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Greg Sargent

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PLEASE, NO MORE...

Greg SargentJun 15, 2006

PLEASE, NO MORE JACKBOOTS STOMPING ON HUMAN FACES! To add a slightly more frivolous point to Matt's post below about Jonah Goldberg, isn't it high time to retire the "jackboots-stomping-on-a-human-face" clich� that Goldberg quotes "Derb" as using? I mean, does any military outfit itself with jackboots anymore? That's a real question. Anybody know? My inclination is to think that the only people who wear jackboots and might want to stomp on human faces these days are off begging on St. Mark's Place in New York's East Village.

UNITED NATIONS OFFICIALLY...

Greg SargentMay 26, 2006

UNITED NATIONS OFFICIALLY DECLARES IRAN DRESS CODES STORY UNTRUE. OK, you read it right here first: The U.N. has done an investigation and declared the bogus dress codes story to be false.

Now can we finally throw the last shovel of dirt on top of this story?

--Greg Sargent

IF BUSH WELCOMES...

Greg SargentMay 16, 2006

IF BUSH WELCOMES IMMIGRANTS, WHY PANDER TO THEIR ENEMIES? In today's Times, Elisabeth Bumiller offers a rather remarkable take on President Bush's immigration speech. She basically said that because his rhetoric was more accommodating than his actual policy proposals, it meant that his approach is "more subtle" than his proposed real-world solutions suggest. She tells us that "what was remarkable to people in Texas was how much he still believes in the power of immigration to invigorate the nation," and adds paragraph after paragraph about Bush's embrace of immigrants while in Texas.

THE POLITICAL IMPORTANCE...

Greg SargentMay 15, 2006

THE POLITICAL IMPORTANCE OF PLACING THE NSA SCANDAL IN A WIDER CONTEXT. We need to look at the latest NSA scandal not in isolation, but as part of a much larger pattern of presidential lawlessness -- a view Matt has rightly insisted upon -- and now we have some proof that this way of seeing it is politically more potent, too. Take a look at the USA Today poll that Atrios flagged. One of its key findings:

About two-thirds are concerned that the program may signal other, not-yet-disclosed efforts to gather information on the general public...

WHEN IN DOUBT,...

Greg SargentMay 15, 2006

WHEN IN DOUBT, LIE. In Laura Bush�s interview yesterday with Fox News, in which she blamed the media for her husband's abysmal poll numbers, the first lady said this:

And I think right now what we're seeing with these poll numbers is a lot of fun in the press with taking a poll every other week and putting it on the news, on the front page of the newspaper. When his polls were really high, they weren't on the front page. (Emphasis added.)

Really? Here's a list of headlines from The New York Times and The Washington Post about polls taken when President Bush wasn't on such hard times. Every one of these was on the front page:

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