Online Journal of Politics and Foreign Affairs
John Hawkins of Right Wing News has expanded his blog empire with a new site called Self Help Quotes, which purports to aggregate “more than 60,000 quotes — including the largest selection of Ann Coulter quotes on the web.” Here’s hoping he had some help with the typing. The front page is a series of [...]
If you haven’t been reading Manzine this week, here’s what you’ve missed: James Bond Ruined the Martini Sean Connery’s Bond was the essence of cool. But he drank lousy martinis. Steakhouse Steak at Home You don’t need to spend $40 at a premium steakhouse to enjoy delicious steaks. Here’s how to do it in your [...]
In a sidebar on the Iraq War casualty predictions post, regular commenter Odograph observes, “I think ‘Bush was famously against nation-building’ is a retroactive political claim.” Not at all. While it’s hard to imagine in hindsight, Candidate Bush ran against nation building and promised a “more humble foreign policy.” Remember, Realist Condi Rice was his [...]
Apparently, a lot of people who use Yahoo! are searching for “Rumsfeld bible quotes” today. This rather odd happenstance is apparently a function of a story that circulated earlier in the week about Rumsfeld putting bible verses on the cover sheets of “Worldwide Intelligence Updates” intended for President Bush. Apparently, the story is largely untrue.
The erstwhile Dr. Leopold Stotch passes along news of the exploits of a fellow Irish prankster: When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he said he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news. His report card: [...]
“It was easier for Obama to fire the CEO of a private company than it is to fire most federal employees.” – Radley Balko “I don’t know if you know this or not but starting today the United States government will stand behind your warranty on a newly purchased General Motors car. Now, that’s going [...]
“As bad a precedent as the AIG bill is, there is one positive. Congress has established the principle that $165 million is not too inconsequential a sum as to require strict budget hawkishness. I can’t wait to apply that standard during the next earmark fight.” – Bob Krumm “I was thinking: How about imposing a [...]
Gina Trapani transcribes a corporate whiteboard offering solutions for “Workday Quality Over Quantity.” Check email ONLY: 10AM 1PM 4PM Send any time Set email to check every 3 hours. NO email on evenings. NO email on weekends. EMERGENCY? = Use phone. FOCUS 1-3 Activities max/day LOG 1-3 Succinct status bullets every day on team wiki [...]
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was on ABC’s “This Week” this morning and two quotes in particular are garnering some attention. Taegan Goddard awarded “Quote of the Day” honors to this one: Well, Governor Sanford says that he does not want to take the money, the federal stimulus package money. And I want to say to [...]
When I woke to an NPR report that Barack Obama had pledged, “Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency,” I had to laugh. Not because I doubt his sincerity but because we’ve heard this sort of thing before. Bill Clinton promised us “the most ethical administration in the history [...]
Publius thinks it’s time to ban the phrase “Sister Souljah” moment, not just because it’s hackneyed but because it has been misused. The more benign interpretation is that a Sister Souljah moment occurs when a candidate criticizes some group or idea nominally aligned with that candidate. In short, it’s criticizing your own coalition — or [...]
This story is a few days old now, but Noah Shachtman‘s post is the first I’ve seen it: Chinese elite anti-terror police officers are wheeling into action ahead of next month’s Beijing Olympics on two-wheeled scooters. Members of the country’s armed police unit practised on the Segway models that have been re-named ‘Anti-Terror Assault Vehicles’ [...]
The Manufactured Outrage of the Day comes to us from Joe Stephens and his page A3 piece for today’s Washington Post, “Obama Got Discount on Home Loan.” Shortly after joining the U.S. Senate and while enjoying a surge in income, Barack Obama bought a $1.65 million restored Georgian mansion in an upscale Chicago neighborhood. To [...]
Bernhard Warner brings an interesting perspective to the fight between the AP and the blogosphere over copyright law. In attempting to bolster the AP’s case, he actually weakens it considerably. To understand where the AP is coming from with this caveman approach to copyright enforcement, you have to understand what it’s like to work for [...]
Just when it appeared that the Associated Press had come to its senses, they’ve now announced an exorbitant up-front fee for even short quotations of their works, Tim Conneally reports for BetaNews. They’ve created a handy-dandy online form to calculate what we owe them. Hmm. Well, surely, an organization as large as the AP, which [...]
Terrorist suspects detained at Guantánamo Bay (and presumably, anyplace else under American jurisdiction) have the right to file habeus corpus petitions in U.S. civilian courts the Supreme Court ruled today in a 5-4 decision. Further, Congress could not pass a law waiving these protections absent rebellion or invasion. Justices Rule Terror Suspects Can Appeal in [...]
Ezra Klein‘s long-awaited (a day’s forever in Internet time) American Prospect piece, “Is Jim Webb Too Good for the Vice Presidency?” is out. The lede: In his new book, Virginia Sen. James Webb quotes T.S Eliot and Rudyard Kipling. He alludes to his past as a boxer and marine. He recalls his “four times great-grandfather,” [...]
Dan Drezner argues, persuasively, that John McCain’s foreign policy is not, as critics charge, simply a continuation of George W. Bush’s. Essentially, while McCain has strong neoconservative tendencies (i.e., he’s quite willing to intervene militarily based on morality alone even if there is no compelling U.S. security interest at stake) but that’s he’s much more [...]
Tyler Cowen and Alex Massie, an economist and a Scotsman, might seem to be odd sources for advice on American country music but they’ve both written interesting posts on the topic. Neither grew up with the tradition but they found religion and are now offering recommendations for those looking to wade in. Cowen suggests, Hank [...]
Yesterday, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton spoke at a Jefferson-Jackson Dinner sponsored by the Indiana Democrats. As it turns out, this is merely one of many Jefferson-Jackson dinners attended by the candidates. I am shocked and outraged. As you may not be aware, the Jefferson-Jackson dinners are hosted to honor and celebrate the legacy [...]
The NYT today runs an incredibly long feature by David Barstow entitled “Message Machine: Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand.” The gist of the piece is that the retired military officers you see on television are often currently employed as defense contractors, and thus have a vested interest in the war machine, and are targeted [...]
General David Petraeus’ testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today was cautious and somewhat predictable. Key quotes follow with bold emphasis mine in all cases: Since Ambassador Crocker and I appeared before you seven months ago there has been significant but uneven security progress in Iraq. Since September, levels of violence and civilian deaths [...]
When I read this post by one of the associate bloggers at Joe Gandelman’s The Moderate Voice, it piqued my interest. The post quotes briefly from this New York Times article about possible unrest from the sharp rise in the price of rice that’s gone on recently: HANOI — Rising prices and a growing fear [...]
I have learned through Diana Hsieh that my Senator, Sam Brownback, apparently has nothing better to do with his time than get together with his buddy Joe Lieberman to introduce a Senate Resolution recognizing “Ten Commandments Weekend”. The resolution states, after several out-of-context quotes, erroneous interpretations, and unfounded historical analysis, that: Whereas the first weekends [...]
An increasing emphasis on high standardized tests scores is hurting efforts to recruit more black and Hispanic students.
Weekend Caption Jam Linkfest. . . Rodney is banging with the Royals. Wizbang is sly as a fox, George Fox. Wyatt Earp thinks the devil is in the details. Public Pondering is making with the wisecracks. Cowboy Blob finally found a cheaper model. Right Pundits actually speaks with quotes. The Gone Rick Motel has a [...]
The Democrats have just increased their majority in the House by one: In a stunning upset Saturday that could be a sign of trouble for Republicans this fall, a little-known Democratic physicist won the special election for a far west suburban congressional seat long held by former GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Rookie candidate Bill [...]
Mark Bauerlein argues in the Chronicle of Higher Education that college professors don’t work particularly long hours once one excludes the 40 hours a week or so they devote to work he personally considers worthless. Michael Bérubé retorts that, yes, there’s a lot of scutwork that produces little social value beyond the walls of the [...]
One meme that has emerged in recent days is the idea that Hillary Clinton’s remaining in the race, and especially her negative attacks on Barack Obama, will seriously damage the Democratic Party and make Obama damaged goods in the fall. John Aravosis is one of the more passionate advocates of this position. Well, come Wednesday, [...]
Supporters of Hillary Clinton, apparently forgetting that she’s probably not going to get the nomination, yesterday moved on to the general election campaign and trotted out a new line of attack: John McCain doesn’t have the right experience to be commander-in-chief. The opening salvo came from, of all people, Gloria Steinem. And she did it [...]
Andrew Sullivan appreciated the late William F. Buckley, Jr.’s civil tone on matters of homosexuality, especially as contrasted with other conservatives of his era, but laments that “Buckley never challenged what he believed was a necessary moral and social injunction against gay love, marriage and sex.” GayPatriot‘s B. Daniel Blatt is more charitable, noting that, [...]
Last night’s Democratic debate featured seven minutes of discussion of Louis Farrakhan’s endorsement of Barack Obama. Despite Obama forthrightly rejecting, denouncing, and otherwise disassociating himself from Farrakhan within the first paragraph of his answer, moderator Tim Russert continued to hammer him with Farrakhan quotes and then allowed Hillary Clinton a couple of minutes to bash [...]
Erik Wemple reports that new Washington Times editor John Sullivan has ended the use of scare quotes for everyday words. He sent out this All Staff email: Here are some recent updates to TWT style. 1) Clinton will be the headline word for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. 2) Gay is approved for copy and preferred [...]
The New York Times today fronts a long exposé on John McCain, which the campaign describes as a “hit-and-run smear campaign,” under the headline “For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk.” The piece alleges that McCain did favors for a female lobbyist nine or more years ago and insinuates that they were romantically [...]
I’ve been invited once again to be an official blogger at CPAC, the premier gathering of American conservatives sponsored by the American Conservative Union. I’m swamped with a project at work but hope to be able to make it to a few sessions; thankfully, it’s only a couple miles away from the office. Among the [...]
Quin Hillyer makes an interesting — and judging by the polls, entirely academic — argument for why South Carolinians should vote for Fred Thompson, even if they prefer Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney. [H]e gives South Carolinians a chance to set out a marker and decapitate the presidential electoral primacy of Iowa and New Hampshire. [...]
My post on the positions various candidates took on evolution and evolutionary theory spawned are rather large number of comments. Several initial ones tried the old Creationist chestnut of, “Yeah, sure organisms change at a genetic level (micro-evolution), but macro-evolution (change at or above the species level), why that is just plain crazy talk.”1 This, [...]
BREAKING NEWS (7/22/08): John Edwards Love Child Scandal Re-Erupts A story entitled “NATIONAL ENQUIRER WORLD EXCLUSIVE: JOHN EDWARDS LOVE CHILD SCANDAL!” is the top story on memeorandum this morning. The link now goes to an otherwise blank page with some advertising but, as you may have guessed from the subtle clues in the headline, it [...]
Wow, some Military Members are Gay. “60 Minutes” must be scrambling for ratings in its latest “don’t ask, don’t tell” report. A gay soldier says he disclosed his sexuality to his superiors, even offering graphic proof, and was neither discharged nor reprimanded, despite the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on homosexuality. What, the military [...]
Andrew Sullivan has a reader email post that captures, for me, the reason that Obama has been catching on of late and could very well knock Hillary Clinton aside in the run for the Democratic nomination. A sample: It’s remarkable how little Obama has focused on black voters until now, but that may have been [...]
Jim Henley and Mark Steyn, two of my favorite political columnists, have a set-to that, with an assist from Little Green Footballs, has clogged the former’s comment section with a swarm of repetitive and mostly inane comments. The short version: Henley terms the arguments advanced by Steyn about the dangers of unassimilated Muslims into European [...]
Bill Clinton, who as president committed the country to a policy of regime change in Iraq, now claims he was opposed to the Iraq war “from the beginning,” Patrick Healy reports for the NYT. During a campaign swing for his wife, former President Bill Clinton said flatly yesterday that he opposed the war in Iraq [...]
Reason editors Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch argue in today’s WaPo that a libertarian revolution is afoot, as evidenced by Ron Paul’s having risen to five percent in the polls and raised a substantial sum of money. The piece has gotten substantial blogospheric attention, little of it positive. John Little sees not a revolution but [...]
I really hate being put into a position in which I’m defending “the Left”, even more so when my post might be taken as opposing that of my fellow associate blogger Steve Verdon since he and I are in substantial agreement on health care and health care reform. Here’s how I would characterize “the Right’s” [...]
John Goodman has ranked the health care plans of Edwards, Clinton, Obama, Guiliani, and Romney. The most costly were the plans for Clinton and Edwards, Most Expensive: Clinton and Edwards. By their own reckoning their plans would cost more than $1,000 per year for every household in America. Obama, a mere piker, comes in at [...]
On the eve of Veterans’ Day, a new study sheds light on the nature of heroism. An infantryman charges a pillbox in the face of enemy fire. A firefighter rushes up the stairwell of a burning skyscraper as office workers flee. A teacher shields her student from a schoolyard gunman with her body. Heroes all. [...]
