Sam Tannenhaus has a very good read at the New Republic about how the Republican Party, and Sen. Barry Goldwater in particular, traveled from being the champions of racial integration to being the defenders, not of segregation, but of the “right to segregate’—“neither a segregated society nor an integrated society, but a free society,” as…
Search Results for: Washington Post
Honest Newt Gingrich and Idiot Bob Woodward
Newt Gingrich has been getting a lot of good press for his recent statements faulting Mitt Romney for staking out such an extreme position on immigration during the Republican primary, berating both Texas Gov. Rick Perry and poor Newt himself for being soft on foreigners. According to Newt, Mitt painted himself into such a far-right…
Those Crazy Muslims
Mark Lynch has a column up at Foreign Affairs reviewing Atomic Kingdom, a report by Colin Kahl, Melissa Dalton, and Matt Irvine at the Center for a New American Security, which I guess should be called Non-Atomic Kingdom, even though it’s definitely less catchy, because the report argues that Saudi Arabia is not, repeat not,…
Ah, Brennan! Ah, humanity!
If you haven’t read Herman Melville’s more than classic short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street,” well, you should. Bartleby, as the title suggests, was a scrivener on Wall Street, someone who copied documents in long hand prior to the development of the typewriter. At the outset a compulsive worker, Bartleby gradually…
Paul Ryan: Pretty but Dumb
Republican pretty boy Paul Ryan gets thoroughly hoisted, if not on his own petard then Ezra Klein’s, who ably dissects Paulie Boy’s duck and weave, bob and bounce, shuck and jive performance before a gaggle of reporters at a recent shindig organized by the Wall Street Journal, whose editors probably wish they hadn’t let Ezra…
General Petraeus, contemplating a career move: Wars are out, assassinations are in!
Establishment dick National icon Bob Woodward reports on a taped conversation that Fox News contributor Kathleen McFarland had with Gen. David Petraeus back when El Davo was still running things in Afghanistan, a tape that, mysteriously, did not surface until after General Dave resigned in disgrace from his position as head of the CIA. Kathleen…
Mitt: “Yeah, I am an arrogant, out-of-touch, multi-millionaire! What’s your point?”
Just in case he hadn’t already alienated every non-millionaire in the country, Mitt Romney has “explained” his recent loss to President Obama in terms of government handouts to blacks, illegals, college kids, horny young women, and other assorted riff-raff. Well, Mitt, maybe next time you should run for President of the Boca Raton Country Club….
Jeffrey to Bibi: Nice Jeffrey, Bibi!
On Sunday, Jeffrey Goldberg took Israeli Prime Minister Bib Netanyahu to task for “three mistakes and one achievement”: In re: Prime Minister Netanyahu’s handling of the Iran crisis: 1) Netanyahu shouldn’t have waved around that cartoonish drawing on the podium of the United Nations. It made him look unserious, and a man in his position…
James Asher, not knowing nuance though it gnaw him on the ass
“jimomensko.com” points us to a memo issued by James Asher, Washington bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers, which included the following warning his staff: Part of our job is to capture what people really mean, not catch them in a gotcha misstatement or an inelegant remark. Nuance matters. To ensure that we don’t leave truth on…
Barack Obama, luckie duckie
Imagine if Muslim demonstrators in Egypt hadn’t gathered outside the U.S. embassy in Cairo on September 11 to denounce a bizarre and obscure video speaking ill of Mohammed. Then the murderous attack on the American consulate in Benghazi would have been seen as a pre-meditated terrorist attack from the beginning, and the entire focus of…