The New York Times ran an article today, Bush Strongly Defends Plan on Prisoners, that is a perfect illustration of how the media have failed the country over the last six years. The lede:
President Bush today strongly defended his ideas about questioning and trying terrorist suspects and signaled that his resolve has not softened despite [...]
The most interesting political story of the last week was not Majority Leader John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) descent into madness, or even ABC’s decision to air a very bad 9/11 movie that tried to blame the attacks on President Clinton, and probably met the legal definition of libel (it was trounced in the ratings by [...]
Publius at Legal Fiction has a great post today, looking at the details of President Bush’s new bill to create military commissions (to replace the ones that were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court).
It’s an improvement over their previous, totally extra-legal system, but it also contains this despicable song and dance: It amends the War [...]
I said the Republicans forget nothing and learn nothing, but this week’s sudden belligerence about Iran suggests that they have forgotten one of their operating procedures from four years ago.
As White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card said about the war in Iraq, “from a marketing perspective, you don’t introduce new products in August”.
Like the Bourbons, the Republicans forget nothing and learn nothing:
Some senior Bush administration officials and top Republican lawmakers are voicing anger that American spy agencies have not issued more ominous warnings about the threats that they say Iran presents to the United States. [...]
The criticisms reflect the views of some officials inside the White House [...]
Peter Beinart has a pretty good article in the New Republic discussing the foreign policy implications of Ned Lamont’s primary victory.
It will draw a lot of criticism, because the rhetoric is, in the best TNR tradition, designed to provoke hostility from the left: it’s already infuriated David Sirota, but what doesn’t, these days?
And [...]
Updated below
I consider myself a Democratic hawk, so I was bemused to see Ann Althouse wonder what happened to people like me:
But looking at the national debate about the meaning of the Democratic Party, I really want Lieberman to get it together and fight for the life of the liberal hawk. We desperately need that [...]
The sheer un-American nature of the abuses being visited on the country and our liberties by the Bush Adminstration and the Republican Congress is so vastly disproportionate to anything in our recent history, that it boggles the mind. The Washington Post article about the government’s new drumhead tribunals is a perfect example. I highlighted some [...]
Can someone please tell me why this is a bad thing?
As the Senate prepared for what promises to be a sharp debate starting on Wednesday about whether to begin pulling troops from Iraq, the Democratic leadership wants its members to rally behind a proposal that calls for some troops to move out by the [...]
Not really, although I am ashamed of my government. Brian thinks this is disloyalty:
I don’t believe that most liberals truly hate America. Many liberals have given and continue to give life and limb for their country. But the scary reality is, my classmate is not alone. In fact, she is representative of dangerously large segment [...]
An article on the politics of port security in today’s New York Times is worth quoting at length:
In 2003, House Republicans, on a procedural vote, agreed to kill a Democratic amendment that would have added $250 million for port security grants to a war spending package.
Two years later, nearly all House Republicans voted against an [...]
It now appears that Vice President Cheney leaked classified information to the press for political purposes:
Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been “authorized” by Cheney and other White House “superiors” in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to [...]
Victor Davis Hanson, also known as the Pericles of Petticoat Junction (*), cries, “Havoc!” over at National Review. He wants a war with Iran, and his approach consists of talking about all the bad things that will happen if we start a war, and then asserting without argument that every alternative is worse. That’s [...]
Wow. This insanely crazy story about the CIA and a Russian defector and the Iranian quest of nuclear weapons is like something out of James Bond. It seems somehow fitting that it all played out in Vienna.
Whether Operation Merlin failed or succeeded, it was definitely really stupid. The Guardian tries to blame George Bush, but [...]
Is the Secretary of Defense the dumbest man in America? Donald Rumsfeld was interviewed by Jim Lehrer on NewsHour yesterday, and admitted:
I was very careful. I never predicted any number of deaths or the cost or the length because I’ve looked at a lot of wars, and anyone who tries to do that is [...]