Ben Adler

OVERESTIMATING AIPAC. My friend Ari Berman‘s new Nation piece on AIPAC gathers some insightful quotes and makes a valid point in the last paragaph about the gap between the moderately high level of public support for Israel and the exceedingly high level of congressional support. But his explanation, which seems to boil down entirely to […]

HOLY HOWELL RAINES, MARKOS! It’s as though the ghost of Howell Raines has somehow snuck back into the New York Times editorial page. Who could have guessed when looking at the Lieberman/Lamont headline that The Times would ditch their establishmentarian penchant for high-minded bi-partisanship and endorse Ned Lamont? To a political junkie, this was like […]

WHY DOES NELSON GET A FREE PASS? It’s been often noted, in the ever-expanding coverage of the liberal bloggers’ animosity towards Joe Lieberman (the most recent and best comments come from Hendrick Hertzberg in this week’s New Yorker), that many Democratic senators, like Ben Nelson of Nebraska, have equally conservative voting records but don’t incur […]

NYT MISSES THE POINT. Today’s New York Times profile of Keith Olbermann as the great hope of MSNBC misses the most interesting aspect of his ascent. It focuses entirely on the humorous side of Olbermann’s beef with Bill O’Reilly and the accusation that Olbermann is picking fights with O’Reilly to boost his ratings. The article […]

BUSH FLIRTS WITH LIEBERMAN. One of the more puzzling moments in George W. Bush‘s interview on Larry King last night was when he was asked whether he would endorse Joe Lieberman for Senate should he lose the Democratic primary and run as an independent. Bush dodged that as follows: G. BUSH: First, the Democrats have […]

THE BLOGOSPHERE’S BEEF WITH TNR. I think Marty Peretz‘s Friday evening post on The Plank, in which he defended TNR from its left-wing blog attackers and excoriated their grammar, actually made a lot of fair points. TNR does effectively criticize the Bush administration and congressional Republicans on any number of issues, mostly domestic. And, I […]

MINUTEMEN EXPLAINED. The New York Times has inadvertently explained the recent resurgence in xenophobia. The explanations that I gleaned from their big story on immigration today are: 1) there are too many retirees with nothing better to do, and 2) there are too many suburbanites not used to diversity and allergic to the common good. […]

PRINCIPLES. I generally agree with Matt‘s article today, particularly his conclusion that principles are “only good if your principles are the right ones.” But he seems to be contradicting himself here: Lieberman at least plausibly really does think the role of a United States senator ought to be complaining about “Friends”� time slot. If so, […]

KEEP DIGGING, TOM. The Tom Friedman column mocked �round the world (in which he boldly declared for the umpteenth time that “the next six months are crucial in Iraq”) just gets funnier as Friedman goes on the defensive. To wit, on CNN today he defended that stereotypically hollow, centrist nonsense with… hollow, centrist nonsense! Money […]