Politics

CNN Dicks Cheney with Subliminal Messages

The Drudge Retort has obtained video footage that proves the superimposition of an X mark over Vice President Cheney during a televised speech Tuesday wasn't just an innocent technical glitch by CNN, as claimed by anchor Daryn Kagan-Limbaugh. In a story impacting hard across the conservative blogosphere, Matt Drudge reported Tuesday on a "large black 'X' repeatedly flashed over the vice president's face!" The X, which appeared for two frames displayed over one-fifteenth of a second, turns out ... (read more)

2005/11/23

Murthquake Continues to Shake Washington

On Friday, Republicans in the House of Representatives pushed to the floor a bill they wrote but did not favor: It is the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately. To no surprise, the bill failed 403-3. The yes votes came from the Democrats Cynthia McKinney, Jose Serrano and Robert Wexler. This bill was must-see C-Span, but I've been struggling to figure out what Republicans hoped to gain with such a transparent stunt. ... (read more)

2005/11/22

Jerry Lewis vs. Jerry's Kids

At an appearance in Chicago Wednesday night, Jerry Lewis flew into a rage when heckled off the stage by disability activists in wheelchairs, telling security to eject one overweight protester by commanding "move that living waterbed out of here." The hecklers were from Jerry's Orphans, a group begun in the early '90s by Mike Ervin, a former Muscular Dystrophy Association poster child. They're angry about their portrayal in the Labor Day Telethon, as described in a documentary The Kids Are All ... (read more)

2005/11/18

My Due Diligence on the Liberal Ad Network

The Drudge Retort has been kicked out of the Liberal Blog Advertising Network, a group of 75 liberal sites organized by Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos and Chris Bowers and Jerome Armstrong of MyDD under the guidance of BlogPAC, a political action committee that Moulitsas and Armstrong began in 2004. Bowers personally invited me to join the network in May 2005, sending several e-mails until I agreed to become one of its founding members. I thought it was a good way to bring liberal blogs closer ... (read more)

2005/11/15

Plain-Dealer Concocts Blog Scandal

The Cleveland Plain-Dealer did a hatchet job this week on potential Ohio Senate candidate Sherrod Brown and liberal blogger Nathan Newman. On Tuesday, Plain-Dealer Washington bureau chief Stephen Koff reported that Brown plagiarized a weblog post written by Newman about Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito's record on worker's rights issues. Koff accurately describes how Brown's staff reused Newman's writing in a letter, but the 20-year reporter made a rookie mistake: He never asked Newman if he ... (read more)

2005/11/09

Faith v. Constitution

Michael Thomson has written critically on the implications of a Catholic Supreme Court majority, focusing on issues where the church and court decisions might come into conflict: ... I am a proponent of diversity. I thought George Bush was as well. In his recent court appointee decisions, he has packed the court with adherents of a religion that controls and manipulates politicians, not just in the United States, but also all over the world. This issue's being played mostly for laughs so far, ... (read more)

2005/11/03

President Bush Courts Catholics

Any legislator who is publicly supporting laws which favor abortion or euthanasia may not present himself or herself for Holy Communion. -- Raymond Burke, Catholic Archbishop of St. Louis If Judge Samuel Alito is approved by the Senate, the Supreme Court will have five Catholic justices, a religious majority that is nearly without precedent in U.S. history. He would join Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The only time this appears to ... (read more)

2005/10/31

Harriet's Homework Helpers

A postscript on Harriet Miers, buried in a Washington Post story on the burial of her Supreme Court aspirations: White House aides finished Miers's second response to the Senate questionnaire and delivered it at 11:40 p.m., more than three hours after she decided to abandon her nomination. The 59-page document makes it clear that the struggle to learn about her advice to Bush would have continued had she stayed in the fray. Asked for details about her work, she submitted 135 boilerplate, ... (read more)

2005/10/28

Brownie Backs Brown-Noser

The White House has enlisted a new ally in the effort to seat Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court: Conservative activist Michael D. Brown said internal GOP polling being cited by party and administration emissaries purports to show that "70 percent of self-identified conservative voters have a favorable impression of Harriet Miers." The emissaries are warning that ordinary Republicans beyond the Washington Beltway continue to support the nomination because they trust President Bush, even after ... (read more)

2005/10/27

Stuart Smalley: Bush Needs Therapy

Stuart Smalley made his first appearance on Al Franken's radio show Friday, venturing into politics to discuss tabloid rumors that the president has returned to the bottle (attached podcast). I'm surprised it took so long to hear from the caring nurturer, who believes the president should get into an anonymous recovery group, regardless of whether or not he's drinking: Right away. Imagine the stress. There but for the grace of God go I. If I were president, I'd be a complete wreck. I'd be doing ... (read more)

2005/10/24

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