Today’s edition of quick hits. * As of the latest report, it looks like the hostages in a New Hampshire Clinton campaign office have been released: “A deranged man wearing what appeared to be a bomb strapped to his chest walked into a Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign office Friday, took several hostages and demanded to […]
If a Democrat asks a question at a debate for Republican presidential candidates, far-right activists reflexively (and incoherently) define this as a “planted” question. But, of course, given the meaning of the word, that doesn’t make a lot of sense. To really appreciate what a “plant” looks like, you’ll have to turn to the Bush […]
At Wednesday’s night debate for Republican presidential candidates, one of the more notable exchanges pitted Mitt Romney and John McCain on the issue of torture. Romney, flustered, struggled to explain his position on waterboarding. McCain, confident, claimed the high ground. “I would hope that we would understand, my friends, that life is not 24 and […]
Details are still very sketchy, but Reuters notes stunning developments at Hillary Clinton’s New Hampshire headquarters. An armed man took people hostage at a New Hampshire campaign office for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton Friday, New Hampshire’s WMUR TV reported. Clinton, who was scheduled to campaign in Virginia on Friday, was not present at […]
Recent scientific breakthroughs on stem-cell research are so promising, some of the right’s less-informed pundits, such as the WaPo’s Charles Krauthammer, have decided to take a victory lap. A decade ago, [James] Thomson was the first to isolate human embryonic stem cells. Last week, he (and Japan’s Shinya Yamanaka) announced one of the great scientific […]
As regular readers know, I’ve been pushing Rudy Giuliani’s serial exaggerations pretty hard, hoping against hope that traditional news outlets would notice the same trend. I started making the connection in July, but reporters said we’d have to wait until the new year before news outlets showed any interest. With that in mind, seeing this […]
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: * Barack Obama has been trading shots for a few weeks with the Clintons, but that doesn’t mean the senator has any ill will towards the former president. In an interview with Time […]
Less than a week ago, Time magazine’s Mark Halperin raised a quite a few eyebrows in the world of political journalism with a startling NYT op-ed. Halperin, best known for his work at ABC News (“The Note” was his creation) before becoming a senior political analyst for Time, argued that there are fundamental problems with […]
Early on at Wednesday night’s CNN debate for Republican presidential candidates, a young woman in Huntsville, Ala., asked the field what they would do “to repair the image of America in the eyes of the Muslim world?” Given the current of state of international diplomacy, it seemed like a reasonable question. But last night, far-right […]
As the “Shag Fund” scandal continues to unfold, more reporters at more outlets are beginning to recognize the seriousness of Rudy Giuliani’s latest scandal. Worse, the former mayor’s presidential campaign has struggled to come up with coherent explanations, offering contradictory accounts. Worse, it’s insisting that Ben Smith’s original report is “false,” but it can’t say […]