided to jump on the bandwagon. Media Matters reports that Blitzer asked Democratic senator Carl Levin the following question: On the right, though, a lot of your critics are saying, ‘You know what you’re doing, Senator? You’re giving aid and
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Bodman dissembles on US emissions
Here’s an example of some appropriate fact-checking. Samuel Bodman, the current Secretary of Energy, is quoted in today’s New York Times making the absurd claim that the United States is “a small contributor” to the overall global warming problem. But as Elizabeth Rosenthal and Andrew C. Revkin point out, we actually account for a quarter
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It’s easy to be a conservative “economist”
Today, the Wall Street Journal editorial board refers to the “economist Michael Darda.” Typically, the phrase “economist” means someone with a Ph.D. (or at least a master’s degree) in economics, but it turns out that Darda’s academic credentials consist of a degree in economics, journalism and public relations from the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater.
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Best floor speech ever
A fellow graduate student passed on this great moment in Congressional history — a floor speech titled “Notre Dame will rise again” from November 21, 1993: Mr. KING. Mr. Speaker, with all the events of the last week, NAFTA, the Brady bill, D.C. statehood, allegations of stolen elections, I think it is important we focus
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Whitehouse.gov search scrubbing?
Compare and contrast (via Real Climate by way of DeLong): Search results for “global warming” for the Whitehouse.gov site in Google: 438. Search results for “global warming” in the Whitehouse.gov search engine: 1.
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Tony Snow: Dissent encourages attack
White House spokesman Tony Snow is hard at work smearing the anti-“surge” resolutions as potentially encouraging another 9/11 (and thereby setting up a future narrative blaming any future attack on current opposition to the war): The White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said Mr. Bush “will continue to exercise his responsibilities as commander in chief” even