Yes, say Jonathan Chait and David Frum, in pre-mortems for the G.O.P.’s efforts to derail the Democratic bill. Chait argues that the Republicans could have sold moderate Democrats on a “vastly more limited” piece of legislation, if they’d been willing to compromise early in the process. Instead, by uniting in lockstep opposition and gambling that [...]
Huge crowds of Iranians turned out for the funeral of leading dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri in the holy Shi’ite city of Qom on Monday and some chanted anti-government slogans, websites reported.Montazeri, who died late on Saturday aged 87, was viewed as the spiritual patron of a pro-reform opposition movement that blossomed after [...]
On blatant display at Columbia U. Iran conference
Universal jurisdiction” sounds like a term plucked from obscure international law journals, but it has pernicious and profoundly antidemocratic consequences in the real world. A British arrest warrant, issued over the weekend in London for former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni, shows precisely why. The warrant charged Ms. Livni—the current leader of the Knesset opposition—with [...]
Can the Senate’s defectors derail the government takeover of health care?
WASHINGTON – The end game in sight, Senate Democrats coped with stubborn internal differences as well as implacable Republican opposition on Monday in a struggle to pass health care legislation by Christmas.A liberal-backed call to expand Medicare as part of the legislation drew strong opposition from Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn. and quieter concerns from a [...]
The energized “tea party” movement, which upended this year’s political debate with noisy anti-government protests, is preparing to shake up the 2010 elections by channeling money and supporters to conservative candidates set to challenge both Democrats and Republicans. Buoyed by their success in capsizing a moderate Republican candidate this fall in Upstate New York, tea [...]
Show biz lore holds that you have to be really smart to play the dumb blond, and that Jayne Mansfield and Judy Holliday actually had Mensa-level I.Qs.
So maybe Media Matters is now lifting tactics from The Girl Can’t Help It instead of Rules for Radicals. But is “playing dumb” really the, er, smartest strategy a [...]
Related posts:
On Nov. 18, two Iranian Internet activists, Ali Behzadian Nejad and Omid Lavassani, were sentenced to six years in prison. Their crimes? Mr. Lavassani had the audacity to design a Web site for the leading opposition figure Mir Hossein Mousavi. Mr. Nejad is being jailed for “published comments” written by others on his blog, and [...]
