Just a small glimpse into the past week’s “new tone” rhetoric from President Obama, Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, Joan Walsh, Tina Brown, and Josh Marshall.

Nothing like a little new media joust on a Saturday afternoon in the fall. Josh Marshall on both Obama and Bill Clinton today at TPM:

Being president is hard. Being president two years into your first term is hard. And being at the center of the polarizing political storm — as Obama is today and Clinton was 16 years ago — tends to wipe the political genius and midas touch and all the other good stuff right off of you. 10% unemployment doesn’t make you look that good either.

This isn’t justifying any mistakes. But I’m surprised how short the memories are of many people who do this political analysis thing for a living.

Josh Marshall on then President George Bush at TPM, Oct 1, 2004 – short memories, indeed, or selective, perhaps. Then, again,  maybe he was simply being prescient given where Obama finds himself today.

I think we all know that the presidency is tremendously hard work, even for a president like this one who keeps notoriously light hours. It’s amazing to look back at the way the office ages the men who occupy it. But worn out and complaining isn’t exactly presidential or an example of strong leadership. No one’s making him be president after all. Maybe it’s time to move on. He’s punched his ticket. He can move on to the next gig.

Let me say up front that I think Koran burning is a bad idea for a lot of reasons. In fact, I think what this little church in Florida is doing is actually harmful to the nation, their own safety and, unfortunately, the reputation and safety of Christians around the globe.

This is all kinds of stupid.

It’s also completely protected by the first amendment. In fact, it’s a two-fer involving both freedom of speech (remember, flag burning is free speech) and freedom of religion.

So where are the Democrats who, just a couple weeks ago, were lecturing us all on the inviolable first amendment? I assume all of those who supported the ground zero mosque are also in support of Koran burning in Florida, yes? (more…)

I thought Josh Marshall would take the crown for most hysterical reaction to opposition to Cordoba House. His call for a Shoah-like project to document the evil as it happened (i.e. resistance to Cordoba House) seemed like a shoo-in, but in the end he’s only first runner up. The tiara definitely goes to Peter Beinart for his piece at the Daily Beast which is full of statements like this:

The super-patriots on Fox News have… declared war on Islam.

Sept. 11, 2001

The ellipsis is his, I didn’t remove anything. This is what the left apparently takes for serious discourse on this topic now. There’s no attempt to engage with the actual arguments of critics, at least some of which are thoughtful. Instead it’s just one more typically unhinged leftist rant about the “intolerant” right:

Until a month or so ago, I genuinely believed that the American right had become a religiously ecumenical place. Right-wing Baptists loved right-wing Catholics and they both loved right-wing Orthodox Jews. All you had to do to join the big tent was denounce feminists, Hollywood, and gays. But when push came to shove, Sarah Palin didn’t care about Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s position on gay marriage. In today’s GOP, even bigotry doesn’t spare you from bigotry…

People in Basra and Kandahar had better hope that America’s counterinsurgency warriors create a society in which they can practice their religion free of intimidation and insult. Because it’s now clear they can’t do so on the lower tip of the island of Manhattan.

(more…)

Greg Sargent is a Washington Post blogger and compromised JournoList hack whose “Plum Line” entries are decidedly left of center. Greg was overwhelmed with enthusiasm last Friday when, for a brief but shining moment, it appeared President Obama was supporting the construction of the ground zero mosque. He gushed that it would “go down as one of the finest moments of his presidency.”

Former Cathedral of St. Sophia, now a mosque

Sargent contrasted Obama’s bold stance with the “clever little dodge” which some Republicans were using. Here’s his description of the conservative stance, “The group has the right to build the center, runs this argument, but they are wrong to exercise it.”

That was Friday. On Saturday, the President gave an impromptu response to a reporter’s question, which went like this:

I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding.

This struck a lot of people as very similar to the distinction made by conservatives, i.e. a legal and religious right to build does not equate to a good (or wise) idea. The only real difference is that President Obama refused to take sides on the crucial issue. In effect, he voted present on the wisdom question.

Needless to say, this came as a big disappointment to Sargent, who was quick to argue that Obama’s clarification was not a walkback: (more…)

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EZRA KLEIN has entered the room.
MATTHEW YGLESIAS has entered the room.
ERIC BOEHLERT has entered the room.
JOSH MARSHALL has entered the room.

EZRA KLEIN: wassup

MATTHEW YGLESIAS: my dick

JOSH MARSHALL: lolz!!!

EZRA KLEIN: hahahahahaha

MATTHEW YGLESIAS: whos got assignmt for 1st period talking points for tomorrow

JOSH MARSHALL: boehlert was supposed to get them from Mr Soros

JOSH MARSHALL: boehlert???

EZRA KLEIN: yo eric where r u

ERIC BOEHLERT: sorry went off to get a red bull

JOSH MARSHALL: ridin tha bull (more…)

UPDATE: Talking Points Memo has issued an update acknowledging some comments made in the post highlighted at Big Journalism were in error.

In Josh Marshall’s article “What were they thinking?” of January 27th, 2010, Mr. Marshall referrs to a wiretapping plot and four times to a plot to bug the offices of Sen. Mary Landrieu by James O’Keefe and the three other conservative activists:

-O’Keefe was allegedly using his cell phone to film the attempt to bug Landrieu’s office as it happened.

-And let’s say they got something really juicy off of Sen. Landrieu’s tapped phone line. What exactly were they going to do with it?

-But they were never going to protect you from an investigation into bugging the office of a United States senator.

-Now, one might speculate that they were going to use the bug to get leads that they would then report out and surface by other means.

-And filming the bugging as it happened definitely suggests they didn’t plan on keeping the thing a secret.

There are no allegations of any wiretap plot in the FBI affidavit, and a law enforcement official has conceded that the four men were not attempting to wiretap, bug, or intercept calls.  Furthermore, legal representation for the accused has gone on record stating there were no intentions to tap phones in the Senator’s office.

We kindly ask you to issue a correction/retraction to the story.

We have been/will be making similar requests of other news sources to correct similar errors.  Some, such as the Washington Post and MSNBC’s David Shuster, already have posted corrections or retractions.