Media Notes, By Howard Kurtz - from Washingtonpost.com
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Romney’s air kiss to Bill Clinton
There was Romney, campaigning Tuesday in Iowa, praising the nation’s previous Democratic president and casting him as far superior to the current incumbent.
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Rand Paul’s cynical budget
“Call me cynical,but I wasn’t sure his views on marriage could get any gayer,” Sen. Rand Paul said of President Obama.
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Pakistan blew its chance for security
As America begins to pull back its troops from Afghanistan, one consequence gets little notice but is likely to have lasting impact: Pakistan is losing the best chance in its history to gain political control over all of its territory — including the warlike tribal areas along the frontier.
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More Volcker rules might help
“As a group,” the economist Robert Lekachman wrote in 1976, “economists are slightly more entertaining than bankers and a trifle duller than lawyers. ” Bankers, please note, were the dullest of all. And while Lekachman (with John Kenneth Galbraith, the wittiest economist of his generation) authored many books and papers well outside his profession’s mainstream, his assessment of bankers was not intended to provoke controversy and didn’t.
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Too much agreement means more entitlements
Since 2001, it has produced No Child Left Behind, a counterproductive federal intrusion in primary and secondary education; the McCain-Feingold speech rationing law (the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act); an unfunded prescription drug entitlement; troublemaking by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; government-directed capitalism from the Export-Import Bank; crony capitalism from energy subsidies; unseemly agriculture and transportation bills; continuous bailouts of an unreformed Postal Service; housing subsidies; subsidies for state and local governments; and many other bipartisan deeds, including most appropriations bills.
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Where have all the candidates gone?
The nascent third-party movement called Americans Elect assembled a dream team of prospective presidential nominees:.
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Obama’s popularity contest
Apresidential race recently focused on high school has come to resemble a popularity contest of the same vintage.
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Is John Edwards a criminal?
The prosecution has rested in a case that should never have been brought: the ghastly soap opera better known as the criminal trial of John Edwards. The testimony has been salacious, mesmerizing and revolting. Edwards has been proved to be what everyone already knew beyond a reasonable doubt: an egocentric cad.
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It’s time to break up the big banks
Consider $2 billion lost on a bad bet, plus billions more as investors dumped the stock, a providential warning. When Jamie Dimon, the imperious head of JPMorgan Chase, revealed that the bank had lost so muchon a derivatives trade gone bad, it was clear warning that, four years after blowing up the economy, the big banks are still playing with bombs.
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A marriage battle that states can’t win
President Obama is walking a tightrope on same-sex marriage, teetering between his stated view that marriage is the province of the states and his legal position that refusal to recognize same-sex marriage can violate the Constitution.
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