John McCain is fighting back against more dirty tricks in South Carolina. This time, it’s a flier attacking his Vietnam War record (of all things) and robo-calls claiming he isn’t really pro-life. In 2000, some supporters of President Bush spread a false rumor that McCain fathered a black child.
At least 40 people claim to have seen a mile-wide unidentified object flying in the sky Jan. 8 near Stephenville, Texas, including some guys who supposedly recorded it on a cell phone.
Iraq has had four attacks since November by female suicide bombers. Wednesday’s bombing, near a market and mosque in Diyala province, killed eight civilians. Maybe, as U.S. military officers say, al-Qaida is turning to women because it’s running out of male volunteers. Maybe it’s because females are less likely to arouse suspicion. In any case, when first lady Laura Bush and others call for expanded rights and opportunities for women in Iraq, this isn’t what they have in mind.
Under a court-ordered disclosure, the Bush White House revealed this week that it destroyed e-mail backup tapes for a period of time before October 2003 — a possible violation of federal laws requiring preservation of presidential documents.
The revelation came amid a lawsuit by citizen groups trying to find out what happened to millions of allegedly missing White House e-mails.
Because of the recycling, “there may be no way to recover the missing e-mails from a period in which the U.S. decided to go to war with Iraq, White House officials leaked the identity of Valerie Plame and the Justice Department started a criminal investigation of the White House,†said Anne Weismann, a lawyer for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The most secretive administration in history is working hard to cover its tracks. What does the Bush team have to hide? Apparently a lot.
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton apologized during the Tuesday debate for some of the tactics by their campaigns. Here’s the view of New York Times columnist David Brooks about the fighting:
“What we have here is worthy of a Tom Wolfe novel: the bonfire of the multicultural vanities. The Clintons are hitting Obama with everything they’ve got. The Obama subordinates are twisting every critique into a racial outrage in an effort to make all criticism morally off-limits. Obama’s campaign drew up a memo delineating all of the Clintons’ supposed racial outrages. Bill Clinton is frantically touring black radio stations to repair any wounds.
“Meanwhile, Clinton friend Robert Johnson, a one-man gaffe machine, reminds us of Obama’s drug use and accuses him of being like Sidney Poitier in ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.’ Another Clinton supporter, Gloria Steinem, notes that black men were given the vote a half-century before women.
“This is the logical extreme of the identity politics that (h)as been floating around this country for decades. Every revolution devours its offspring, and it seems the multicultural one does, too.â€
GOP legislative leaders undermined their own goal of holding the growth in the state budget to 5 percent by asking the governor to boost the Legislature’s operating funds by 20 percent next year, $16.4 million to $19.7 million, for a “computer strategic plan.†The extra money would pay for high-tech upgrades related to Webcasting, public broadcasting and more. No doubt the needs are real, but shouldn’t self-professed budget restraint begin at home?
John McCain is fighting back against more dirty tricks in South Carolina. This time, it’s a flier attacking his Vietnam War record (of all things) and robo-calls claiming he isn’t really pro-life. In 2000, some supporters of President Bush spread a false rumor that McCain fathered a black child.
