Brendan Nyhan

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  • O’Connor was not the swing abortion vote

    Matthew Yglesias has a Tapped post making a point I’ve been meaning to make: namely, five judges on the current court besides O’Connor support the core finding of Roe v. Wade, which means that O’Connor’s retirement does not place basic abortion rights in direct jeopardy. Liberals are going to get this wrong by the thousands

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  • What is John Zogby talking about?

    Zogby International, the polling firm of John Zogby, announced its latest poll yesterday with a press release headlined “No Bounce.” The release states that “President Bush’s televised address to the nation produced no noticeable bounce in his approval numbers, with his job approval rating slipping a point from a week ago, to 43%, in the

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  • The ugliness of the College Republicans

    Via Wonkette, this passage from a Nation web-only piece on the national convention of the College Republicans is almost too easy to mock, though it is amusing: By the time I encountered Cory Bray, a towering senior from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, the beer was flowing freely. “The people opposed to

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  • The press notices Bush tying Iraq to 9/11

    Interestingly enough, the press is finally picking up on the way President Bush linked Iraq and 9/11 over and over during his speech last night. He’s only been doing it for, what, almost three years? We wrote all about it in All the President’s Spin. So have many other people. But the press frequently refuses

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  • Deeper into the morass: Mark Fuhrman on Terri Schiavo

    Did you think Ed Klein’s book-length smear of Hillary Clinton represented a new low for the publishing industry? Think again. Racist OJ cop Mark Fuhrman is about to release a new book on Terri Schiavo. Here’s what the Human Events promotional material says: “Fuhrman proves that the death of Terri Schiavo was a legal homicide

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  • The hapless Democrats

    I just got one of those fundraising solicitations disguised as a “survey” from the Democratic National Committee, and it’s a perfect illustration of why the party is such a disaster. First, unlike the Heritage Foundation “survey” I debunked on Spinsanity a couple of years ago, this one actually doesn’t have a bunch of ridiculously tilted

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  • Why Bush’s speech won’t have any effect

    Via Dan Froomkin, here’s Newsweek questioning the efficacy of high-profile presidential speeches: [T]he administration is not politically deaf. Bush and his advisers can hear the rumblings of concern in the public and within their party’s own ranks, and last week they began taking steps to shore up support for the war. In the view of

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  • Elizabeth Dole suggests dissent endangers the troops

    Via Salon’s War Room blog, here’s NBC’s First Read on how Sen. Elizabeth Dole has joined the GOP’s latest anti-dissent offensive Six days after [Karl Rove] accused liberals — especially MoveOn.org — of being weak in responding to 9/11, MoveOn today launches a $500,000 TV and print advertising campaign calling to bring home US soldiers

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  • Grover Norquist on John McCain

    Despite frequent claims to the contrary, John McCain is unlikely to win the GOP presidential nomination in 2008 for one simple reason: the conservative establishment, which controls the Republican Party, hates him. It’s the same reason he lost in 2000. Here’s a leading indicator — anti-McCain vitriol from top apparatchik Grover Norquist: Sen. John McCain

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  • More smears from Taranto

    James Taranto claims (without evidence, of course) that “some” in the left and the press want America to be defeated in Iraq: That Iraq is “another Vietnam” was a cliche long before the U.S.-led coalition even liberated Baghdad, but lately the drumbeat has become louder and more tired than ever. A Google News search for

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