Month: August 2007
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Iraq’s NSA loves cartoons
Via Michael Crowley, the Washington Post reports a bizarre anecdote about the Iraqi national security adviser watching cartoons during a meeting with Rep. John Porter (R-NV): But even such tight control could not always filter out the bizarre world inside the [Green Zone] barricades. At one point, the three [visiting members of Congress] were trying
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APSA 2007
I’m currently blogging from the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in Chicago. Check out the program if you’re interested in what political scientists are studying these days. (Answer: Everything you could imagine — the printed program is a 400 page book.)
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Boyer touts Giuliani legend
Peter Boyer’s New Yorker profile of Rudy Giuliani contains some juicy nuggets I hadn’t heard before, but he annoyingly takes the Giuliani crime-fighting legend at face value: Loyalty is the virtue that he most prizes, and its absence in an aide is the surest route to exile. That was the fate of his first police
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Alan Wolfe as purgative
Crooked Timber’s Henry Farrell slams senior liberal intellectual Alan Wolfe as a source of “ideas journalism of all kinds except that kind which actually has ideas” (ouch): [I]t seems to me that Alan Wolfe doesn’t come in for anywhere near as much flak as he deserves. Not that he’s a [Dinesh] D’Souza, or anything like
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The fascist presidential candidate
Perusing the Project Vote Smart list of all the presidential candidates, which includes the crazies, I found someone named Jack Grimes from the United Fascist Union party. At least he’s clear about what he stands for! Here’s a selection from the U.F.U. website, complete with the best candidate headshot ever and praise for Saddam Hussein
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The next Ricky Ray Rector?
Last week’s New York Times Magazine featured a compelling article about the “Norfolk Four,” a group of Navy men who apparently were pressured into false confessions for a rape and murder despite no physical evidence linking them to the crime. A fifth man later confessed and was linked to the crime by DNA evidence. But
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RNC: “Democrats are hoping our troops fail”
In the latest post-9/11 attack on dissent from the GOP, RNC chairman Mike Duncan has sent an email to supporters charging Democrats with wanting the US to lose the war in Iraq: From: “Robert M. (Mike) Duncan” To: [email protected] Subject: Democrats Hope America Loses? Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2007 18:03:46 -0400 (EDT) Dear Brendan, The
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Gonzales: Not so “irreplaceable”?
Just a few weeks ago, big liberals were saying that Alberto Gonzales was “irreplaceable” and “indispensable” and promising near-apocalyptic horrors if he were fired, impeached, or decided to resign. So why has the President “grudgingly” accepted his resignation? Here, for instance, is Josh Marshall calling Gonzales “irreplaceable” in The Hill because “the Democratic Senate is
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“To Catch an iJacker”?
How absurd has Dateline NBC’s exploitation of the “To Catch a…” genre become? It sounds like a Dateline Hollywood parody, but they are hunting iPod thiefs: Perhaps hoping to capitalize on the distinctive “To Catch a Predator” format while softening the show’s unpleasant edge, “Dateline” producers are applying the show’s hidden camera style to a
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Fact-checking narratives, not policy claims
Ezra Klein makes an important point about the discrepancy between obsessive fact-checking of possibly phony narratives (such as those of Scott Beauchamp) and the relative lack of attention given to false or misleading claims about policy: Indeed, it’s a shame that so much attention is given to untrue narratives — which, really, can only be