I noted over the weekend that the Los Angeles Times broke new media ground with regards to covering the war in Iraq: the paper decided to stop playing semantics games and call the conflict a “[tag]civil war[/tag].” Today, NBC did the same thing. From this morning’s MSNBC broadcast: “The news from Iraq is becoming grimmer […]
Any top 100 list is intended to be a conversation piece. It’s an entirely subjective exercise to name the top 100 best movies, or football teams, or albums, so when some magazine pulls a list together, it’s supposed to spur debate. With this in mind, The Atlantic has a cover story ranking the top 100 […]
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers: * While the House race in Florida’s 13th remains unresolved, Rep. [tag]Katherine Harris[/tag] (R), who gave up the seat to run for the Senate, has a plan. Roll Call reported today that if […]
Both the NYT and the WaPo have major articles today on how Bush might try to salvage what’s left of his presidency. As Jim Rutenberg sees it, some kind of triangulation strategy is under consideration. Senior Republican staff members in Congress have voiced the fear that Mr. Bush will now put his legacy over the […]
We’ve had some fun this year taking note of the president’s alleged reading habits, his alleged book-reading contest with Karl Rove, and his demonstrably ridiculous summer reading list, which included some French existentialism. George W. Bush is many things, but “bookworm” isn’t on the list. That won’t stop him and his supporters, however, from creating […]
I mentioned on Friday that congressional Dems are getting ready to start flexing their oversight muscles in 2007, and a fair amount of their attention will be directed at a certain Vice President’s office. Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), the incoming chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, for example, noted over the weekend that […]
For the better part of 2006, the Bush gang and their allies have decided that the key to public support for the war in Iraq — or what’s left of it — is blaming the media. In March, for example, Dick Cheney said, “There is a constant sort of perception, if you will, that’s created […]
I have not yet seen the new movie “Bobby,” about the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and the lives of 22 people who were at the Ambassador Hotel the night he was killed, but David Sirota has and he wrote a good post about it. I didn’t agree with every word of his meta-analysis, […]
By any reasonable measure, Iraq is now out of control. It’s reached a point in which the LA Times has stopped the semantics game news outlets have been toying with for months and started using the appropriate phrase. Iraq’s civil war worsened Friday as Shiite and Sunni Arabs engaged in retaliatory attacks after coordinated car […]
Focus on the Family’s James Dobson made yet another hour-long appearance on CNN’s Larry King live this week, and because the interview was aired the night before Thanksgiving, it didn’t generate much in the way of attention. Like Fred Clarkson, I think that’s a shame — Dobson was in rare form. Dobson said, for example, […]