Salon.com > Matt Drudge http://www.salon.com Fri, 04 Jan 2013 21:15:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Hack List No. 5: The Drudge Report http://www.salon.com/2012/12/20/hack_list_no_5_the_drudge_report/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/20/hack_list_no_5_the_drudge_report/#comments Thu, 20 Dec 2012 15:47:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13149890 This year, my annual list of the worst of political media highlights not just individuals, but the institutions that enable those individuals. The 2012 Hack List will be counting down the 10 media outlets that are hurting America over the next two days -- stay tuned! (Previous Hack List entries here, here and here.)

Shortly after noon on Nov. 6, Time's Mark Halperin posted this on Twitter: "When John Harris & I wrote 'Drudge rules our world,' we were describing what IS, not what ought to be. Doubters already proven wrong today." A few hours later Barack Obama won reelection, which I assume came as a shock to people who do get most of their news from Matt Drudge.

Here's a brief tour of 2012 as the Drudge Report covered it.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/20/hack_list_no_5_the_drudge_report/feed/ 26 Sorry, America, there is no such thing as “October Surprises” http://www.salon.com/2012/10/24/sorry_america_there_is_no_such_thing_as_october_surprises/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/24/sorry_america_there_is_no_such_thing_as_october_surprises/#comments Wed, 24 Oct 2012 20:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13051177 Mitt Romney campaign surrogate Donald Trump was making some noise recently about some sort of "announcement" he planned to make that would somehow hurt President Barack Obama's reelection efforts. Today, it turned out to be some nonsense related to Trump's pet theory that Obama was secretly not a very good student in college.

Meanwhile, celebrity attorney Gloria Allred promised some juicy revelations that would damage the presidential campaign of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. It is apparently some old testimony from Romney in his friend's divorce trial. What will it reveal? Probably nothing that will cause Romney to lose.

We're in fake-out October Surprise season, and for all their feigned world-weariness, political reporters love it. It would be so magical if some unforeseen event suddenly "shook up" an election in its closing weeks, or else everyone is basically stuck writing the same boring stories about "turnout operations" and "ground games" until Tuesday night.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/24/sorry_america_there_is_no_such_thing_as_october_surprises/feed/ 22 Hannity and Carlson freak out over Drudge video http://www.salon.com/2012/10/03/hannity_and_carlson_freak_out_over_drudge_video/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/03/hannity_and_carlson_freak_out_over_drudge_video/#comments Wed, 03 Oct 2012 14:28:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13028967 Tucker Carlson appeared on Sean Hannity's show last night to discuss the "game changer" video, trumpeted by the right-wing media, of Obama giving a speech about race in 2007.

Hannity pointed to Obama's cadence, what he later referred to as "Al Gore preacher mode," and which he thinks is different from Obama's normal style because of the audience: "You notice the change in the way he delivers this speech before a predominantly African-American audience," Hannity said.

Carlson agreed: "This accent is absurd. This is not the way Obama talks...he is telling a predominantly black audience something very clear. the federal government doesnt like you because you are black."

Watch:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/03/hannity_and_carlson_freak_out_over_drudge_video/feed/ 23 Dumb tweet: Obama phone “a bribe” http://www.salon.com/2012/09/27/dumb_tweet_obama_phone_a_bribe/ http://www.salon.com/2012/09/27/dumb_tweet_obama_phone_a_bribe/#comments Thu, 27 Sep 2012 21:33:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13024029 A video of a woman claiming that the Obama campaign gave phones to minorities in Cleveland went viral today, thanks to a link from the conservative Drudge Report. Word of the "Obama Phone" -- which is a myth -- spread to Twitter:

[embedtweet id="251425453313765376"]

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/09/27/dumb_tweet_obama_phone_a_bribe/feed/ 6 Drudge’s latest dog whistle http://www.salon.com/2012/09/27/drudges_latest_dog_whistle/ http://www.salon.com/2012/09/27/drudges_latest_dog_whistle/#comments Thu, 27 Sep 2012 16:57:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13023550 Matt Drudge has a history of using his site for race-baiting purposes, and that tradition continues today.

In a video posted on the Drudge Report, a black woman in Cleveland says that people should vote for Obama because he gave free phones to minorities and people on food stamps or other welfare benefits.

 

 

Here's the video in question:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/09/27/drudges_latest_dog_whistle/feed/ 10 Hot trend: Weird, dumb lies about Joe Biden http://www.salon.com/2012/08/16/hot_trend_weird_dumb_lies_about_joe_biden/ http://www.salon.com/2012/08/16/hot_trend_weird_dumb_lies_about_joe_biden/#comments Thu, 16 Aug 2012 21:28:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12984450 One major institutional difference between the left-wing and the right-wing media is the right-wing media's undisguised contempt for its audience. Right-wing blog readers, Rush listeners and Fox viewers of America, take note: They think you're stupid. All of them.

There's no other explanation for the conservative media tendency to highlight and publicize stories that any person who's been following politics for six months would immediately recognize as complete bullshit. This is why the Weekly Standard has created a clock that is counting down to the moment when Barack Obama will drop Joe Biden from the ticket and replace him with Hillary Clinton -- an event that everyone knows will not happen. Bill Kristol and his lackeys cannot possibly be dumb enough to actually believe that Obama will blow up his own campaign and pull an entirely pointless V.P. switch. But they obviously think Weekly Standard readers are dumb enough to buy it. Matt Drudge, who knows his audience is stupid (Condi for Veep!), has been pushing the dump Biden story hard all week, just because. Everyone knows it won't happen.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/08/16/hot_trend_weird_dumb_lies_about_joe_biden/feed/ 22 Drudge won’t link to this http://www.salon.com/2012/07/05/drudge_wont_link_to_this/ http://www.salon.com/2012/07/05/drudge_wont_link_to_this/#comments Thu, 05 Jul 2012 15:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12950794 I spent part of my Fourth of July with Matt Drudge fans, after Drudge linked to a silly Newsbusters piece taking umbrage at my interview with PBS's Tavis Smiley on Monday. (Here's the whole thing.) Umbrage-addicted Noel Sheppard found fault with most of what I said, but he and his readers were most outraged when I told Smiley that Republicans have "an older white base that doesn't quite understand how healthcare works." Also big on Drudge Wednesday: Chris Rock tweeting "Happy white peoples independence day, the slaves weren't free but I'm sure they enjoyed fireworks." I'm glad Chris Rock and I could make Drudge's holiday a happy one, since he's been devoting his site to scoping out signs of anti-white racism everywhere since Barack Obama's election.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/07/05/drudge_wont_link_to_this/feed/ 208 Matt Drudge’s rescue mission http://www.salon.com/2012/04/26/matt_drudges_rescue_mission/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/26/matt_drudges_rescue_mission/#comments Thu, 26 Apr 2012 11:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12909857 D.C.’s conservative newspaper, the Washington Times, has long been mocked for its crazy owner, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. When he isn't busy performing mass weddings, the billionaire Moon has been underwriting the money-losing paper -- which, at a high point, once earned the personal praise of Ronald Reagan. Recently, however, the Times has struggled, not just because of the usual industry woes, but also because of infighting among the 92-year-old Moon’s heirs. Thankfully, the Times has had a helping hand from another famous right-wing eccentric: Matt Drudge.

For the past year, Drudge has provided the Washington Times with, on average, 46 percent of its monthly traffic. In November of 2011, the Drudge Report sent 4.7 million visitors to the Washington Times website, or 57 percent of all the Times’ traffic that month. By comparison, just 820,000 visitors actually accessed the Times through its homepage that November. (These numbers come from the Times’ internal Google Analytics statistics, which Salon obtained.)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/26/matt_drudges_rescue_mission/feed/ 5 The Breitbart media http://www.salon.com/2012/03/05/the_breitbart_media/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/05/the_breitbart_media/#comments Mon, 05 Mar 2012 12:45:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12472371 Andrew Breitbart's fingerprints are all over the majority of the partisan political Internet. The Blaze, the Daily Caller, Huffington Post, even Politico: They'd all look quite different without his influence. There was already Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes and Matt Drudge himself, but Breitbart was a phenomenon of the Internet age, and would not have thrived before the Web helped to destabilize the traditional press.

He intuitively understood how the media work even if he needed to invent a grand conspiracy to explain the motivations of its primary actors. He knew that if the press felt it had missed a major story from an unexpected source, it would quickly rush to be the first to publicize further material from that source in the future. He learned this from Matt Drudge, who really did become the de facto "assignment editor" of the political press following his publication of Michael Isikoff's axed Lewinsky story. The parallel right-wing press has been in existence for years, and the early conservative blogosphere organized itself around blogs from people like Michelle Malkin and Glenn Reynolds, but Breitbart was an expert in forcing their obsessions into the "mainstream."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/03/05/the_breitbart_media/feed/ 75 “Obama donor” Pakistani agent gave $10,000 to GOP congressman http://www.salon.com/2011/07/19/obama_donor_2/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/19/obama_donor_2/#comments Tue, 19 Jul 2011 20:15:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2011/07/19/obama_donor The FBI arreased two U.S. citizens for being unregistered agents of the Pakistani government. Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai and Zaheer Ahmad ran a "Kashmiri organization" that was actually controlled by the Pakistani military intelligence service, according to the Bureau. The organization was designed to advance Pakistani interests in Kashmir while hiding the involvement of the Pakistani government in funding the lobbying.

Here's Matt Drudge's headline (which was, for hours, just below the huge Murdoch story on top of the page): "Obama donor arrested as 'Pakistani agent'..."

Free Republic used the same headline, along with "Pakistani accused of masking contributions to US politicians."

Leaving aside the fact that "Pakistani agent" sounds more like "spy" than "unregistered foreign lobbyist," it's true that Syed Ghulam Fai gave $250 to Barack Obama, making him an "Obama donor." He's also given $6,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and at least $10,000 to Representative Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/19/obama_donor_2/feed/ 16 The right’s weird Michelle Obama problem http://www.salon.com/2011/07/13/michelle_obama_resentment/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/13/michelle_obama_resentment/#comments Wed, 13 Jul 2011 01:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2011/07/12/michelle_obama_resentment It was just stupid when the Washington Post's 44 blog ("Politics and Policy") "reported" that Michelle Obama ate a hamburger. (Or, as Ta-Nehisi Coates said, it was "the dumbest story ever written in all of human history." He's not wrong!) After the right-wing blogs all picked it up, as they were always going to because of their seething, inexplicable hatred for the first lady, though, it became something darker than stupid.

After everyone else began calling the story dumb and pointless and inane, the Post... ran a poll. Now the people can decide if Michelle Obama is "a hypocrite" for eating a hamburger! In order to justify the newsworthiness of "Michelle Obama eating a hamburger," the Post's Tim Carman Googled "Michelle Obama" and "hamburgers," and discovered that she has eaten at least five hamburgers in the past.

Type in “Michelle Obama and salads” into Google, and you gets tons of hits about her introducing salad bars into schools. But few hits of her ordering salads in public.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/13/michelle_obama_resentment/feed/ 149 Matt Drudge has cool new white supremacist fans! http://www.salon.com/2011/06/09/drudge_white_supremacists/ http://www.salon.com/2011/06/09/drudge_white_supremacists/#comments Thu, 09 Jun 2011 19:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2011/06/09/drudge_white_supremacists Remember how news aggregator Matt Drudge has basically turned his site into a one-stop shop for news about black people being scary? ThinkProgress has found some people who are really excited about this development. They are, of course, the white supremacists of the Council of Conservative Citizens.

ThinkProgress and the Southern Poverty Law Center report that the neo-confederate CCC recently crowed on their website that Mr. Drudge's famous report looked remarkably like their own work.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/06/09/drudge_white_supremacists/feed/ 63 Matt Drudge’s disgusting race war awareness campaign http://www.salon.com/2011/06/01/drudge_race_panic/ http://www.salon.com/2011/06/01/drudge_race_panic/#comments Wed, 01 Jun 2011 12:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2011/06/01/drudge_race_panic Matt Drudge's non-political obsessions used to be harmless things like "extreme weather" and "pictures of Olympic wrestlers." Since the election of Barack Obama, though, Drudge -- the proto-blogger and reclusive creator of the noted Courier New tribute site the Drudge Report -- has developed a new fixation. He seems to be actively seeking out and publicizing stories of kids and young people getting in fights. Not just any people, mind you! People with something in particular in common.

It sort of started with the tale of Ashley Todd, the 20-year-old McCain campaign volunteer who claimed she was attacked by a savage, black Obama supporter, who supposedly carved the letter "B" into her face. She made the whole thing up, but her story's many inconsistencies and unlikely elements did not stop Drudge from heavily publicizing it, until it all fell apart.

Then there was the tale of the New Black Panther Party poll-watchers who "intimidated" Fox cameras in Philadelphia. You can imagine how much Drudge enjoyed that one.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/06/01/drudge_race_panic/feed/ 539 Five political books that were doomed before they were even published http://www.salon.com/2011/05/20/bad_idea_books/ http://www.salon.com/2011/05/20/bad_idea_books/#comments Fri, 20 May 2011 11:55:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2011/05/20/bad_idea_books On May 12, it was reported that Donald Trump was working on a "policy book," to be released this summer by the right-wing Regnery Publishing. No surprise there: All candidates and would-be candidates for president release either memoirs or policy books, or both. On May 16, less than a week later, Trump announced that he will not be running for president. Whoops! Now that book is pointless, months before the ghostwriter has finished it.

Trump's is not the first, and will not be the last political book that was rendered ridiculous or blatantly incorrect before or very shortly after its release. It's not even the only one released this year! Here are some of our favorite sad, wrong books:

"Where's the Birth Certificate?" by Jerome Corsi, 2011

Oh, there it is! Sorry, Jerome Corsi, but you couldn't have realized that your entirely pointless search for the "long-form" birth certificate would end nearly a month before your book's publication.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/05/20/bad_idea_books/feed/ 20 Matt Drudge hypes Jerome Corsi’s new birther book http://www.salon.com/2011/04/20/corsi_book/ http://www.salon.com/2011/04/20/corsi_book/#comments Wed, 20 Apr 2011 17:21:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2011/04/20/corsi_book Good news, literate people: Jerome Corsi's latest book has gone to press. And Matt Drudge has exclusive details! And by "details" I mean "incredibly, comically vague assertions."

Corsi is best known, still, for his famous "Swift Boat" book, which was full of easily debunked lies about John Kerry, but which was not easily debunked until all the lies had been properly reported and disseminated. Since that book he's gone "full fruitcake," repeating every single right-wing conspiracy theory that comes down the pike, from the NAFTA superhighway to the truly weird "abiotic oil" theory, which says petroleum doesn't come from biological material.

Corsi already wrote his silly Obama book, in time for the 2008 elections, but he forgot to make that book about how Obama was secretly born in Kenya, because that particular conspiracy theory had just been invented at the time. So now he's giving it another go, with "Where's the Birth Certificate."

Drudge's "FLASH" is very, very funny, so I'm just going to reprint it:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/04/20/corsi_book/feed/ 68 Israel loses five days’ worth of time to bomb Iran in one day! http://www.salon.com/2010/08/17/bomb_iran_days_drudge/ http://www.salon.com/2010/08/17/bomb_iran_days_drudge/#comments Tue, 17 Aug 2010 18:50:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2010/08/17/bomb_iran_days_drudge As of this morning, Matt Drudge was warning Israel that it only had "8 days" to bomb Iran.

The situation has deterioated considerably since then. At the moment, Israel has only three days left to strike Iran's terrifying nuclear reactor.

It's not just Matt's confusion! Here's former envoy to the U.N. and world's angriest walrus John Bolton on Monday: "So if Israel is going to do anything against Bushehr it has to move in the next eight days."

And Bolton, today:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/08/17/bomb_iran_days_drudge/feed/ 69 Did Michelle Obama go on vacation because she hates her husband (and America)? http://www.salon.com/2010/08/09/michelle_obama_vacation_outrage/ http://www.salon.com/2010/08/09/michelle_obama_vacation_outrage/#comments Mon, 09 Aug 2010 21:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2010/08/09/michelle_obama_vacation_outrage Mickey Kaus, Maureen Dowd and Matt Drudge agree: Attention must be paid to a vacation taken by the president's wife and their young children.

Maureen Dowd wants to know why that terrible Michelle Obama isn't making her husband "toast" and martinis instead of jetting around the world cavorting with "a cavalcade of Secret Service agents, friends, children and staff" while he sits around miserably solving all the world's problems. Michelle is "giggling" at her hardworking husband, apparently, instead of giving him foot rubs or whatever wives are supposed to do when their husbands get home. [UPDATE: Obama is "gigging" her husband, apparently, according to Maureen Dowd. I regret, and am somewhat confused by, the error.]

Moving from bizarrely retrograde to outright batshit, we turn to former Slate blogger and current failed Senate candidate Mickey Kaus, who, considering the first lady's utterly unremarkable trip to Spain, postulates "three levels of perception." The "Real Insider," according to Mickey, knows that Michelle Obama's trip ("with her daughter and an expensive posse") means: "Jeez, they must have had some kind of fight. She's pissed! This is a big 'screw you.'" (Women, amirite?)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/08/09/michelle_obama_vacation_outrage/feed/ 178 Now reopen Breitbart’s ACORN fraud — and get the story right http://www.salon.com/2010/07/21/acorn_10/ http://www.salon.com/2010/07/21/acorn_10/#comments Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:15:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joe_conason//2010/07/21/acorn Former USDA official Shirley Sherrod, a dedicated public servant innocent of the prejudice and misconduct falsely imputed to her, deserves justice. As soon as the White House and Tom Vilsack restore her job, with an appropriate apology, they will begin to remove a stain of cowardice from their administration. But while that may be all the government can do, it isn’t sufficient to close this case.

Real justice, as I suspect Sherrod would agree, also requires due process for Andrew Breitbart, the Internet impresario who framed her on his Big Government website. In these circumstances, that means a fair, thorough and tough examination of the media fraud that launched his operation last year: the ACORN tapes, whose misuse by Breitbart closely parallels his behavior in the Sherrod affair.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/07/21/acorn_10/feed/ 116 Thursday link dump: Invisible electric Kool-Aid acid fence http://www.salon.com/2010/06/24/thursday_link_dump_8/ http://www.salon.com/2010/06/24/thursday_link_dump_8/#comments Thu, 24 Jun 2010 22:45:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2010/06/24/thursday_link_dump
  • North Koreans actually got to watch live World Cup soccer! Until North Korea suffered a humiliating defeat. Then no one mentioned it.
  • Jack Shafer has advice for people being profiled for feature stories: don't get profiled for a feature story.
  • Scalia actually wrote a good opinion today!
  • Here's your regular reminder that Rick Berman is a shady character.
  • Rupert Murdoch went on Fox News and forced Doocey to say "undocumented immigrants" instead of "illegals."
  • Dave Weigel apologized for writing a bunch of totally justified things about Matt Drudge and other tools.
  • Ed Rendell presents a master class in dealing with a sex scandal rumor.
  • Rand Paul will fight immigration with "an underground electric fence." No one know what the hell that means.
  • Tea Partiers -- who constantly claim liberals are "infiltrating" and embarrassing them -- have acquited SEIU shirts. But... why?
  • Jason Linkins criticizes some wonderful BP-sponsored "journalism."
  • The American Bar Association found Elena Kagan "well qualified" -- their highest rating -- for the Supreme Court. The vote was unanimous, with one abstention. This is, I guess, "good news" for her nomination, but won't really do anything to undercut any potential Republican attack, because those attacks will not be based on "facts." The ABA has rated most recent nominees "well qualified." (Except Thomas.)

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    ]]>     http://www.salon.com/2010/06/24/thursday_link_dump_8/feed/ 3     Tuesday link dump: BP’s PR http://www.salon.com/2010/06/01/tuesday_link_dump_3/ http://www.salon.com/2010/06/01/tuesday_link_dump_3/#comments Tue, 01 Jun 2010 23:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2010/06/01/tuesday_link_dump
  • The House and the Senate are mad at each other. The Senate is mad that the House is passing too many bills, and the House is mad that the Senate is incapable of action on anything. Freshman Democrat Gerry Connolly: "When the word spread last night [the Senate] had already adjourned, people were astounded, stunned." Happy recess!
  • What do the media expect President Obama to do about the oil spill that he's not currently doing? Caring and emoting. Just, you know, take it really seriously, in front of their cameras!
  • Human Rights Campaign hired a Republican pollster to convince Scott Brown to support the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell." Then they revealed the results of that poll, and now the Republican pollster is mad that people think he took dirty gay money from dirty gay people.
  • "Does Washington care about unemployment?" No.
  • BP hired former Cheney aide Anne Womack-Kolton to be their new spokeswoman. Also working on crisis management for BP is former Human Rights Campaign and RIAA head and DC power-lesbian and Huffington Post blogger Hilary Rosen!
  • New York Times political reporter Matt Bai doesn't understand political science and apparently doesn't read any liberal bloggers.
  • According to Matt Drudge, the people whose boat was boarded by commandos while they were in international waters were, in fact, the aggressors, and the people boarding said boat, from a helicopter, were the victims of a terrible attack. (The sad thing is that that is basically expected from people like Matt Drudge. It is a little more depressing to hear it from "liberals" like Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer.)

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