Sam Rosenfeld

“WINNING THE CRITICAL WAR OF WILL.” Via K-Lo, Fred Thompson endorses the Green Lantern theory of foreign policy in his response to Harry Reid‘s critique of General Peter Pace. Harry Reid, though, has taken a different route. He made his statement about General Pace on a conference call with fringe elements of the blogosphere who […]

LEFT IN THE WEST. The Hill discusses recent changes that have improved Democrats’ ’08 Senate prospects a bit. Several of them are happening in the West, where, as we’ve been hearing for a while, Democrats have been resurgent and well-placed to capitalize on opportunities as they arise. To be momentarily callous here, the death of […]

ON IT GOES. Though efforts by some war supporters to characterize last year’s bombing of the Shia Imam al-Askari mosque in Samarra as the original instigator of serious sectarian bloodletting in Iraq were completely bogus, it’s true that that attack caused an intense uproar and signified a worsening of the civil war. The mosque was […]

FERGUSON’S FACT-LESS CHECK OF GORE. In Sunday’s Washington Post, Weekly Standard senior editor Andrew Ferguson had a little hit job on Al Gore’s new book, built around Gore’s citation of an Abraham Lincoln quote which, according to Ferguson, has been falsely attributed to The Great Emancipator. Here’s how Ferguson opens the piece: You can’t really […]

HARDBALL. Here’s Ezra: Note that Ezra managed to actually stop Matthews in his tracks for a nanosecond right off the bat with his green-card-for-snitching-on-illegal-employers proposal. Nicely done. Meanwhile, yesterday I mentioned that, earlier in the program when talking to Ben Affleck, Matthews actually invoked fascism in criticizing Rudy Giuliani‘s approach to the politics of terrorism. […]

THE F WORD. Ezra‘s not on yet, but I figured it should be noted that, in his convo with Ben Affleck, Chris Matthews uttered the word “fascist” in criticizing the politics of fear that he thinks Rudy Giuliani employs on national security issues; I’ll link to the transcript when it gets posted. –Sam Rosenfeld

A POX! It may surprise you to hear this: In his column today, David Broder assesses the Democratic and Republican primary debates that happened this week, considers both parties to have engaged in a “dispiriting display of pandering and group-think,” and warns that “the dynamic on both sides is trending toward extreme positions that would […]

THE POLITICS OF RESENTMENT, GLOBAL WARMING EDITION. Last week, the White House touted President Bush‘s announcement of a new plan for 15 major countries to forge a climate change policy in 2008 as a bold step forward in tackling the problem. Substantively, it was easy enough to show that this was actually all bunk. But […]

“A BIZARRE NOTION.” He ended his answer implying that he’d authorize air strikes against an Iranian nuclear warhead if one’s built, but prior to the conclusion Joe Biden made two surprising (for a debate) and welcome points on Iran: that the policy of “regime change” itself — of making demands on a country like Iran […]

THROWING ‘BOWS. John Edwards took the first direct shots at fellow candidates in tonight’s Democratic primary debate in New Hampshire, on the subject of the war supplemental vote — he said the way in which Obama and Clinton handled the vote illustrated the difference between “being a leader and being a follower” (those two fell […]