I’ve been wondering about this myself for quite a while, but Atrios went ahead and checked Nexis to get the answer. Number of times the term “Clinton fatigue” appeared, according to a Nexis search, in major papers during July of 1999: 27. Clinton Gallup poll approval rating in July of 1999: 64 Number of times […]
In Monday’s debate, Hillary Clinton was asked whether she’d describe herself as a “liberal.” I expected the usual Democratic line — “I don’t believe in labels” — but her answer was much, much stronger than the usual talking point. “You know, Rob — (laughter) — you know, it is a word that originally meant that […]
For some inexplicable reason, Republicans have been preoccupied for quite some time with Baghdad’s electrical supply, pointing to it as one of the good-news stories that Americans allegedly don’t hear about. The White House urged the media to cover it more a year ago; Tony Snow bragged about Iraq’s electricity-generating facilities; and then-House Speaker Dennis […]
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: * Former Sen. Fred Thompson’s staffing trouble got worse yesterday when his lead political advance operative resigned unexpectedly. The staffer, Sam LeBlond, who is George W. Bush’s nephew, joined Thompson’s campaign committee less […]
For months, media figures — some conservative, some not — have criticized Democratic presidential candidates for balking at a scheduled debate hosted and sponsored by Fox News. The Dems’ reasoning is fairly obvious — there’s no point in legitimizing a partisan news outlet — but they’ve been blasted anyway. Some have suggested they’re cowardly, others […]
I noticed this morning that Oliver Willis wrote that “National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez has a Rick Santorum moment and says the reason a bestiality case happened in Massachusetts is because of gay marriage.” I thought he was kidding. He wasn’t — The Corner had this post, under a headline that read, “Slippery Slope?” Just […]
As I noted a couple of weeks ago, the story of Pat Tillman’s death in Afghanistan has gone from being tragic to suspicious to scandalous. To quickly recap, Tillman, a former NFL star who retired from football to become an Army Ranger, was killed in Afghanistan in 2004 and his death was quickly seized upon […]
Considering CNN’s Glenn Beck’s record of lunacy, I more or less assumed he was no longer able to surprise me. I stand corrected. Cable news viewers can be forgiven if, like us, they happened to turn on Glenn Beck’s show on CNN Headline News Wednesday night and were surprised to see a spokesman for the […]
Today’s edition of quick hits. * The Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama quarrel is still going strong in its fourth day, with Obama goings so far today as to suggest that Clinton may be “Bush-Cheney Lite.” Clinton responded, “You know, I have been called a lot of things in my life, but I have never been called […]
When it comes to Alberto Gonzales’ precarious future, it’s important to remember that we’re not just dealing with one lie, we’re dealing with several. He lied about DoJ divisions over domestic surveillance. He lied about coaching witnesses before congressional testimony. He lied about violations of the Patriot Act. In each instance, he lied in sworn […]