Today’s edition of quick hits. * About that 15-day FISA extension: “With time running out for Congress to finish work on an overhaul of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) filed a bill on Friday that would extend the current law through the end of the month. The Senate is […]
My single biggest complaint with mainstream political reporting is the he-said, she-said phenomenon. Reporters will let the public know what both sides say about a given issue, but they’re extremely reluctant to let us know when one side is demonstrably wrong. (Fact-checking, apparently, is an example of bias.) But once in a while, a traditional […]
If you missed it, MSNBC’s David Shuster has drawn the Clinton campaign’s ire over a very dumb comment he made on the air last night. This video, from TPM, shows the remark and Shuster’s efforts to explain/apologize for it this morning. For those of you who can’t watch videos online, the clip shows Shuster discussing […]
The far-right Washington Times, one of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s enterprises, has one of those classic hit-jobs today that’s almost impressive in its mendacity. The target: Hillary Clinton. The headline: “Hillary still in bed with ’96 scandal.” Nearly one in five “HillRaisers,” the elite big-money fundraisers for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, have […]
Following up on the last item for a moment, there was one other part of Bush’s speech to CPAC that warranted special attention. “When I took office, we inherited a recession — and then we acted. We were guided by this principle: the best way to help our economy grow is to leave money in […]
It’s been more than seven years, but I still laugh when I look back at this classic satirical item from The Onion, in which George W. Bush assured the nation that “our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over.” “My fellow Americans,” Bush said (in this fake-news item), “at long last, we […]
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: * I get the sense that supporters of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are borderline obsessed with hypothetical general-election polls, each hoping to prove they could beat John McCain while the other couldn’t. […]
Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran (R), 11 days ago, on the idea of John McCain getting elected: “The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.” Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran (R), last night, on his presidential endorsement: U.S. […]
When Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign disclosed on Wednesday afternoon that the candidate had given herself a $5 million loan, it came as a huge surprise to the political world, which had assumed Clinton’s coffers were full. When the campaign added that some senior aides would go without pay, it reinforced the notion that, in the […]
Some people have the gift of timing. James Dobson isn’t one of them. There’s been ample speculation for months about when and whether the far-right evangelical would officially throw his support to one of the Republican presidential candidates. Dobson demurred, noting that he’s never formally endorsed a White House hopeful before, and he’s not going […]