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McCain liberal hatred watch II
I have argued that liberals will grow to loathe John McCain as he increasingly preaches to the GOP faithful in preparation for his 2008 presidential campaign. In the first installment in this series, I noted that McCain endorsed George Wallace Jr., who has spoken four times to a racist hate group, and praised Trent Lott,
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People’s interview with President Bush
I got my wife a copy of People’s year-end issue for some trashy vacation reading, and it turned out to contain an interesting interview with President Bush. For one thing, Bush strangely segues to praising the debate over the war in Iraq: PEOPLE: Mr. President, when historians look back at 2005, how do you want
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Robert Novak says Frist ’08 is done
I’m no fan of Robert Novak, but he’s an influential conservative insider, so it’s important that he slams Bill Frist’s nascent presidential candidacy in today’s edition of the Evans-Novak Political Report, which covers the failure of the Republican Congress to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling or pass a long-term extension of the
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What does the FISC know that we don’t?
Via Drudge, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a remarkable story investigating a possible reason for President Bush’s decision to secretly wiretap Americans without a search warrant: Government records show that the administration was encountering unprecedented second-guessing by the secret federal surveillance court when President Bush decided to bypass the panel and order surveillance of U.S.-based terror
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Cry me a river, Deborah Pryce
In the New York Times today, Rep. Deborah Pryce, the fourth highest-ranking member of the House Republican leadership, bemoans the lack of Democratic support for GOP legislation: Congressional Republican leaders, while acknowledging the unsightliness of the last few days of all-night debate, floor fights and mop-up sessions, expressed satisfaction with what they accomplished if not
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Thomas Frank answers Larry Bartels
Last month, I linked to a paper (PDF) by Princeton’s Larry Bartels taking issue with Thomas Frank’s bestselling What’s the Matter with Kansas? I focus on four specific questions inspired by [author Thomas] Frank’s account: Has the white working class abandoned the Democratic party? Has the white working class become more conservative? Do working class
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David Brooks on the rule of law
Matthew Yglesias writes up something I noticed this morning: [T]here’s something a bit odd about this David Brooks column, which seems to concede that the President’s wiretap scheme was illegal, but then slides glossily past the point to discuss other issues. Now, obviously, a columnist has a right to focus on whatever he wants to
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The robotic Scott McClellan
The Washington Post’s Mark Leibovich highlights the disturbing and robotic message discipline of White House spokesman Scott McClellan (via Mark Dubois, a fellow grad student here at Duke): On the Thursday morning after his reelection in November 2004, President Bush bounded unexpectedly into the Roosevelt Room of the White House, where about 15 members of
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NSA dissembles about wiretaps
Today’s New York Times reports the National Security Agency was following President Bush’s lead by dissembling about the need for a court order to wiretap Americans: Testifying before a Senate committee last April, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then head of the National Security Agency, emphasized how scrupulously the agency was protecting Americans from its electronic
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The problems with the Groseclose/Milyo study of media bias
UCLA political scientist Tim Groseclose and Missouri economist Jeff Milyo have published a study (PDF) alleging liberal media bias that is receiving a lot of attention, including a link on Drudge. But you should be wary of trusting its conclusions for reasons that I tried to explain to Groseclose after he presented the paper at