“Conventional wisdom in Washington, especially conservative conventional wisdom, is that campaign finance reform doesn’t matter as an issue. Conservatives resolutely refuse to learn any lesson from John McCain’s thumping of George W. Bush in New Hampshire, when he made campaign reform his central theme — or from Mr. McCain’s subsequent defeat after he veered from that message. But campaign reform turns out to have surprising political salience. Conservatives should welcome this fact, since they have no stake in the current system… Is it too much to ask our fellow Republicans and conservatives to rethink their self-defeating defense of the current corrupt campaign finance system, and shape campaign reform legislation that would be good for them and for the country?” – Bill Kristol, New York Times, September 27, 2000, on the doleful influence of large amounts of corporate money in politics. While he wrote this piece, Kristol was in the midst of getting $100,000 from Enron for political advice.
CHOMSKY’S LIES: Noam Chomsky cited Human Rights Watch in his recent Salon interview for his claim that Clinton’s feckless bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan took tens of thousands of lives. Human Rights Watch denies it ever made such a statement.
The Dish 