Politics RSS
Wed, 10 Oct 2007
The Frost Story
Bloggers portray a different "reality"
By Posted at 02:00 PM Comments (23)
The fight over a bill calling for a $35 billion increase in funding for the SCHIP program, (passed by both houses of Congress and vetoed by the president last week), which helps states insure uninsured children in need, has been ugly, but over the past few days, it got a whole lot uglier.
The kickoff to the latest...
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Wed, 3 Oct 2007
Milbank on Blackwater
How WaPo columnist distinguished himself
By Posted at 11:54 AM Comments (2)
It's hard to find anything new under the sun when cracking open the morning papers to read the accounts of Congressional hearings. Reporters dutifully quote the Congressmen and women asking questions, the witnesses giving answers, and toss in a few words from various outside "experts" to spice things up a bit.
That's why Dana Milbank's story...
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Wed, 26 Sep 2007
Iranian Media Claims Victory
Who cares?
By Posted at 01:12 PM Comments (9)
On Monday afternoon, I was asked to do a radio interview reacting to the visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Columbia University earlier in the day. The host asked if I thought that the Iranian media--in the face of evidence to the contrary--would simply splice together clips of Ahmadinejad's applause lines and claim victory in the debate. I though... Read More
Mon, 17 Sep 2007
President blogger panel gets mixed results
The blogs on the case
By Posted at 01:28 PM Comments (2)
Remember the good old days of the 2004 election season, when the Bush campaign would hold "public" events that were stocked with rabid Bush supporters, and anyone who didn't unflinchingly back the president was escorted out of the event, or denied entry?
Well, something akin to those good old days went down last week when the White...
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Fri, 31 Aug 2007
FUBAR
PBS runs into the FCC's nanny-state regulations
By Posted at 12:11 PM Comments (3)
It's official, we've become a nation of children. And like children, we can't be trusted to hear nasty swear words--even while watching violent, televised images from a war zone.
Got that? Violence, OK. Bad language, verboten!
On September 23, PBS begins airing Ken Burns' fourteen-hour World War II documentary "The War," and in interviews with former...
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Fri, 10 Aug 2007
Krauthammer, Goldfarb, and Emanuel
Getting the TNR mess wrong on purpose
By Posted at 03:06 PM Comments (4)
In the continuing story of Private Scott Beauchamp and the disputed, and partially discredited, "Baghdad Diarist" stories he wrote for The New Republic, there's yet another wrinkle.
I'm not talking about the debates over the anonymous source who told The Weekly Standard that Beauchamp signed documents stating that he made everything up--something that no one, not even the...
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Tue, 7 Aug 2007
Obama blames the press
The senator wasn’t clear on Pakistan, and so he smacks an easy scapegoat
By Posted at 03:27 PM Comments (3)
As Ben Smith at Politico points out today, Barack Obama has been blaming the media for misrepresenting his position on Pakistan, articulated in his big foreign policy speech last week. "The misreporting that was done needs to be cleared up," Obama told a Sioux City, Iowa, audience yesterday. "I never called for an invasion of Pakistan."
The original speech... Read More
Fri, 3 Aug 2007
Obama Flamed Again
This time, though, he wuz robbed
By Posted at 02:15 PM
Barack Obama is being pummeled again for his public statements about foreign policy. The candidate told the Associated Press yesterday that he would not use nuclear weapons against Al Qaeda "under any circumstances," drawing criticism from Hillary Clinton, among others. "Presidents should be careful at all times in discussing the use and nonuse of nuclear weapons," Clinton said. "Presidents... Read More
Mon, 30 Jul 2007
Clinton v. Obama
The campaign’s first throw-down is thin stuff
By Posted at 02:15 PM Comments (2)
Looks like we have ourselves a fight. All three major dailies today have accounts of the rhetorical rumble between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over the answers each gave to a question at the CNN/YouTube debate earlier this week. The initial argument, over what value each candidate would place on diplomacy in a future administration, has now been almost... Read More
Fri, 27 Jul 2007
YouTube Debate Has Legs
Incredibly weak ones
By Posted at 01:20 PM Comments (1)
Newspapers and bloggers continue to pick over Monday's YouTube debate, arguably the most sensational story thus far of the campaign season. Unfortunately, much of this afterlife of the debate has centered on an insubstantial back-and-forth between the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama camps. "For Clinton and Obama, A Debate Point Won't Die," reads the Washington Post headline, referring to... Read More
