YOUR DELTA TAU CHI NAME IS … PINTO
Why is the Bush administration like “Animal House”? Go check my latest post over at The American Street.

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TRUST
I suppose being a reporter made me less trusting of allowing people to get too close to my children; I saw too many pedophile arrests come across the wire about teachers, Scout leaders, choir directors and ministers. So I fought with my ex-husband about our sons being in Cub Scouts: “They don’t go on any [...]

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SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU THINK IN SOUND BYTES?
Here’s a very thoughtful op-ed piece from today’s Times.
During the cold war, the paradigm of “state-sponsored terrorism” was useful, if not entirely correct. Most terrorists did receive help from states, and there were some links between disparate groups, although not to the extent that many in the [...]

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Shorter David Brooks:
Damn! Do you believe they pay me to write the same column over and over again?

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BRINGING IT ON
I wasn’t happy about Kerry getting the nomination. I was wrong. This makes up for everything:
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry challenged President George W. Bush to prosecute former national security aide Richard Clarke if they can show that he lied about terrorism policy.
“My challenge to the Bush administration would be, if (Clarke) [...]

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THE SKY IS FALLING
Oh dear. This really could swing the election toward Bush.
COLOURFUL US boxing promoter Don King has thrown himself into the political arena by lending his voice to a Republican Internet “game” attacking Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, the Republican National Committee announced today.
The game, found on the web at www.gop.com/kerryvskerry, shows King [...]

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FUCKING LIARS
Is this woman even capable of telling the truth?
Democratic commission member Richard Ben-Veniste disclosed this week that Rice had asked, in her private meetings with the commission, to revise a statement she made publicly that “I don’t think anybody could have predicted that those people could have taken an airplane and slam it into [...]

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POUNDING THE TABLE
This is interesting:
The vehemence with which administration officials have attacked Mr. Clarke’s motives brings to mind the old lawyer’s joke: When the facts are with you, pound the facts. When the facts are against you, pound the table.
Why are administration officials pounding the table so hard? Because confirmation of Mr. Clarke’s basic accusations [...]

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LAZY ASS RICH BOY
Josh Marshall’s been working hard, digging up and detailing the White House strategy against Richard Clarke. It’s complex, so go read it all. But I thought this bit was especially telling:
Bear in mind that top White House aides have told the press that the president personally initiated and is directing this campaign [...]

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AND IF YOU TAKE MORE OF THOSE, YOU WILL GET AN OVERDOSE
Oh, those wacky pharmaceutical companies! And the doctors who still actually believe them…
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday warned U.S. drugmaker Wyeth over circulating misleading claims that its antidepressant Effexor outperforms other popular competitors.
Several print materials, including a journal advertisement, misuse [...]

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SEE ‘BREAD, SIDE WITH BUTTER’
Well, whattaya know. Condi’s too busy to testify before the 9/11 commission, but never too busy to speak to a satellite conference for Rupert Murdoch.
Surely, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, a key player on all the fronts that were in play, had a very long list of responsibilities. No time for [...]

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ANOTHER LYING LIAR
David “Our Favorite Conservative” Brooks is from Wayne? Man, does this explain a lot. I thought his face (i.e. breeding stock) looked familiar. (Via Atrios.) How funny, to know for sure that he just makes stuff up:
In January, I made my own trip to Franklin County, 175 miles southwest of Philadelphia, with a [...]

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BECAUSE THEY VALUE TRUTH ABOVE ALL
They really are scum. Make that scared scum… via Billmon:
In a highly unusual move, key Republicans in Congress are seeking to declassify testimony that former White House terrorism adviser Richard Clarke gave in 2002 about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Friday.Frist said the [...]

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GOTCHA BACK
From today’s Daily Misleader - gee, it sure looks like Richard Clarke was right.
A previously forgotten report from April 2001 (four months before 9/11) shows that the Bush Administration officially declared it “a mistake” to focus “so much energy on Osama bin Laden.” The report directly contradicts the White House’s continued assertion that fighting [...]

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IF IT’S FRIDAY, IT MUST BE MOVIE DAY
It was just one week ago we had four inches of snow outside. Today, it’s about 70 degrees out and my sliding doors are open. Loving it…
Just came back from the multiplex, where we saw “Jersey Girl.” Sorry to say, it’s only a a B minus.
It was too [...]

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As Dean Wormer once said, “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”
“Flounder” McClellan at yesterday’s press gaggle:
Q Scott, Secretary Snow today, speaking to the House Financial Committee, said that the President — he believes the President would sign any extension on unemployment benefits. Is that something new?
MR. McCLELLAN: I [...]

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SOME TRUTHS ARE SELF-EVIDENT
Sign of the times:
Columbus - An unseen vandal scrawled the word “LIES” across the walls and pillars of Ohio Republican Party headquarters overnight Thursday.
The culprit’s black spray paint stood out sharply against the white trim of the tidy brick building, which sits at the corner of South Fifth and Rich streets [...]

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ALL POLITICS ARE LOCAL
Here’s the thing. Arlen “Single Bullet” Specter is not a liberal; he’s an opportunist. It’s not new, he’s always been a windsock.
Now he faces a real primary threat from Pat Toomey, another wingnut in the Santorum mold. He’s supported by the far-right fringe; Specter only looks liberal in comparision. When it comes [...]

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QUOTABLE
“We are so united, Joe Lieberman and Al Sharpton were on their way to San Francisco for a marriage license before their wives got wind of it.”
- Anne Richards, introduction to the Democratic National Unity Dinner in D.C. last night.

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IF I ONLY HAD A BRAIN
Brad DeLong imagines the opening statement he’d make if he were Condi.

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THEY KNEW
More on Sibel Edmonds:
A former FBI wiretap translator with top-secret security clearance, who has been called “very credible” by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has told Salon she recently testified to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States that the FBI had detailed information prior to Sept. 11, 2001, that a terrorist [...]

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LIAR, LIAR
All Condi, all the time.
Ms. Rice, in a briefing in her West Wing office on Wednesday called specifically to rebut Mr. Clarke’s charges, said that Mr. Clarke had not been demoted and that she was puzzled by his remark that the current White House did not see terrorism as urgent.
“I don’t know what it [...]

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FIGHTERS
If only they’d been as ferocious in their attacks on bin Laden, huh?
The barrage was unusual for a White House that typically tries to ignore its critics, and it was driven by White House calculations that Clarke would appear credible to average viewers. Bush’s advisers are concerned that Clarke’s assertions are capable of inflicting political [...]

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RUNNING GOVERNMENT LIKE A BUSINESS
Krugman on Medicare:
What actually happened was that private plans skimmed the cream, accepting only relatively healthy retirees. Yet Medicare paid them slightly more per retiree than it spent on traditional benefits. In other words, instead of saving money by subcontracting its role to private plans, Medicare was in effect required to [...]

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HOW, LIKE, IMMATURE
The reaction to the all-out attacks on Richard Clarke continues:
The White House is so thin-skinned and defensive, however, that it simply cannot bring itself to join what ought to be a grown-up national conversation of how best to deal with terrorism. Its schoolyard name-calling does no one any good, least of all Mr. [...]

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DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN
I knew as soon as I saw the headline it was the same section of I-95. I just knew it.
It was back in 1983 when my mother (who’s got a thing about bridges - that is to say, they terrify her) and father took a road trip to New England with [...]

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GO HAWKS
St. Joe’s 84, Wake Forest 80. What a nailbiter. What a great game.

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WHAT THE FUCK?
From Busybusybusy, via Julia over at Sisyphus Shrugged (I swear to God they didn’t make this up), today’s Crossfire:
Robert Novak: Congressman, do you believe, you’re a sophisticated guy, do you believe, watching these hearings, do you believe that Dick Clarke has a problem with this African-American woman, Condoleezza Rice?
Rahm Emmanuel: Say that [...]

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WHY SHOULD THEY HAVE TO WORK THAT HARD?
Sean Aday:
As the headlines from Tuesday’s 9/11 testimony show, the media are downright Buddhist in their abhorrence of imbalance. So when the White House is accused of fudging Medicare numbers, or giving phony budget estimates, or falsely describing the number of viable laboratory stem cells, or missing signals [...]

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GOOD GOLLY
Miss Molly:
He paints a sad tale of both arrogance and ignorance: repeated warnings by both Clarke and George Tenet apparently made no impression on an administration obsessed with Saddam Hussein.
This thesis is born out by the eerily prescient and tragically ignored Hart-Rudman report on terrorism, presented on Jan. 31, 2001. (And let me [...]

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