In the Arena In the Arena

Obama’s Right About Iraq

…and Kos is wrong. Clearly, there are no negotiations to be had with Bush. He won’t sign anything with a timeline. And clearly the Democrats are not going to cut off funding for the troops–nor should they: our withdrawal has to be careful and intelligent, not precipitous. As Jim Webb says, we have to leave this war more responsibly …

The Worst Person in the World: Me, I’m Told

I had been trying to decide whether I should respond to all the comments regarding my post the other day about Hillary Clinton’s website and its appeal for support of the Rutgers women’s basketball team, which had stirred up some dust from the folks at Media Matters. I was leaning against engaging on this one, until a friend from …

Imus Update

CBS has fired Don Imus. We’ll see how he does on satellite. He might be quite lonely.

UPDATE: Great minds think alike, but sometimes I luck out too. Sorry to echo you, Karen.

More Than a Handful Is Too Much?

Dana Perino told reporters only a “handful” of WH staffers had RNC “@gwb43.com” addresses. She later amended that to a “big handful.”

The Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington now says that the “Bush White House has lost over FIVE MILLION e-mails in a two year period.” Insert “you know what they say about big hands” joke …

Weak Attractions

Time’s latest poll has good news for Mitt Romney, and that’s pretty much it (he’s cut in half the people who have haven’t heard of him!). There’s less good but certainly not bad news for Obama and Edwards, who have both narrowed Hillary’s lead. Interestingly, Obama is the only Dem with a lead in general election match-ups, and he ties …

South Carolina Abortion Fight

Over the past decade or so, abortion opponents have been extraordinarily shrewd in picking their fights. By waging the abortion debate around issues like parental consent, where public opinion is on their side, they have managed to enact scores of new restrictions in just about every state in the country. I wrote about this at length

Fraudulent Voter Fraud

Yes, the White House “losing” those not-quite-White House emails is the big news today regarding the fate of Gonzales, the administration, etc, but this story — about the pointless prosecution of non-existent voter fraud — reminds us of just how hollow the original pretense for firing those USAs was to begin with:

Mistakes and lapses

Kurt Vonnegut, R.I.P.

For a fatalist, he was admirably joyful:

(talking about when he tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope) Oh, she says well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a

Regarding Imus: A Few Further Thoughts

My piece on why I’m pulling out of the Imus country club is online now (it’s a sidebar to an excellent essay by Jim Poniewozik):

I’m embarrassed to admit that it took Imus’ saying something so devastatingly crass to make me realize that there just was no reason beyond ego to play along. I did the show almost solely to earn my

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