Month: September 2007
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Oprah’s health care activism
Yesterday Michael Moore appeared on Oprah for a second time to talk about health care in America. Setting aside my issues with Moore, what was striking about the episode was the extent to which Oprah herself has been converted to the cause. The format of the episode was stacked — it was Moore and the
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Psychodrama in Jeffrey Toobin’s “The Nine”
Law professor/blogger Ann Althouse has written a devastating review of Jeffrey Toobin’s new book The Nine: It may well be that judicial intuition and ideology have more effect on the cases than do the arguments based on precedent and statutory and constitutional texts, but “The Nine” doesn’t put the reader in any position to reach
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Bush links Iraq and 9/11 once again
It’s no longer “news” when President Bush links Iraq and 9/11, but his latest email (PDF) to the RNC list contains a particularly egregious example of the ways in which he seamlessly blends the two: After the enemy attacked us, I vowed I would rally this nation and use our resources to protect you. And
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Bill Kristol’s cheap talk on 2008 race
As I mentioned a few days ago, I’m highly suspicious of most expert predictions, which studies have shown to be terrible. So it’s amusing to see William Kristol
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Jena DA Reed Walters dissembles in NYT
In an op-ed in the New York Times today, Reed Walters, the DA who is prosecuting the so-called “Jena Six,” offers a seemingly reasonable defense of why they should be charged with aggravated second-degree battery. However, the primary reason for the protests is that five of them were charged with attempted second-degree murder, a fact
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Bob Herbert reads the mind of Bush 41
After asserting that there is a quota permitting only one black justice on the Supreme Court, NYT columnist Bob Herbert pulls a Maureen Dowd, purporting to read George H.W. Bush’s mind and then attributing a quote to him with the weasel words “seemed to be saying”: In 1991, the first President Bush poked a finger
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Best and worst headlines of the day
Best NYT headline of the day: “In Beach Enclave, Affluent Are Split Over Effluent.” It’s the “Headless Body in Topless Bar” for coastal elites! However, that triumph is offset by this clunker, which ran over a typically dreary editorial: “Gunfight at the S-Chip Corral.” Ugh. Update 9/25 5:00 PM: ABC News has an especially inane
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WH accuses Obama of “intellectual laziness”
Pot/kettle alert: According to Drudge, a senior White House official accused Barack Obama of “intellectual laziness”: As for Obama, a senior White House official said the freshman senator from Illinois was “capable” of the intellectual rigor needed to win the presidency but instead relies too heavily on his easy charm. “It’s sort of like, ‘that’s
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Reid: Republicans don’t care about troops
On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid suggested that Republicans who opposed efforts to force a withdrawal from Iraq don’t care about protecting the troops: “They want to protect the president more than they want to protect our troops,” said Reid, a Nevada Democrat. This is a nasty smear that directly mirrors GOP attacks on
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Giuliani again attacks MoveOn dissent
Speaking at the NRA yesterday, Rudy Giuliani said that the MoveOn ad smearing General Petraeus “passed a line that we should not allow American political organizations to pass”: Whether you agree with the war in Iraq or you don’t; whether you agree with the surge or you don’t; Democrats even came back from Iraq and