The copy-editing dept, i.e. you, has sent me a memo. "Coup de grace" means a strike that tries to put a victim out of his or her misery. It does not mean what I wanted it to mean in this post. A reader elaborates:
If Cheney had been killed in the attack it might have been the coup de grace to the administration’s policies in the region. The attack may have been a coup de main; it was certainly a coup de theatre.
Obviously not my coup of tea.
The former Chief Justice prevented Hispanic voters from casting ballots in Pheonix in 1962. Newly declassified FBI documents fill in the picture. That much is clear. But was his judicial philosophy also designed to keep minorities from the polls? Here’s a negative view of Rehnquist’s legacy from Legal Times.
Phillip Weiss re-emerges in … The American Conservative, a magazine that’s getting hotter by the day. His thesis? That Carter’s vicious attack on Israel has been a net plus for the former president in the curren political climate. Money quote:
The conventional wisdom seemed to be that Carter had damaged himself, and badly.
But the fury has masked a quieter trend —nodding support for the president’s views across the country. The book still ranks sixth on the New York Times bestseller list three months after publication, and Carter has taken on a moral halo among progressives and realists, the shotgun marriage of the Bush years. Film director Jonathan Demme, who mainstreamed gay rights with “Philadelphia,” is making a documentary on the book tour. “NBC Nightly News” featured the former president breaking down in tears on a panel at the Carter Center when relating a story of praying to God to give him strength before he confronted Anwar Sadat at Camp David in 1978, when Carter forged an historic peace accord between Israel and Egypt.
“I think the attacks in some ways have made the book more effective,” says Michael Brown, a fellow at the Palestine Center. “It’s extraordinary, but when people oppose a book or a movie, and make a big fuss out of it, most Americans will say, ‘I want to know what this is about.’”
That’s Dinesh D’Souza’s game-plan as well. (Hat tip: 3Quarks. Photo: Former US President, and electoral observer, Jimmy Carter, speaks with candidate Daniel Ortega from the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in Managua, 06 November 2006. By Yuri Cortez/AFP/Getty Images)
Romney’s flip-flop routine is understandable once you realize he’s a businessman:
In the executive suite, abandoning deeply held attitudes and reversing positions are job requirements. How often have you seen a CEO proclaim that a struggling unit is not for sale, only to put it on the block a few months later?
And Bush’s MBA taught him … what, exactly?
An old slur gains new salience. Here’s why:
Facts matter. Reality matters. Right now, it’s possible that facts and reality matter more than ever before, as we are being faced with crisis upon crisis. If we do not stand up for the facts, and demand that reality be restored to its rightful place in our politics and policies, we will not be able to survive all the crises that we are faced with.
Conservapedia is a joke, to be sure, and it’s not even a good joke. The truthiness culture that it represents, on the other hand, is a clear and present danger to our future well-being and that of our children. It is a mindset that is unhealthy and unacceptable, and it needs to be fought.
Some, however, just can’t get enough.
Jon Chait has a revelation.
Former New York City Mayor and possible Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani addresses a luncheon hosted by the Hoover Institution Overseers at the Willard Inter-Continental Hotel February 26, 2007 in Washington, DC. Giuliani layed out his postion on several key subjects, including welfare, education and health care reform, for the conservative thinktank.
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
From their point of view, surely a coup de grace: showing their firepower and fanaticism within earshot of the vice-president. All that was needed was for the veep to be trapped by a snowstorm for one night for the enemy to act. It certainly helps justify the extraordinary secrecy the secret service deployed for the trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan; but it also helps justify mounting concern that we are losing traction in the war against the Talbian in the region. Pakistan is particularly the threat, after the peace-deal with the terrorists by Musharraf. But here again, diplomacy does not seem to be Cheney’s strong suit. "Pakistan does not accept dictation from any side or any source" was Musharraf’s original response to Cheney’s strong-arm tactics. Kharzai seems more supportive – just alarmed that he may be abandoned in the near or distant future. Both Democrats and Republicans need to make sure that Kharzai knows that U.S. support for his fledlging democracy is solid and bipartisan and open-ended. And that the debacle in Iraq – and whatever redeployments may be needed to grapple with it – will not affect that.
I remember when Nixon died that I was in a hotel room in New York about to head out for a night on the town. Then the Frost interviews came on the television, and I was still there, transfixed, hours later. It’s some of the most riveting television ever broadcast. Here are some highlights. Because you can never see enough Nixon.
Grand Rapids, Michigan, 8.30 am.
The Dish 