Uncategorized
-
The deliberative dystopia of Hardball
I can’t stand to watch it, but Bob Somerby routinely suffers through the inanity of MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews.” Check out the five questions Matthews recently asked New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, who is running for president, during an interview: QUESTION 1: Welcome back to Hardball. Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico is a
-
More reasons to like Barack Obama
He can’t stand listening to a fellow senator who has to be Joe Biden: Listening to a bloviating colleague at his first meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama slipped a three-word note to a member of his staff: “Shoot. Me. Now.” I feel the same way.
-
“Obama Bin Laden” trademark denied
Today’s sign of the apocalypse — someone tried to trademark “Obama bin Laden”. Luckily, they were turned down: Government officials have rejected a Florida man’s bid to trademark the term “Obama bin Laden,” ruling that the conflation of the names of a U.S. Senator and the world’s leading terrorist was “scandalous” and wrongly suggested a
-
Accusing D’Souza of treason
Andrew Sullivan, who warned that “[t]he decadent Left … may well mount what amounts to a fifth column” after 9/11, approvingly quotes Bruce Bawer in The Stranger calling Dinesh D’Souza’s new book treasonous: For those who cherish freedom, 9/11 was intensely clarifying. Presumably it, and its aftermath, have been just as clarifying for D’Souza, whose
-
The strange Libby defense
Scooter Libby’s defense strategy is, um, unusual: Lawyers for I. Lewis Libby Jr. opened their case Monday with a parade of prominent Washington reporters who testified that Mr. Libby never mentioned the identity of a Central Intelligence Agency operative when they interviewed him during the period the officer’s identity was leaked to the news media.
-
NYT says VP has “awesome authority”
Before it was known Vice President Cheney wouldn’t testify in the Scooter Libby trial, the New York Times made a bizarre reference to “the awesome authority of his office”: If he testifies, Mr. Cheney will bring to the jurors the awesome authority of his office and could attest to Mr. Libby’s character as policy adviser
-
Frontline’s “News War” series
Tonight PBS will be airing the first of a four-part series on the state of the news media titled “Newswar” — here’s the New York Times review: It’s fair to say that the relationship between the press and the Bush White House has often been one of mutual suspicion and sometimes outright hostility. And the
-
The barbarity of prison rape
If you asked me what issue Americans will see in retrospect as the greatest unacknowledged barbarity of our time, I would nominate prison rape, which is not only tolerated but frequently encouraged within our prisons and is still the subject of jokes in popular culture and politics. Ezra Klein has more here, here, and here.
-
Eric Alterman’s David Duke reference
Eric Alterman opened his Media Matters column with this passage, which takes a cheap shot at Time magazine: William E. Odom, a retired Army lieutenant general, was head of Army intelligence and director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan, has the best short explanation of where we stand in Iraq today, read it
-
Joe Lieberman is a cheeseball
I don’t know what’s more embarrassing about this passage from Jeffrey Goldberg’s New Yorker article — the fact that Goldberg and Lieberman independently paid to see Behind Enemy Lines or the fact that Lieberman actually cheers during crappy Hollywood blockbusters: Lieberman likes expressions of American power. A few years ago, I was in a movie