Keith Olbermann announced the news on Daily Kos, and it will be officially announced tomorrow. Rachel gets the 9 pm slot, and it will be interesting to see what happens to the Dan Abrams show.
Rachel is an excellent commentator. Conservatives will howl that MSNBC is becoming even more liberal, but she is extremely talented so they can’t attack her ability.
Great move.
Wow. Alan Colmes is getting tough!
Here’s a clip of Alan Colmes taking on Sean Hannity and some conservative pundits who were ripping John Edwards for his admitted affair. After we get a typical tirade from Hannity about how we can’t trust someone who hasn’t been true to his wife and family, Colmes seizes on the opening and raises the issue of John McCain’s admissions that he was not faithful to his first wife.
Hannity goes crazy, arguing that this was thirty years ago and that McCain was a prisoner of war. Of course, he has a point. I don’t think we should disqualify a candidate for issues like this, particularly when it happened years ago. But, Hannity and other moralists are more than happy to scream for bright-line moral tests when they apply to Democrats, but they won’t apply the same standards to their side.
Colmes let’s him have it, and he doesn’t back down. He’s taken plenty of flack over the years for being the liberal stooge on Fox, but this clip shows that he does have his moments.
Hat tip: Fark
This is getting to be ridiculous.
Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.
Also, officials may share copies of the laptop’s contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“The policies . . . are truly alarming,” said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who is probing the government’s border search practices. He said he intends to introduce legislation soon that would require reasonable suspicion for border searches, as well as prohibit profiling on race, religion or national origin.
DHS officials said that the newly disclosed policies — which apply to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens — are reasonable and necessary to prevent terrorism. Officials said such procedures have long been in place but were disclosed last month because of public interest in the matter.
There’s no reason to have such a broad policy when it comes to U.S. citizens. It’s also unconstitutional. The “probable cause” test seems very appropriate for citizens, and a lower threshhold of reasonable concern would be appropriate for non-citizens.
This is an example where we need “activist” judges. The whole point of our constitution was the separation of powers. The sad fact is that our government, and all governments, sometimes get overzealous. They want to “protect” us, and in doing so they destroy our freedoms. That’s why we need a bunch of unelected judges to reign in our elected officials. Elected officials are too often swayed the the fears of the moment and the mood swings of the electorate.
Conservatives don’t get this. They love to demonize judges, until they need them to protect us from a government that goes too far.
Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria takes a close look at Barack Obama’s approach to foreign policy, noting Obama’s emphasis on realism, in sharp contrast to John McCain and George W. Bush, who have embraced the wide-eyed idealism of the neoconservatives.
The rap on Barack Obama, at least in the realm of foreign policy, has been that he is a softheaded idealist who thinks that he can charm America’s enemies. John McCain and his campaign, conservative columnists and right-wing bloggers all paint a picture of a liberal dreamer who wishes away the world’s dangers. Even President Bush stepped into the fray earlier this year to condemn the Illinois senator’s willingness to meet with tyrants as naive. Some commentators have acted as if Obama, touring the Middle East and Europe this week on his first trip abroad since effectively wrapping up the nomination, is in for a rude awakening.
These critiques, however, are off the mark. Over the course of the campaign against Hillary Clinton and now McCain, Obama has elaborated more and more the ideas that would undergird his foreign policy as president. What emerges is a world view that is far from that of a typical liberal, much closer to that of a traditional realist. It is interesting to note that, at least in terms of the historical schools of foreign policy, Obama seems to be the cool conservative and McCain the exuberant idealist.
Just as with his other policies, Obama takes a much more nuanced approach to the world, recognizing that the world is a complex place. In contrast, McCain seems to embrace W’s simplistic “good vs. evil” approach to most situation.
Obama rarely speaks in the moralistic tones of the current Bush administration. He doesn’t divide the world into good and evil even when speaking about terrorism. He sees countries and even extremist groups as complex, motivated by power, greed and fear as much as by pure ideology. His interest in diplomacy seems motivated by the sense that one can probe, learn and possibly divide and influence countries and movements precisely because they are not monoliths. When speaking to me about Islamic extremism, for example, he repeatedly emphasized the diversity within the Islamic world, speaking of Arabs, Persians, Africans, Southeast Asians, Shiites and Sunnis, all of whom have their own interests and agendas.
Obama never uses the soaring language of Bush’s freedom agenda, preferring instead to talk about enhancing people’s economic prospects, civil society and—his key word—”dignity.” He rejects Bush’s obsession with elections and political rights, and argues that people’s aspirations are broader and more basic—including food, shelter, jobs. “Once these aspirations are met,” he told The New York Times’s James Traub, “it opens up space for the kind of democratic regimes we want.” This is a view of democratic development that is slow, organic and incremental, usually held by conservatives.
In accepting the Democratic nomination for the open Senate seat in Virginia, Mark Warner made it clear that he will not be in the running for Obama’s VP.
That’s unfortunate, as he would have been a great selection.
© 2026 NorthCoastBlog.com
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑