Joe Conason

When the children of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy came to the family dinner table every evening, they were expected to know a poem by heart. So it was fitting when his daughter Kerry recited a classic poem of Langston Hughes this morning, at the marvelous ceremony rededicating the former Triborough Bridge in her father's name.

That poem concludes ''Let America be America again''—and there was a powerful sense of that possibility in the remarks delivered by Kerry, her brother Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former President Bill Clinton, and M.T.A. chairman Lee Sander.

Especially moving were the comments of Gov.  read more »

As Barack Obama makes his way through the transition to power, he is learning the steps of an old dance. Having promised change, he now surrounds himself with experience. Having poured scorn not only on the Bush administration but at times on the Clinton administration as well, he now welcomes those who served his Democratic predecessor, including the former first lady who ran against him. And having roundly denounced current foreign and military policies, he may very well ask Defense Secretary Robert Gates to remain in place.

While Mr. Obama displays both confidence and maturity in embracing his former adversaries, he must expect cries of outrage and disappointment from his own supporters.  read more »

Why would Barack Obama invite Hillary Clinton into a serious discussion of her potential appointment as secretary of state without reaching his own conclusions about the risks and benefits of that possibility? That seems frivolous and foolish, neither of which describe the manner in which the president-elect is conducting the transition. Unless he has made his first big mistake, the likelihood is that he and his team were prepared to make the offer before they contacted her.

Certainly Mr. Obama has had plenty of time to mull over the issues surrounding that appointment, including the role of the former president who happens to be married to Senator Clinton.  read more »

Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story—touted as one of the year’s very best political documentaries when it played at the Democratic and Republican conventions earlier this year—aired on PBS Frontline last night. Yes, I ought to have mentioned that before airtime rather than a day late, especially because most readers surely missed its theatrical run. But happily PBS will air the film again this week. In New York it will appear on WNET again next Saturday and on WLIW throughout the week. For airtimes on all local stations, check the Frontline page on the PBS website, which includes a handy zipcode widget.  read more »

While the ultimate occupants of three United States Senate seats are yet to be determined in Alaska, Georgia, and Minnesota, chances seem small that Democrats will increase their new majority to 60 seats – the supermajority that insures against a successful filibuster. So the same Republicans who once complained about the use of that legislative weapon by the opposition now brandish it in warning to President-elect Barack Obama.

Nobody can doubt that the Republican remnant in the Senate will obstruct as soon as that seems politically safe. Right-wing pundits, from Rush Limbaugh to the Wall Street Journal editorial page are already egging them on furiously.  read more »

Today’s Salon column examines the pretensions of the Rove generation of conservative activists – and how the “emerging Democratic majority” predicted six years ago brought those great expectations to grief.

What have our dear wingers learned from this sobering experience? There’s a deep lesson for them in the public rejection of Sarah Palin, but they don’t seem to be getting it.  read more »

The best single essay on the conservative betrayal of their own intellectual tradition -- and its ultimate expression in the Palin fiasco -- appeared in the Wall Street Journal’s weekend edition. Singling out the editors of the Weekly Standard and the National Review, Mark Lilla

The New York Times features an exhaustive report today on the feuding between the McCain and Palin camps, but it is best savored while listening to Carl Cameron of Fox News Channel, who finally spills what he has been hearing for months from McCain insiders or "folks" as he calls them. This quote proves that Cameron has an unappreciated talent for understatement:

We are told by folks that she didn’t know what countries were in NAFTA – the North American Free Trade Agreement – that being Canada, the US and Mexico. And we’re told she didn’t understand that Africa is a continent rather than just a country just in itself – a whole host of questions that caused serious problems about her knowledgeability.  read more »

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When George W. Bush looks back someday on the wreckage of the past eight years, even he may someday realize that he missed his most important political opportunity in the months after 9/11. Despite his lackluster performance on that day, Americans stood with him as the symbol of the nation, displaying a steadfast and sober unity we had not felt for decades. He betrayed us all by discarding that spirit. Instead he followed the bad counsel of Karl Rove, whose dreams of a century of Republican rule could only be realized by demonizing the Democrats as unpatriotic or worse.

The Rove strategy was brilliantly successful, for a time.  read more »

Nowhere in this country is the vote more certain to favor Barack Obama than in downtown Manhttan, where we voted this morning. Here, there are no contested races down-ballot to draw voters to the polls. But the lines in every polling place are the longest I have ever seen – out the door and around the block, hours after most people have gone to work. Many parents brought their children along with them to vote, as we did. The mood in our place was cheerful but subdued, as everyone waits.

If the waiting ends in cheers tonight, then we will owe a deep toast to Obama and his campaign (and to his late grandmother for raising him so well).  read more »

Before the first vote is counted, plenty of bad advice for Barack Obama is arriving in a wave of clichéd punditry that, should he actually win, will only grow from now through Inauguration Day and beyond. The potential magnitude of Obama’s expected victory – and the accompanying upsurge of Democrats in both houses of Congress – is already creating a sense of panic that he and his fellow Democrats might actually try to enact the program that their party supposedly upholds.

In the Wall Street Journal, center-right Democrat Doug Schoen, former polling partner of Mark Penn, cautions Obama and the Democratic leadership in Washington against interpreting victory, even a “landslide of historic proportions,” as a mandate for progressive policies.  read more »

Writing a post-mortem for John McCain’s presidential candidacy would be premature. But if and when that moment comes next week, toxic staff infection will be listed as a primary cause of death.

Rarely has any national campaign suffered from the combination of oafish incompetence and transparent malice displayed by the little coterie of operatives who surround the Republican nominee. They continue to damage his reputation and theirs, even as they attempt to escape blame for the campaign’s declining prospects.

Now these geniuses seem to think they can offload the responsibility for their mistakes onto Sarah Palin, which would be like Doctor Frankenstein trying to blame everything on the poor monster.  read more »

Yesterday's alleged American incursion into Syria brought the war in Iraq back into the headlines briefly this morning — although that issue has receded even further from campaign consciousness as economic fears take over. The absence of news from Iraq has allowed John McCain to pretend that his insistence on maintaining the American occupation until "victory" is still relevant. You'd have to be paying close attention to what has actually been happening to understand just how far from reality the Republican nominee has drifted, while negotiations with Baghdad over the status of American forces turn into a farcical stalemate.

Wherever John McCain appears on the stump in these waning days of the presidential campaign, he is always accompanied by his imaginary friend “Joe the Plumber,” but it is the specter of Karl Marx that lurks just offstage. Reverting back to the Republicanism of eons ago, when he was just a child, he inveighs against the “socialist” design of Barack Obama’s tax platform. This delusional ranting, like so much of Mr. McCain’s behavior this year, tell us nothing about Mr. Obama (or socialism!) but much about him.

Let’s begin with the dishonesty of the McCain rant. What Mr. Obama proposes is to restore the tax rates on the wealthy to the same level as during the Clinton administration – that is, to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire without renewing them for individuals and families reporting more than $250,000 in annual income.  read more »

Colin Powell has done the right thing for a change, and done it gracefully, so he may hope that he can avoid delivering the full mea culpa that the country still has coming from him. This endorsement is not about race, as the racists insist, but about rehabilitation.

The overprivileged grifters in the Bush family unaccountably had Powell's loyalty, so he could not walk away from their party until their day was done. But when Tom Brokaw asked him to explain why he supports Barack Obama, whose plan to end the war in Iraq is supposedly anathema to Powell, his answer was glib and unsatisfactory.  read more »

With the annoying confidence of the truly ignorant, television's chattering heads now insist every night that Barack Obama and John McCain "tell us what they're going to cut" from their spending programs. The droning chants for "cutting" reflects the traditional mentality of the national press corps, but it is hard to imagine anything less relevant or more stupid as we confront a deep recession. Fortunately the Nobel committee has just awarded the 2008 medal to Paul Krugman, so perhaps he will command the attention of these blowhards when he urges more rather than less federal spending (a view that has also been  read more »

From John McCain's perspective, the dispiriting outcome of the last presidential debate was determined long before he and Barack Obama arrived on the Hofstra campus. It had been decided months before, in fact, largely by the ineptitude of the Republican campaign's strategists. Actually, as experienced figures in both parties now agree, "strategist" is probably too generous a term to describe the people managing McCain's campaign. (Lobbyist is generally a more accurate term for the top advisers but beside the point here.) Rick Davis, Steve Schmidt, and the rest of the McCain-Palin crew have consistently failed to move their campaign above the tactical level.  read more »

For anyone who followed the story of how and why Sarah Palin fired her state’s public safety commissioner, last week’s release of a legislative investigation that found she had violated state ethics statutes was anticlimactic. After all, everyone knows that she and her husband, Todd, tried to push Walt Monegan, then Alaska’s public safety commissioner, to fire a state trooper named Mike Wooten, who was involved in a bitter divorce from Ms. Palin’s sister—and that after Mr. Monegan refused, he lost his job.

But while the state probe’s conclusions were unsurprising, there is still something to be learned from its findings and the McCain-Palin campaign’s response.  read more »

It is encouraging to see more and more honest conservatives asking themselves hard questions about the candidacy of Sarah Palin and its dumbing down of their party and movement. Some are more honest than others, of course. Clearly David Brooks understands why Palin could be a "fatal cancer" for the Republican Party, but for publication he can't quite muster the bracing forthrightness of the City Journal's Heather Mac Donald (h/t to the Daily Beast). Poor Heather simply can't bear to listen to the hockey mom any more:

"I know, it’s elitist to expect a candidate for president or vice president to speak like an adult.  read more »

Sarah Palin may not be the brightest bulb, but she (or her handlers) have fully absorbed a very familiar approach to governance and law.
When you're under investigation for misconduct, stonewall staunchly, refuse to testify, withhold documents under "executive privilege," and make sure your subordinates do likewise. When a report comes out that says you violated ethics, just insist that it said no such thing.

Create your own reality, so to speak, and always feel confident that the national media will refrain from calling you the liar that you most certainly are -- and that the faithful base and Fox News will always be on your side. As I mention in this column, this is not exactly an enormous change from the status quo in the White House.

For anyone who followed the story of how and why Sarah Palin fired her state’s public safety commissioner, last week’s release of a legislative investigation that found she had violated state ethics statutes was anticlimatic. After all, everyone knows that she and her husband Todd tried to push Walt Monegan, then Alaska’s public safety commissioner, to fire a state trooper named Mike Wooten, who was involved in a bitter divorce from Ms. Palin’s sister – and that after Mr. Monegan refused, he lost his job.

But while the state probe’s conclusions were unsurprising, there is still something to be learned from its findings and the McCain-Palin campaign’s response.  read more »

Few things have done Paul Krugman greater honor than the large, angry and often frustrated contingent of right-wing critics provoked by his New York Times columns over these eight years—until today's announcement that he has been awarded the highest recognition in his profession, the Nobel Prize.

It's worth remembering now, as many of those same critics prepare to raise churlish questions about Krugman's prize, that he entered the political wars rather reluctantly.

Without pretending to know him well, I can say that I like him personally as well as admiring his writing—and that when we first met in the fall of 2003, as liberals were at long last beginning to push back, he was still shocked by the ugly quality of the debate in a political culture dominated by the likes of Karl Rove, Roger Ailes, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O'Reilly.  read more »

Among the most useful exercises to ward off mental plaque is to imagine reversed circumstances. Now a provocative version of that exercise has popped up on various message boards, written by someone who wonders how America would receive an Obama family that was ... well, more like the McCain and Palin families. It is especially useful for those who imagine that racial prejudice has magically disappeared:  read more »

Steve Kornacki's column today pointedly recalls the nasty Republican memes of the 1992 campaign, which sought to instill doubt about Bill Clinton's patriotism because he had protested the Vietnam War. So desperate were they to retain power that employees of the first Bush administration rifled illegally through Clinton's passport files.

(That scandal concluded with an ineffectual special-counsel investigation by a highly partisan G.O.P. lawyer.) Flash forward to the affecting moment two weeks ago, when that same George H.W. Bush, now quite old and frail, showed up as an honored guest of his successor at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York.

There was real emotion in the elder Bush's voice when he talked about his friendship with Clinton, which began in earnest with their fund-raising efforts on behalf of the Katrina and tsunami victims.  read more »

It seems like only a few glandular cases are obsessed with the fact that Barack Obama knows Bill Ayers, the vintage '60s "revolutionary" and former mad bomber, with everyone else including the New York Post dismissing the charge as a low blow.

But the Ayers controversy is only the spearhead of a massive Internet campaign by McCain supporters to brand Senator Obama a "socialist," the timing of which is exquisitely (if unintentionally) comic.

It goes like this: Sometime in the distant past, Obama won the endorsement of the Chicago chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, or D.S.A.—a rather moderate group of activists by left-wing standards, who have always believed in advancing such radical concepts as universal health care, green technology, union jobs at decent wages, as well as many other worthy ideas that are now boringly mainstream.  read more »

John McCain's latest debate performance points up the cynicism of his recent attacks on Barack Obama's character -- which he plainly did not dare to repeat before the live audience on national television.

But if the questions that Senator McCain and his lip-sticked pitbull have raised about Senator Obama are so vital and so pertinent, why not challenge him in the town hall forum, where both candidates had plenty of latitude to speak as they wished?

Why not bring up Bill Ayers and Reverend Wright and any other twitchy bit of irrelevancy that might excite the Republican?

The answer is that Senator McCain knew he was addressing independent voters, so he restrained himself from plunging straight into the gutter, a spectacle he and Governor Palin reserve for members of their own party.  read more »

John McCain's latest debate performance points up the cynicism of his recent attacks on Barack Obama's character -- which he plainly did not dare to repeat before the live audience on national television. But if the questions that Senator McCain and his lip-sticked pitbull have raised about Senator Obama are so vital and so pertinent, why not challenge him in the town hall forum, where both candidates had plenty of latitude to speak as they wished? Why not bring up Bill Ayers and Reverend Wright and any other twitchy bit of irrelevancy that might excite the Republican? The answer is that Senator McCain knew he was addressing independent voters, so he restrained himself from plunging straight into the gutter, a spectacle he and Governor Palin reserve for members of their own party.  read more »

Nothing in the presidential campaign so far has been as instructive as its swift descent into the politics of personal destruction. Although voters have probably heard little lately that they did not already know about Senator Barack Obama, they have learned something very important about Senator John McCain.

Back when this contest began, Mr. McCain expressed the desire for a different kind of campaign than we have seen in recent years. Rather than the old style of character-assassination politics perfected by his former nemesis Karl Rove to defeat him, Al Gore and John Kerry, the Arizona Republican urged a substantive debate and a fair comparison of public careers.  read more »

It is touching whenever Sarah Palin, mother of little Trig, promises to give America’s special needs children a big hug, you betcha. But as the New Republic reports today, her actions as Governor of Alaska have surely increased their numbers – by encouraging the release of the horrific pollutants that cause birth defects.

Thanks to a long history of permissive regulation of the oil and mining industries, Alaskan newborns suffer from a rate of birth defects that is double the national average. Let me repeat that, as Joe Biden would say: Double the nation average of birth defects in Alaska due to industrial pollution.  read more »

It was always difficult to understand why The New York Times felt obliged to devote regular Op-Ed space to the views of William Kristol, but as of today I get it.

What Kristol provides, unlike many writers whose opinions are equally trite and detestable, is a transparent view of the Republican operative brain. Reading him, you can almost hear the ratcheting of his mind through layers of opposition research until he thinks he has found what his candidate needs. This morning he treats us to his conversation with Governor Sarah Palin, in which they try to come up with a strategy (or at least a few tactics) to distract the country from the economic disaster created by years of right-wing governance.  read more »

When voters return to the grim task of assessing John McCain's credibility, they may turn to The Nation, which has just exposed yet another highly embarrassing episode in the career of his campaign manager, superlobbyist Rick Davis. This time the issue is not just another special interest represented by Davis, of which there are many examples, but the connections between Davis, the ruling Russian oligarchy, and the government of Vladimir Putin.  read more »

The failure to pass bailout legislation reflected a political system as bereft of confidence as the financial markets. President George W. Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson had no credibility to match the arrogance of their initial demand for absolute power in distributing $700 billion of public assistance (the old synonym for welfare). Many Republicans in Congress lacked the intellectual fortitude to cope with the spectacular collapse of their ideology.

So the rescue of capitalism once more becomes the sole responsibility of the Democrats.

Much can be said about the Democratic Congressional leadership’s fumbling and fearfulness, which have hobbled them ever since they recaptured the majority.  read more »

The national press corps no longer lies down for John McCain with the promiscuous eagerness that used to be so habitual, which is of course why the McCain camp rages and pouts about "the media" these days. But he still gets away with incredible reversals and acts of hypocrisy.

Didn't everybody covering the campaign listen to his remarks at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York yesterday morning? Didn't everybody hear him outline the five things he required in order to support bailout legislation, and his stirring call for bipartisanship?

He dropped all that as soon as he got to Washington and wanted to pretend to lead the House Republicans -- a tableau of fraudulence that I examine  read more »

More notable than the appearances of John McCain and Barack Obama this morning at the Clinton Global Initiative was the host's personal endorsement of the Democratic nominee—despite their fractious and friction-plagued relationship.

Bill Clinton first acknowledged that he should treat both nominees with nonpartisan hospitality and deference, which he certainly tried to do. He offered a courteous shout-out to Cindy McCain for her charitable work in Rwanda, where Clinton's own foundation is very active. Yet after listening to McCain, praising and thanking him graciously for his remarks, Clinton could not resist the chance to add a few extra words of praise for Obama when introducing the Illinois senator (who showed up on a giant screen via satellite).  read more »

Al Gore showed up at the C.G.I. plenary session this morning to deliver a passionate assault on the oil and coal industries, which he referred to as ''carbon companies.'' Gore accused them of committing "material fraud" by claiming that there is such a thing as clean coal technology. He raised the ante when he urged young Americans to engage in ''civil disobedience'' to stop the construction of any new coal electric plants "without CO2 sequestration"—which he had just noted does not yet exist.

At the opening plenary session of the Clinton Global Initiative just now, Michael Bloomberg appeared with Lance Armstrong to announce a joint anti-cancer effort between their foundations.

After the cyclist mentioned his announced return to competition, the Mayor said, "l did like the comments about doing it again, but that's another issue."

He smiled broadly as the audience applauded and laughed.

Then Bill Clinton more or less endorsed a third term for Mayor Bloomberg, saying of Hizzoner:

"I admire him, I'm grateful for his service and I'm guessing there's a lot more ahead."

Debate over how to resolve the nation’s financial emergency is taking a salutary direction for the moment, as politicians of both parties refuse to be herded by the Bush White House into a ridiculous $700 billion swindle. Before Congress approves such a stunning expenditure to save the undeserving hides of the super-rich, they may at least create provisions for independent oversight, new regulation, public equity and homeowner relief.

There is one more thing that should not be neglected, however. Before this is over, we will need a special prosecutor with an ample budget to find, prosecute, imprison and ultimately deter the criminals responsible for this disaster.  read more »

This week, I'll spend some time liveblogging from the Clinton Global Initiative—the remarkable annual event where, between celebrity sightings, hundreds of smart and knowledgeable people discuss big problems and practical ways to solve them.

At this year's C.G.I., there will be a major pre-debate appearance by John McCain and Barack Obama, virtually together. On Thursday morning, at a conference plenary titled "Integrated Solutions: Water, Food & Energy," Senator McCain will deliver the opening remarks in person—and Senator Obama will make the closing presentation (reportedly via satellite).

In between, the plenary panel discussion will feature NBC News special correspondent Tom Brokaw, oil and gas tycoon T.  read more »

On Tuesday , I posted a column urging Barack Obama to emphasize John McCain's long history of support for Social Security privatization – a position that looks even more embarrassing today than a few weeks or months ago. For some time, McCain has been trying to revise his own history and pretend that he “never” supported privatization (or what he and other Republicans daintily refer to as “personal accounts”). Obama shouldn't let him get away with it.

Within a day following my post—by pure coincidence, needless to say—the Obama campaign aired an ad on the privatization theme in Michigan, as my former Observer colleague  read more »

Regrettably but predictably, the success of Barack Obama has revived traditional knee-jerk racism on the American far right – and the latest examples are more blatant than latent.

In Michigan, right-wing operatives are seeking to aggravate white Democrats by linking Obama to Kwame Kilpatrick, the disgraced mayor of Detroit who leaves office today in a deal with prosecutors that included pleading guilty to two felony charges of obstructing justice. A brief clip of Obama praising Kilpatrick last year, long before his indictment, is the centerpiece of an inflammatory ad appearing on cable channels in Macomb County outside Detroit, where white Democratic voters reside who may be susceptible to such appeals to prejudice.  read more »

Suddenly politics has transformed John McCain from a rich Republican, with all the usual expensive baggage, into a populist tribune of the proletariat (and never mind his habit of voting against any increase in the minimum wage, and his rally in Vienna, Ohio, where he barked: "Let me tell you, friends, there's no place I'd rather be than here with the hard-working men and women of Ohio.''

Six months ago, he was the guest of Lord Rothschild and Nathaniel Rothschild at a Spencer House fund-raiser in London, where the tariff was $2300 a head and the recommended attire was “lounge suits.” And two years ago, the star-struck Senator and his lobbyist pal Rick Davis boarded a yacht in Montenegro -- will somebody please tell Sarah Palin where that is? -- to party with movie star Anne Hathaway and her glamorous con-man boyfriend, Rafael Follieri.  read more »

With the markets in frightening turmoil and the public outraged by financial irresponsibility and excessive greed, John McCain has suddenly rediscovered the importance of strong, watchful government. Only six months ago, he assured the Wall Street Journal that he is generally opposed to regulation, but today he is ready to control executive compensation, defend 401k accounts from corporate predators, and impose renewed federal oversight of errant markets.

This populist rhetoric sounds strange, especially when emitted by a politician whose circle of advisers include former Senator Phil Gramm, vice president of the scandal-tainted Union Bank of Switzerland, and John Thain, chief executive of the firm formerly known as Merrill Lynch.  read more »

Aside from dim Bush-style clichés ("the fundamentals of our economy are strong") and vaguely populist scapegoating (“Wall Street is the villain”), exactly what does John McCain have to offer Americans frightened by the current financial bloodbath and the certainty of recession?

Suddenly he and Sarah Palin are promising to expand their crusade for “reform” from Capitol Hill to the capitalists. "I promise you we will never put America in this position again. We will clean up Wall Street," said McCain.

"Washington has been asleep at the switch, and ineffective," declared his running mate this morning, in her usual earnest manner.  read more »

Some of Sarah Palin’s replies to Charlie Gibson reminded me of a bit that the brilliant comedian Robert Klein used to do, recalling how he’d pile on the bullshit in high school. “Shovel, please!” he’d cry, as he began to answer an essay question on a history exam.

The only difference is that Palin didn’t necessarily understand the questions, let alone provide plausible answers. It was obvious, for instance, that she had no idea what the ABC newsman meant when he asked her opinion of “the Bush doctrine.”

But rather than simply say so, in keeping with her honest “everywoman” persona, Palin clumsily pretended to know by parrying with questions:

“Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?”

“In what respect, Charlie?”

“What do you interpret it to be?”

“His world view?”

“No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.  read more »

The latest evidence to bolster Barack Obama’s foreign policy judgment against his critics arrived this morning on the front page of The New York Times. The paper of record reports today that President Bush issued an order three months ago that permits U.S. special forces to strike against Al-Qaeda inside Pakistan, without the permission of Islamabad’s government.

That is precisely what Obama said he would do as president if the Pakistani government proved unwilling or unable to act against the Islamist terror organization whose attacks on 9/11 are being marked today in New York, Washington, and around the country.

Ever since he made those remarks during a Democratic debate in August 2007, they have drawn sharp criticism from various opponents (including Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden).  read more »

Is Sarah Palin the implacable pit bull of government reform, lipstick and all? The latest Republican campaign commercial pictures her in heroic terms at the side of John McCain as one of the “original mavericks,” declaring that she “stopped the bridge to nowhere.”

The fate of that canceled span—which would have used nearly $400 million in federal funds to connect the tiny Alaskan island of Gravina to the mainland town of Ketchikan and the rest of the state—is meant to symbolize her aggressive opposition to wasteful spending.

But even cursory examination shows that her posturing is wildly exaggerated and her campaign claims veer toward fraud.  read more »

Is Sarah Palin the implacable pit bull of government reform, lipstick and all? The latest Republican campaign commercial pictures her in heroic terms at the side of John McCain as one of the “original mavericks,” declaring that she “stopped the Bridge to Nowhere.”

The fate of that cancelled span --—which would have used nearly $400 million in federal funds to connect the tiny Alaskan island of Gravina to the mainland town of Ketchikan and the rest of the state—is meant to symbolize her aggressive opposition to wasteful spending.

But even cursory examination shows that her posturing is wildly exaggerated and her campaign claims veer toward fraud.  read more »