Brendan Nyhan

Treason rhetoric roundup

In the last few days, there have been a slew of accusations or insinuations of treason in the debate over US foreign policy and the war in Iraq, continuing the pattern of attacks on dissent since 9/11. Rush Limbaugh, who once accused ...

Wash. Times: Bush's military speeches aren't political

Time for another entry in the history of the nation's most hacktastic newspaper, the Washington Times, whose inspired brand of "journalism" kept us busy at Spinsanity for years. Their latest offense comes in an article disclosing a pri...

Rick Reilly smeared in SI letter

Earlier this month, I noted a Rick Reilly column in Sports Illustrated that gently turned against the war in these concluding paragraphs: Athletes love teams, and when they run out of sports teams they sometimes join bigger teams, o...

Marshall: Cheney advanced al Qaeda agenda

It was bound to happen. For years since 9/11, Republicans have suggested that anti-war dissent helps al Qaeda. Now Josh Marshall, an influential center-left blogger, has reversed the charges, arguing that "It's hard to imagine that the...

Mike Gallagher: Wishing for another attack

Here's one of the more vile statements I've seen recently. Atrios flags conservative pundit Mike Gallagher -- the sixth most popular radio host in the country -- wishing for another 9/11 in order to silence left-wing dissent: Seeing Jan...

Up is down: No legislating from the bench (unless you're conservative!)

RNC chairman Ken Mehlman in an email to supporters yesterday invokes Janice Rogers Brown after claiming that Bush's nominees are being filibustered because they would not legislate from the bench: Democrats are obstructing President Bus...

Washington Times reporter bashes Bush

Washington Times national reporter Eric Pfeiffer has written a piece for The New Republic Online that describes President Bush as "a failed oilman before becoming governor of Texas," says the President "has accumulated a disastrous envir...

Conservative editorials attacking Iraq dissent

In the wake of the attack on Hillary Clinton by Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman, two major conservative editorial pages have published editorials suggesting that supporters of withdrawal from Iraq are treasonous and support genoci...