Republicans Love Barack Obama - For Now

George Will closes a subpar (by his standards, at least) column on the silly populism of Mike Huckabee and John Edwards with this praise for Barack Obama: Barack Obama, who might be mercifully closing the Clinton parenthesis in presidential history, is refreshingly cerebral amid this recrudescence of the paranoid style in American politics. He is the un-Edwards and un-Huckabee -- ...

Peggy Noonan on John Edwards’ Hair Poofing

Peggy Noonan sizes up the presidential field for "Reasonable Person" qualities and passes all of the major candidates except Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. Her reasoning on Clinton is, frankly, unreasonable: Because she's polarizing, she wouldn't be able to rally the nation in a crisis. By that standard, of course, the current president isn't "reasonable," either. This is ...

Demonizing Ahmadinejad

University of Michigan Middle East scholar Juan Cole argues that the demonization of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is misguided and part of a right wing propaganda campaign to agitate for another war. Critics have also cited his statements about the Holocaust or his hopes that the Israeli state will collapse. He has been depicted as a Hitler figure intent on ...

Civility, Hypocrisy, and the Rules of Political Debate

Glenn Greenwald argues that many of those now condemning MoveOn.org and/or demanding that Democrats condemn MoveOn.org for suggesting General David Petraeus would "betray us" are hypocrites, since many have used inflammatory rhetoric themselves. He's surely right in many particulars. Those on the Ann Coulter wing of the Right, who routinely throw around words like "traitors" and "treason" to describe mainstream ...

Larry Craig and Right Wing Hypocrisy

Several bloggers on the left see hypocrisy on the response by right wing bloggers to the Larry Craig lewd conduct story. Glenn Greenwald wonders why those were so outraged when Mike Rogers floated rumors outing closeted gay Republicans are now so vehement in insisting that Craig should resign. While I don't doubt that there has been hypocrisy and ...

Progressive Revolution to Purify Democratic Party

Matt Stoler is leading the charge for the Netroots to root out the "Bush Dogs" from the Democratic Party, purging it of the impure traitors who do not buy into every jot and tittle of the Progressive Agenda. We've been working to identify the group of conservative Democrats in the House who are holding back progressives from being ...

Jose Padilla Convicted on Terrorist Charges

Jose Padilla has finally been found guilty of major terrorism charges. Jose Padilla was convicted of federal terrorism support charges Thursday after being held for 3 1/2 years as an enemy combatant in a case that came to symbolize the Bush administration's zeal to stop homegrown terror. Padilla, a U.S. citizen from Chicago, was once accused of being part of an ...

Glenn Greenwald Gets Results

As noted here, Glenn Greenwald recently raised a red flag about General David Petraeus giving an "exclusive" interview to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt and asked to have the general appear on Alan Colmes' liberal show, on which he's a contributor, to demonstrate that the war is a national endeavor, not a partisan one. He was informed that there ...

Glenn Greenwald Demands Equal Time

Glenn Greenwald wrote General David Petraeus' press spokesman seeking to get an interview to balance out the one he recently gave to the "highly partisan, pro-war Republican talk show host and blogger Hugh Hewitt" and received a less than enthusiastic response. Presumably, that's what he expected. It's hardly surprising, really, that a man attempting to rally support for ...

Democrats and the Wimp Factor

Glenn Greenwald updates his post in response to my earlier post. He agrees that Democrats are willing to play aggressive politics but says he was actually making a much narrower post. When I said that conservatives are far more eager than liberals "to exploit these sorts of themes," I am referring to the gender-based personality attacks that have become a ...