Uncategorized
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The intellectual insecurity of George W. Bush
Fred Becker of Wonkette notes George W. Bush lording his office over Samuel W. Bodman, his PhD-holding Secretary of Energy, yesterday: THE PRESIDENT: I appreciate the Secretary of Energy joining me today. He’s a good man, he knows a lot about the subject, you’ll be pleased to hear. I was teasing him — he taught
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The Dick Durbin saga
I want to revisit a couple of points from the controversy over Dick Durbin’s remarks on the Senate floor, for which he was forced to apologize yesterday. First, while I’m no fan of Nazi comparisons, I do think the subtlety of Durbin’s point was completely lost amidst the manufactured outrage. Andrew Sullivan does a good
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Never trust the Wall Street Journal editorial page
You just cannot trust the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Here are two more reasons why: 1) Kevin Drum on the first column by the frequently deceptive pundit/activist Stephen Moore, who just joined the paper’s editorial board: Moore’s sermon today is about the wonders of supply side economics: In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan chopped
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What are Jeff Link and Ron Fournier talking about? (John McCain edition)
There’s some strange analysis of the 2008 presidential race in a new AP story by Ron Fournier. First, a Democratic consultant I’ve never heard of claims that John McCain will be the “heavy favorite” in the Republican primaries — an implausible claim given how much he’s disliked by establishment conservatives: If you want to be
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Botched soundbite watch: Gary Ackerman
Gary Ackerman probably didn’t intend this statement to come out the way it did: “The reason our flag is different is because it stands for burning the flag,” Representative Gary L. Ackerman, Democrat of New York, said in a speech on the House floor, wearing a flag-print necktie. “The Constitution this week is being nibbled
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The loathsome Washington Times
Via Jim Romenesko, I see that that Washington Times editor Wes Pruden announced that he’s planning to step down in the next few years, so this seems like a good occasion to paw through a few of the skeletons in the closet of Washington’s influential conservative newspaper. First, there’s its owner, the cult leader Reverend
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What are John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge talking about?
John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge of The Economist have published an op-ed titled “Cheer Up, Conservatives!” in today’s Wall Street Journal that includes this disturbing paragraph: If the American dream means anything, it means finding a plot of land where you can shape your destiny and raise your children. Those pragmatic dreamers look ever more
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John Leland and Jodi Wilgoren botch Social Security coverage
Today’s long, anecdotal article on Social Security in the New York Times includes a passage reinforcing the canard that the program is a bad deal for blacks: Here as elsewhere, Social Security has paid back some more generously than others. Created to protect the most vulnerable, it redistributes money from rich people to poor people,
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David Brooks notices that Bill Frist screwed up
I’m not the only one to notice that Bill Frist is squandering his medical credibility: These days he seems not so much the leader of the Senate conservatives, but someone who is playing the role. And because he is behaving in ways that don’t seem entirely authentic, he is often trying just a bit too
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Sheryl Gay Stolberg on George Allen’s anti-lynching resolution
Writing in the New York Times Week in Review, Sheryl Gay Stolberg revisits the George Allen image makeover campaign, including describing the noose he hung from a tree in his law office as a “lasso”: One open question is what benefit a politician gets from apologizing. Senator George Allen, Republican of Virginia, for instance, has