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Drew Westen’s academic guru tricks
Kevin Drum nails something that makes me crazy — the way that wannabe gurus like George Lakoff and Drew Westen use academic credibility to legitimate ideas that aren’t backed by specific research: Unfortunately, [Drew] Westen [the author of The Political Brain] then falls into the same traps that George Lakoff falls into. First, he uses
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Obama: Young people stink
I have to admit I’m amused that Barack Obama held a youth event named “Generation B.O.” What’s he trying to say?!
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Bush: Democrats’ secret weapon?
The Wall Street Journal editorial board warns that the immigration debate threatens to make the GOP a minority party. They’re right. It splits the Republicans right down the middle, demoralizes the base in advance of 2008, and is prompting a conservative counter-mobilization that could make Latinos a Democratic constituency for years to come. Ironically, the
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The anti-third party meme spreads
An op-ed debunking third party hype is featured today on the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal website. Keep ’em coming…
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Taranto’s jargon on detainees
One of the most effective ways to smear dissent is to associate it with “helping the enemy,” as in this passage from a WSJ op-ed by James Taranto today: Some politicians have also undertaken efforts on behalf of enemy fighters. Senate Democrats, joined by Republican Arlen Specter, have introduced legislation that would restore habeas rights
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Lowlights from the National Review cruise
Political magazines love to send reporters to infiltrate the other side and hear what they say to each other in private. As a result, stories about the fundraising cruises held by The Nation and National Review have become something of a cliché. Nonetheless, TNR’s piece on the last National Review cruise (held after the election
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Broder on Bloomberg: Wrong, wrong, wrong
David Broder — the high commissioner of Washington punditry and de facto leader of the Bloomberg base — is feeling the public’s “palpable hunger” for leadership: More than that, there is a palpable hunger among the public for someone who will attack the problems facing the country — the war in Iraq, immigration, energy, health
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Newsweek: Iraq/9-11 misperceptions up
Horrifying news from Steve Benen at Talking Points Memo — misperceptions about Iraq are going back up: As part of its cover story on “what you need to know now,” Newsweek conducted a broad poll on a variety of political and cultural affairs. There were plenty of interesting results, but one section was particularly noteworthy.
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Hillary promotes stem cell “ban” myth
In her speech to the Take Back America conference last week, Hillary Clinton was the latest Democrat to promote the myth (here, here, here, and here) that President Bush has instituted a “ban” on stem cell research: You know, later today, apparently, the president will veto a bill passed by Congress to support stem cell
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The “next war”
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Joshua Muravchik smears dissenters against the war in Iraq as “hastening the advent of the next war”: With the Bush administration’s policies having failed to pacify Iraq, it is natural that the public has lost patience and that the opposition party is hurling brickbats. But the demands of congressional