Uncategorized
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Bad idea watch: Franken wants fines for lying
I’m not a big fan of the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund, but he is absolutely right about this Al Franken quote: Al Franken, the liberal former Air America host who is now running for the Senate in Minnesota, is already slipping into the role of potential legislative censor of his old industry. “You shouldn’t
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Huckabee wrong on SCHIP crowdout
In a letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal, GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee mischaracterizes the effects of the SCHIP children’s health insurance bill that President Bush vetoed, saying that he opposes “moving two million children from private insurance to government insurance”: I was not criticizing President Bush’s veto as a matter of
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Obama: Still no issues
Given my previous complaints about Barack Obama’s reluctance to go negative, I’m happy to see him start taking on Hillary, but the grounds on which he chose to do so is bizarre. You don’t take down a frontrunner by talking about what exactly she said about Social Security to some voter in Iowa — it’s
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Fun with wire photos
Someone at the New York Times was amusing themselves with this juxtaposition of photos of Charlie Rangel and Dick Cheney:
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Chris Dodd has white hair!
You have to love ads with the punchline that Chris Dodd is old. It even has a bad 80s sitcom feel!
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The epistemology of candidate evaluation
Matthew Yglesias argues for rejecting the politics of “character,” “leadership,” and all the other unknowable quantities of political candidates: At the end of the day, it’s not about finding the candidate who “really” has the best views. Instead, insofar as the issues matter to you (and, obviously, there are considerations beyond “the issues” in play)
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Polarization watch: Bush countdown clocks
You know the country is deeply divided when more than 100,000 people buy clocks counting down the seconds until the president leaves office: As Campaign ’08 rages on and Hillary, Rudy, Barack and Mitt buttons dot the political landscape, a deeply unpopular President Bush is proving that he may be going but he’s clearly not
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Investigating Thompson’s throat-clearing
The New York Times blog The Caucus has investigated why Fred Thompson keeps clearing his throat. Now that’s news I can use!
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Mitt Romney’s Obama/Osama pander
I’m not a fan of character-based meta-narratives about candidates, but I have to say it — Mitt Romney can’t even pretend to misspeak in a convincing way: “I think that is a position which is not consistent with the fact,” Mr. Romney said. “Actually, just look at what Osam, uh, Barack Obama, said just yesterday,
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The downside of SCHIP
It looks like Democrats are making modifications designed to pick up the votes to override a second veto of the SCHIP children’s health insurance bill. It would be a major political and policy victory, but there’s a downside that isn’t well understood. Expanding SCHIP would make the status quo more acceptable to moderate Republicans, which