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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
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Unity ’08: 2008 is like 1860
TNR’s Britt Peterson presents the right take on Unity ’08 — a third-party presidential candidate has no chance: Of course, Unity ’08’s coherence problem may be the least of their hurdles. As John Anderson, Ross Perot, and Ralph Nader can attest, the deck is stacked against third-party candidates. Getting on the ballot in all 50
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Ron Fournier’s advice to Barack Obama
It’s great to see Barack Obama reminding voters that he has more experience as an elected official than Hillary Clinton or John Edwards: On the campaign trail, Obama gently reminds voters that Clinton and Edwards are not so experienced: She is a second-term senator who has never run a government or business. Edwards served one