Brendan Nyhan

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  • Dionne suggests no attacks on Feingold’s patriotism

    E.J. Dionne is clearly not reading this blog. Today, he writes the following: As one of Feingold’s colleagues pointed out, a censure proposal related to any aspect of the president’s policies on terrorism would once have unleashed an unrelenting Republican attack on the sponsor’s patriotism. Now, Republicans have to content themselves with using calls for

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  • NYT on conservative impeachment hype

    You read it here first. Back on February 15, I flagged Paul Weyrich’s article claiming that “if Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is Speaker of the House come next year George W. Bush will be impeached.” Matthew Yglesias picked up the post on Tapped, and the impeachment meme started to go mainstream. Yesterday, as I noted, the

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  • Feingold resolution draws attacks on dissent, straw men

    Wisconsin Democratic senator Russ Feingold’s introduction of a motion to censure President Bush for his illegal domestic wiretapping program has drawn a number of unfair attacks. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist responded that “the signal that it sends that there is in any way a lack of support for our commander in chief, who is

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  • Media recognizing that Bush is unpopular?

    It’s striking that the media narrative is finally shifting to acknowledge the fact that Bush is a very unpopular president. Here’s a brutal but accurate excerpt from the Washington Post: Bush’s problems go beyond the fatigue factor [among his staff]. An unpopular foreign war, high energy prices and the nation’s worst natural disaster in decades

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  • Paul Krugman on John McCain

    America’s most influential liberal columnist tries to get the anti-McCain backlash going: It’s time for some straight talk about John McCain. He isn’t a moderate. He’s much less of a maverick than you’d think. And he isn’t the straight talker he claims to be. No more bipartisan love for you!

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  • Toni Morrison pushes Bennett smear

    In a fundraising letter for Southern Poverty Law Center (JPEG), Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison pushes the myth that conservative pundit Bill Bennett advocated the abortion of black babies to reduce crime. She writes: With former Secretary of Education William Bennett talking about the abortion of black babies to curb crime and with hurricane Katrina

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  • Deleted from Google

    Anyone know why I would be deleted from Google? All of a sudden, hundreds of posts are no longer indexed. In fact, as far as Google is concerned, this site doesn’t exist at all. The only reason I can think of is that they didn’t like a slight search hack I had running in the

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  • George W. Bush is not a “Texas rancher”

    It’s sad how easily the press gets taken in by biographical spin. Time describes President Bush as a “Texas rancher” dispensing homespun wisdom in an article this week: White House officials contend that Bush quickly realized the ports affair was a fiasco. “I know a prairie fire when I see one,” the Texas rancher told

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  • John McCain’s straw poll follies

    As predicted, John McCain is starting to realize that his party’s activist base doesn’t like him: Facing a loss at a 2008 straw poll event this weekend, Senator John McCain of Arizona told his supporters to write in President Bush [?] as a sign of support, leaving many sputtering. “For the next three years, with

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  • CBPP: Tax cuts don’t pay for themselves

    The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has published the definitive case against the claim that tax cuts pay for themselves. Here are the key findings from the report: -Despite recent statements by the President, Vice President, and certain Congressional leaders that tax cuts pay for themselves by stimulating economic growth, revenues over the past

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