Patriotism isn’t about colored ribbons or bumper stickers on your car. It isn’t about waving a flag or chanting “U-S-A” at a sporting event. It certainly is not about wearing an American flag pin on your lapel. These are all pleasing symbolic displays of patriotism, but they are not patriotism in and of itself.
Feeling [...]

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There is an internet campaign making the rounds via email and blog claiming that Barack Obama is unpatriotic. One claim is that he’s actually a Muslim and that he was sworn into the Senate on the Koran. Another claims that he refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance. And yet another claims he is a [...]

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The New York Times has begun producing a useful debate transcript analyzer. The analyzer allows you to not only view the video and transcript of a debate, but also view how much time the candidates had to speak, how many words they said, and the order in which they spoke. This tool can be [...]

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The Reagan Library Republican Debate finished just a couple hours ago and even though there were four candidates on stage, CNN’s Anderson Cooper was primarily focused on John McCain and Mitt Romney. Mike Huckabee twice made the point that he was not getting nearly as many questions asked of him as of the titular front [...]

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Anderson Cooper, the moderator of the CNN/YouTube Republican debate, made a point of telling the candidates at the start that they were expected to address the questions asked and not drift off onto other subjects. “Americans put a lot of time into submitting these questions. We think they deserve direct answers. ” In that [...]

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I analyzed the Democratic candidates’ ability to give straight answers to questions during the NBC debate on October 30, 2007. I have done this before with the Republican candidates in their third debate and the Democrats in their second, third, and fourth debates. There have been a few debates between then and now that [...]

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As I suffer through the increasing obfuscation of the Bush administration, I’m looking for a candidate who can give a clear answer to a clear question. I’ve had enough ridiculous parsing of every word that emanates from the White House and the tortuous Orwellian logic used to try to convince me that ignoring the Constitution [...]

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The YouTube Democratic debate analysis is in! I analyzed the candidates’ ability to give a straight answer to each question during the debate. The goal is the same as it was when I analyzed the Republican candidates in their third debate and the Democrats in their second and third debates. I don’t evaluate the merits [...]

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Jim Gilmore, Republican presidential candidate from Virginia, has withdrawn his candidacy for the nomination. He cites his late entry in the race and “front loaded nature of the primary schedule” for his withdrawal.
Notably, he comes right out and says that it takes “years of preparation to put in place both the political and financial infrastructure [...]

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Speculative Bubble did a great job of aggregating all the presidential candidates’ blogs into a single page. Or at least the ones with an RSS feed. It’s a great way to compare the talking points the campaigns are pushing side by side. It also provides a nice view of how active these blogs really [...]

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