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What is Eric Boehlert talking about?
Salon’s Eric Boehlert is joining the left wing blogosphere in freaking out about the Jeff Gannon/James Guckert story: On Feb. 17, “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams introduced a report on controversial White House correspondent James Guckert by informing viewers that the saga was “the talk of Washington.” Nine days later the mysterious tale of
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Go Togo
It received almost no media attention here in the US, but the cause of democracy won a major victory yesterday. Under pressure from other African countries, the ruler of Togo was forced to resign yesterday, aborting an unconstitutional takeover of power. And Hosni Mubarak is promising a multi-party presidential election in Egypt, though his regime
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Realities collide on Social Security
Dueling press releases: Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee: “THE REVIEWS ARE IN: SANTORUM’S SOCIAL SECURITY ROADSHOW WAS A BUST!!! … Pennsylvanians – Young and Old – Reject Santorum’s Scheme to Privatize Social Security” National Republican Senatorial Committee: “Rather Than Offer Ideas or Solutions, Democrats Offer Doom and Gloom Attack Politics… Sen. Rick Santorum’s (R-PA) Social Security
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Fact-checking the Post’s fact-check on Social Security
The Washington Post has published a useful fact-check of misleading claims about Social Security, including two I’ve flagged before: Bush’s claim that Social Security going “bankrupt” and Democratic suggestions that Bush’s private accounts plan is intended to enrich Wall Street. But Jim VandeHei and Jonathan Weisman mess up the numbers pretty badly in the middle
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MP3 audio of Cox’s CPAC speech
Courtesy of Robert Cox, the proprietor of TheNationalDebate.com and the driving force behind the Media Bloggers Association (of which I’m a member), here is MP3 audio of the relevant portion of Chris Cox’s highly misleading speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference. (For those who are interested, Bob has an interesting and thoughtful post up
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Reforming the presidential nomination process
In the Washington Post today, E.J. Dionne gently mocks the Democrats’ Commission on Presidential Nomination Timing and Scheduling: When the going gets tough, Democrats form commissions. It’s an old habit: If an election is lost, there must be some fix in the party’s rules and procedures that will turn things around. The commission is co-chaired
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The VA, “baby bonds” and national service
My friend Ben Fritz, who co-edited Spinsanity with me and Bryan Keefer, has a good post up on his blog about two creative ideas to promote national service. First, Philip Longman wrote a fascinating article in the Washington Monthly about innovation in medical care at the Veterans Administration. It’s so good, Longman argues, that we
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Cox responds on Salon WMD quote
I called Rep. Chris Cox’s office this morning to ask if he had been accurately quoted in the Salon article I posted on over the weekend, which includes this passage: Vice President Dick Cheney, a regular CPAC speaker, gave the keynote address. California Rep. Chris Cox had the honor of introducing him, and he took
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Cox discovers Iraqi WMDs
It’s been clear for months that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction and had a very limited WMD program before the war. Yet in late October 27% of Americans falsely believed that Iraq had WMD before the war and an additional 22% believed it had a major WMD program (PIPA poll [PDF] –
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Blog scalps: Overhyped
Dan Drezner and Kevin Drum are mulling a question that I had a couple days ago — are blogs really bringing down high-profile targets like Trent Lott, Howell Raines and Eason Jordan, or is it something else? The answer, I think, is that the role of the blogosphere is being dramatically overhyped. Here’s why. Within