Uncategorized
-
Sen. John Cornyn: “None of your civil liberties matter much after you’re dead”
With leadership like this, we might as well give up now (via the Progress Report): “None of your civil liberties matter much after you’re dead,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a former judge and close ally of the president who sits on the Judiciary Committee. Russ Feingold’s response was more than appropriate: Sen. Russ Feingold
-
What is Ronald Kessler talking about?
In another Wall Street Journal op-ed today, Ronald Kessler engages in some deeply fallacious reasoning (subscription required): The fact that Mr. Bush bypassed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which lays out procedures for intercepting communications in terrorist cases, raises legitimate concerns. But it should be of more concern that al Qaeda and related terrorist
-
What are Stephen Moore and Lincoln Anderson talking about?
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed on the improving fortune’s of America’s middle class (subscription required), Stephen Moore and Lincoln Anderson write: The middle class has not been “shrinking” or losing ground, it has been getting richer. For example, the Census data indicate that the income cutoff to be considered “middle class” has risen steadily.
-
Let the parsing begin: McClellan on “nothing has changed”
As I predicted yesterday, Scott McClellan tried to defend President Bush’s most damning previous statement about wiretapping by parsing what the President said as only referring to the Patriot Act. Here’s the transcript from his press briefing: Q Scott, in April of 2004, President Bush delivered remarks on the Patriot Act, and he said at
-
Bush 2004-2005: “[A] wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed.”
Inspired by this Atrios post, here’s a chronology of technically true but misleading statements by President Bush and his administration that imply court orders are required for all government wiretaps: President Bush — April 19, 2004: For years, law enforcement used so-called roving wire taps to investigate organized crime. You see, what that meant is
-
“Snoopgate”: Is the timing political?
Via Josh Marshall, Jonathan Alter discloses that President Bush called New York Times executive editor Bill Keller and publisher Arthur Sulzberger to the White House and attempted to persuade them not to run the blockbuster story that the administration authorized a vast, lawless expansion of the government’s surveillance powers. Alter gets this exactly right: Bush
-
Bush “understands” your outrage
Besides President Bush’s reference to Osama bin Laden as “Saddam,” the most grating trope of today’s press conference was his insistence that he “understands” every disagreement and criticism that has been levelled at him. In a wonderful example of the practice of feigned responsiveness, Bush would say “I understand” or “I fully understand” various concerns
-
The Republican War on Science breaks through
Congratulations to my friend Chris Mooney. His book The Republican War on Science received a very favorable review in the New York Times Book Review yesterday, and Morgan Spurlock of “Super Size Me” has optioned the movie rights. Here’s an excerpt from my review of the book: I want to recommend that everyone pick up
-
Deborah Solomon is harsh, part 4
Deboarah Solomon, the Simon Cowell of newspaper magazine journalism, went for the jugular again during an interview with author Peter Watson in last week’s New York Times Magazine: WATSON: I do not believe in the inner world. I think that the inner world comes from the exploration of the outer world – reading, traveling, talking.
-
Missing posts
As some of you noticed, some posts disappeared on Friday when Typepad had technical difficulties, but everything is now back up to date.