A good night for both candidates…and a lovely final statement–now there’s a metaphor!–by Hillary Clinton. I did think Obama bested her in two important exchanges, though. The first was Obama’s alleged plagiarism, where his assertion that this was “silly season…and that discourages people” [from voting, participating etc] utterly trumped her canned “change you can xerox” [...]
• “But while Lessig wryly notes that the RIAA and MPAA ‘won’t be excited to have an opponent of extremist copyright legislation in Congress,’ he also stresses that a congressional run would not be some kind of crusading extension of his work on ‘free culture.’ For Lessig, the central policy question will be, ‘Who ultimately [...]
Answer: It’s right there in the story. We may never know, at least in time for it to make any difference: Complicating the dispute is the FEC’s current lack of a quorum. The six-member commission has four vacancies and Senate Democrats and Republicans are at loggerheads over how to fill them. In his letter, Mason [...]
Lots more money is involved (millions, as opposed to tens of thousands), but no sexytime lobbyists in this McCain story: Is he improperly pulling out of the primary season public financing? I’ll defer to Karen’s greater expertise on campaign financing as to tease out whether anyone is behaving badly here — or how bad the [...]
So the January reports are out. But even though only three weeks have passed since the end of the reporting period, so much has happened in the presidential race that all this reads like something from an archaeological dig. Don’t you think, given all the technology we have available today, that someone should move for [...]
What Klein said about what Scherer said. It seems worth adding, however, that the Washington Post has a far more straightforward story on this whole business today. Another point: The Post story, which has former strategist John Weaver quoted on the record as saying he warned the lobbyist in question to stay away from McCain, [...]
What Scherer said. And some additional thoughts: 1. Huh? What do we make of a story with this headline: For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk Once again, huh? 2. The sex angle. Sex is, or should be, an issue in politics only when it raises larger character questions about the politician involved–a [...]
Every now and then, the New York Times writes a story that requires Cliffs Notes. It is a story that doesn’t exactly say what it is saying, or only says part of what the reporters seem to believe, or seems to be saying something it is not, or something like that. No doubt the story [...]
