"The Obama Haters" is a horribly inaccurate title. The article itself is a 25-years-later review of Richard Hofstadter's 1964 essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Reading this essay (and the Slate article today) gives rise to thought on what led to the McCarthyism that Hofstadter wrote in reaction to, and what might lie in our very near future....regarding the Obama haters.
posted by Kickstart70 on Sep 23, 2009 - 73 comments

The coverup is always bigger than the crime. No matter what your political leanings, the Scooter Libby obstruction of justice trial has something for everyone, including testimony by memory experts, an all-star witness lineup, including the Vice President of the United States and the Secretary of State, phone calls to the press from the bowels of Air Force Two, the first high-profile Federal court proceeding where bloggers have been given press credentials, some interesting Voir Dire questioning of potential jurors [pdf ] - and the interesting responses thereof, a book largely culled from research done by the Citizen Press, an unpopular war, an unpopular president, and an even more unpopular Vice-President, full-frontal assaults on the credibility of the press, scrubbed newspaper archives, at least one witness (a former White House Official?) who has been granted immunity, an earlier leak of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq regarding WMD, and quite possibly substantial insight into the who, what, when, and where of the selling of the Invasion of Iraq.
posted by rzklkng on Jan 17, 2007 - 28 comments

Newsfilter: Former CIA officer Valerie Plame sues Cheney, Rove, Libby, close on the heels of columnist Robert Novak kinda-sorta coming clean about his role.
posted by bardic on Jul 13, 2006 - 78 comments

Frog Scoot? The FBI appears ready to point fingers in the Plame affair, at Senior Administration Officials Lewis Libby and John Hanna. TPM reports that the intial charges against Hanna may be intended to induce him to name higher-ups. Will this really go down before the election?
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly on Feb 5, 2004 - 19 comments