Uncategorized
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Will 2006 be the year of Wilfredo Horton?
Here’s a lesson in how party elites try to placate their base. With grassroots conservatives increasingly angry about President Bush’s failure to address illegal immigration to their satisfaction, the National Republican Senatorial Committee is on pander patrol. It just sent out a faux survey/fundraising email (PDF) under the name of its chair, Elizabeth Dole, which
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Peter Feaver: From Duke to the White House
My weekly political science department basketball game is in the news: A central figure behind President Bush’s new victory-in-Iraq strategy is a charismatic conservative sprung from Duke University’s left-leaning political science department. Peter D. Feaver, 43, is open-minded but a tough debate foe, his colleagues say. Students pack his classes. His international policy lectures earned
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John Dickerson unspins the RNC “white flag” video
Slate’s John Dickerson exposes two misleading quotations in the RNC’s demagogic “white flag” web video: It goes almost without saying that some of the quotes from Democrats are taken out of context in a way that completely distorts their meanings. In the statement excerpted in the video, Kerry was not accusing U.S. soldiers of war
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Unintentionally funny White House transcript
As Dan Froomkin noted a couple of weeks ago, President Bush has spoken exclusively to heavily screened audiences for months, and almost never answers questions from other citizens. So the news that he took questions yesterday after his speech to the World Affairs Council about Iraq was somewhat shocking — I shared the audience’s reaction
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Wavy Gravy and the “World Can’t Wait” petition
Yesterday, the anti-Bush “World Can’t Wait” group ran an ad in the New York Times with the usual list of lefty petition signers. But one stood out: Wavy Gravy. Amused by the idea that I would care what Wavy Gravy thinks, I went to the group’s website and found this drivel: Your government is moving
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Reporters’ fixation on personality
Matthew Yglesias makes an important point on Tapped: I read Newsweek’s story on Bush in a bubble with interest, and so should you. The basic storyline is something we’ve read before at occasional rough spots for the president, but this article adds some new details. To me, though, the most interesting thing is that this
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New York Post accuses Howard Dean of “sedition”
On Wednesday, I denounced a New York Post editorial which attacked Howard Dean for saying “The idea that we’re going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong.” The Post editorial not only got Dean’s quote wrong by omitting the exculpatory word “unfortunately” (as Michael Koplow pointed out in a
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More on the Treasury junk chart
Today, the NYT’s Edmund Andrews further devastates the Treasury Department’s junk chart claiming President Bush’s tax cuts stimulated impressive job growth, which I debunked last week: THE Bush administration has begun an aggressive campaign to reassure Americans that the economy is doing well. It is highlighting the jobs numbers, which have shown steady gains since
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A great headline: “Rabid beaver chases couple”
Via fellow grad student Jacob Montgomery, this Durham Herald-Sun story takes “dog bites man” stories to a whole new level: Rabid beaver chases couple BY ROB SHAPARD : The Herald-Sun [email protected] Dec 7, 2005 : 9:36 pm ET CHAPEL HILL — A local couple got a little closer to nature than they wanted when a
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Lessons for Kaus: Parties elect presidents
Today, Mickey Kaus asks, “Is antiwar sentiment in the Democratic primaries going to be so great that maybe Hillary would be well-advised to run for president as an independent?” Answer: No. It’s almost impossible for independents to win the presidency. Not long ago, I tried to explain this to Kaus when he hyped a McCain