The Carpetbagger Report

Once in a great while, a Fox News exec will slip and acknowledge the network’s ideological agenda. At the Davos conference last week, it was none other than News Corp. chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch. In a session moderated by Charlie Rose and available via Webcast, Murdoch lamented the fact that big media conglomerates have […]

The WaPo’s R. Jeffrey Smith and Carol Leonnig, Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff, and the Post’s Dan Froomkin have all published compelling pieces over the last couple of days highlighting the way in which Scooter Libby’s trial is “boring in on” Dick Cheney’s role in the Plame scandal. Testimony from last week reinforced long-held suspicions that the […]

It looks like Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is buckling under pressure. The poor guy is projecting his own faults onto his critics. Sen. John McCain yesterday said his colleagues who support a nonbinding resolution opposing a troop surge in Iraq are “intellectually dishonest,” an apparent bid to rally Republican opposition to the resolution, which could […]

At a certain level, I’m terribly uncomfortable with the very idea of Nader having been right about any of the political choices he’s made over the last seven years, but Matthew Yglesias raises a provocative point on the subject. [O]ne of the memes floating about in the Nadersphere has, I think, been vindicated: Namely the […]

As you may have heard, San Francisco Mayor [tag]Gavin Newsom[/tag] has become mired in a tawdry mess — he had an [tag]affair[/tag] with a female staffer who just happened to be married to one of his closest advisors and friends. Newsom has fessed up and apologized, his friend (who was going to be the manager […]

I can appreciate the fact that the right is having some trouble defending its national security policies, but the near-constant references to the TV show 24 are getting a little silly. Media Matters had a good item on this yesterday. In his January 30 syndicated column, Cal Thomas attacked “ideologically decrepit” Iraq war protesters and […]

I thought Weekly Standard editor William Kristol had officially gone over the edge two weeks ago when he argued that critics of the president’s escalation policy in Iraq should just “be quiet for six or nine months.” But in his latest column, Kristol takes the inanity one step further. John Warner of Virginia, Gordon Smith […]

Fox News released a poll (.pdf) this week with many of the usual political questions one would expect to see right now — the 2008 presidential race, the war, etc. But, with the Super Bowl in mind, the network also asked respondents two of the strangest questions I’ve ever seen in a national poll. 35. […]

I’m certainly not in the habit of praising Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), but he clearly made the right call on an HPV vaccine. Less than a year after the FDA approved the vaccine that builds an immunity against the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, Texas has become the first state to require all 11- and […]

First up from the God Machine is an annual poll published by Gallup on the role of religion in the United States. This year’s results included plenty of interesting data, but there was one part of the poll that stood out. Americans are divided in their opinions about the current level of influence displayed by […]