The immediate post-debate consensus, across the political spectrum, was that George W. Bush didn’t do so well. Although the blow-by-blow analyses differed from pundit to pundit, almost everyone identified two areas in which the president must strengthen his performance in time for the next debate: his answers, and his body language.
Pulling out of the debates, [...]

“Whether or not Iraq was central to the war on terrorism before the U.S.-led invasion — a point on which reasonable people can differ — there is no question that it is central today.”
Max Boot, the writer of those lines from an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, is a senior fellow at the [...]

In an article following up on its post-debate coverage, Fox News correspondent Jane Roh quotes a member of an organization called “Commies for Kerry” as heartily endorsing the Kerry candidacy.
Of course, there were some Kerry supporters in attendance who had no doubts whatever about their candidate.
“We’re trying to get Comrade Kerry elected and get that [...]

“Communists for Kerry,” the group cited as a pro-Kerry organization by Fox News correspondent Jane Roh, if that’s her real name, was identified as a Republican organization by both Cox News Service and The New Republic in late August.
The group’s website, to which the Fox News story links, includes an “About Us” section containing [...]

During Friday’s presidential debate, John Kerry articulated a number of areas in which the Bush administration has failed to act with sufficient ardor to protect the United States. Port security, private infrastructure security, air cargo inspections, the flagging effort to secure nuclear materials around the world, more police, firefighters and medical personnel. Kerry might have [...]

Joan Didion has an essay in the current New York Review of Books addressing the role that a fear of imagination has played in surrendering the nation’s collective authority into the hands of an individual.
She’s addressing the likes of Tom Friedman, who now says of the administration’s Iraq adventure that “what I resent so much [...]

The Boston Globe has a lengthy article detailing the ways in which the Republican congressional majority have shut down the democratic process within the legislature, particularly in the House of Representatives.
This is not just another “he said-she said” quarrel over immeasurables. The Globe goes into detail—ten pages of it—on the number of bills members have [...]

Associated Press carries an item today noting that John Edwards has given Vermont Senator Pat Leahy “a prime seat” for tonight’s vice-presidential debate. A top Bush campaign official, according to AP, has called John Kerry’s campaign to complain.
Leahy is the senator whom Cheney urged to “f**k yourself” when the two met during a senate event.
So [...]

Vice president Dick Cheney didn’t look so hot physically tonight, but he hung in throughout the entire debate with Democratic challenger John Edwards.
Like his putative boss, Cheney seemed unprepared for an actual contest. Unlike the president, the vice president possesses a range of skills sufficient to at least put on a show despite a [...]

Author and Harvard University professor Stanley Hoffmann has an essay in the current New York Review of Books in which he advocates a speedy withdrawal from Iraq. The bookends of his argument are that counter-insurgencies are rarely defeated by the occupying power that sparked them, and that a sane withdrawal would do much to strengthen [...]

Newsweek’s Mike Isikoff, who turns in good investigative performances on alternate Tuesdays in months ending with “r,” has a partial list of little white lies told by Dick Cheney during his debate with John Edwards. Chief among them is Cheney’s blatant revisionism of the Bush administration’s rationale for invading Iraq, which turns out to have [...]

Charles Duelfer has become the seventeenth U.S. official to note that where banned weapons in Iraq are concerned, there’s no there there.
Vice president Dick Cheney is quoted by ABC News as greeting the release of Duelfer’s report by remarking that “the headlines all say no weapons of mass destruction stockpiled in Baghdad. We already knew [...]

The Department of Energy’s short-term energy outlook for October predicts that the cost of home heating oil will increase by nearly 30% over last year, with propane and natural gas costs expected to rise by 17% and 11%, respectively.
The rising costs threaten to swamp the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which distributes [...]

James Baker is the Bush family talisman, their genie. When one or another of them are in trouble, they need only give the lamp a few rubs and out comes Baker, wreathed in smoke and packing a supernatural punch.
Baker nearly rescued Bush père’s doomed bid for a second term. He was largely responsible for [...]

A Government Accountability Office report released yesterday shows an overall increase in prescription drug prices of nearly 22% since January of 2000. Brand name prices increased by 26%, more than three times the 8.3% increase in generic drug prices.
The GAO study (.pdf file) looked at the drugs most commonly prescribed to Medicare and non-Medicare customers. [...]

A recent study by the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) estimated that as little as 27% of U.S. aid money spent in Iraq actually reaches Iraqis.
The rest, according to CSIS, is swallowed up by security, administrative overhead, insurance, labor costs for foreign workers, corporate profits, and mismanagement, fraud and corruption.
CSIS estimated the [...]

John Kerry outpointed George Bush in tonight’s town-hall style debate, but the president appeared to be conscious and resting comfortably after the mauling he took in the first debate.
Both candidates had some difficulty answering the questions put by the audience. John Kerry led the off-topic parade, but it wasn’t long before the president caught on [...]

Dov Weisglass, one of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s closest friends and his senior advisor, pronounced the Palestinian state dead in an interview with Israel’s liberal newspaper, Ha’aretz.
Weisglass told Ha’aretz that Sharon’s plan to withdraw from the Gaza strip would serve to “prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on [...]

Famed philospher Jacques Derrida, known as the father of deconstructionism, died yesterday of pancreatic cancer at a hospital in Paris.
Coincidentally, the New York Times is running a lengthy article deconstructing the meaning of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the current number one on the U.S. hit list in Iraq.
One of the principles of deconstructionism is that [...]

The third debate between George Bush and John Kerry on Wednesday in Arizona may well decide the winner of the election. If John Kerry uses the debate to articulate a vision for the future of the country, the debate will be his.
After nearly four years in office, George Bush has no coherent vision. As bad [...]

Eddie Adams was the photographer every writer wants to be. Digital Journalist has posted its long-awaited (by me, anyway) tribute to Adams, featuring a selection of his photos and recollections from his friends.
The most famous Eddie Adams photo is of a South Vietnamese officer executing a Viet Cong man on the street during the [...]

Daniel Okrent, the public editor of the New York Times, published the name and hometown of a reader who sent an inflammatory e-mail to Times political correspondent Adam Nagourney in response to a Nagourney article in the Times.
Okrent, who also published the names and hometowns of several other readers, did not indicate whether the reader [...]

U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton chastised the Justice Department last week for failing to stop leaks naming Steven Hatfill as a “person of interest” in the FBI’s investigation of the anthrax attacks following 911.
According to the Washington Post, Walton, the judge in Hatfill’s civil suit against the government, told Justice Department attorneys that “if you [...]

Karen Ryan, the public relations flack who impersonated a journalist for the Bush administration’s Health and Human Services Department, has surfaced again, this time in connection with a Department of Education video news release program.
One service the company provided was a video news release geared for television stations. The video includes a news story [...]

For the second or third time in recent weeks, U.S. officials have acknowledged that U.S. domestic politics trump military necessity in Iraq.
The Los Angeles Times has an item in today’s paper headlined, “Major Assaults on Hold Until After U.S. Vote.” The article quotes a number of unidentified sources as saying that attacks on insurgent strongholds [...]

Sinclair Broadcasting’s decision to run an anti-Kerry film on the eve of the presidential election may be costly. In response to the company’s decision to run “Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal,” during prime time next week, opponents of the move are organizing an effort to challenge the license renewals of any Sinclair stations [...]

Republican Senator Kit Bond of Missourri issued a press release today taking aim at the Pentagon’s mismanagement of absentee balloting for U.S. troops. Senator Bond has “included language in the Defense Authorization bill to force the Pentagon to confront the problems surrounding military voting.”
“Our troops are overseas working to help the newly freed people in [...]

By ordering its stations to pre-empt their prime-time schedule to air an anti-Kerry film, SBG has drawn the country’s attention to a gathering threat: Weapons of Mass Deception.
More dangerous than anything a terrorist group or an outcast state like Iraq is our ability to subvert ourselves. By choosing to define an obviously polemical film as [...]

Sinclair Broadcast Group’s decision to air an anti-Kerry film across its 62 stations may have launched a liberal juggernaut.
In the days since the Los Angeles Times reported that the media company had ordered its stations to pre-empt their prime time schedules in favor of airing the film “Stolen Honor,” liberal weblogs, media watchdogs and politicians [...]

In a little-noticed article last week, Knight Ridder reporters quoted Iraq’s defense minister, Defense Minister Hazem Shalan al Khuzaei, as saying he wants U.S. troops “to stay for 15 years. On the general level, I want them to stay until the situation stabilizes. Why do I favor 15 years? The fact is, we are [...]