Jacob Weisberg Quotes
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Both Left and Right take pleasure in mildly persecuting those who fail to meet their civic ideals.
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Raised in a house filled with old books, I'm drawn to them: the dust jackets that call out a historical moment, the marbled boards, the words pressed into the page with movable type.
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Seeing the rich and famous screw up makes us feel superior, or at least not quite so inferior.
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I think 'Slate''s editorial staff understands the intersection of journalism and technology better than any other.
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Where Republicans encourage popular myths about taxes, spending, and climate change, Democrats tend to stoke our fantasies about the sustainability of entitlement spending as well as about the cost of new programs.
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Paradoxically, I think working at an Internet magazine intensifies the attraction of beautiful printed objects.
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American liberals are an external part of Israel's conscience, and when it disdains them, it becomes a harder and more isolated place. The support that Israel has gained from millenarian American conservatives is no substitute, in part because such allies aren't persuasive global advocates for Israel.
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Israel never meant to take over the West Bank and Gaza - it got stuck with them after the 1967 war.
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Joe Lieberman can be cloying and sanctimonious.
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The best thing you can say about libertarians is that because their views derive from abstract theory, they tend to be highly principled and rigorous in their logic.
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Abandoning traditions of responsibility and civility won the GOP control of both houses of Congress in 1994. Rejecting any compromise brought Republicans the perks and power of majority control for the first time in 40 years. Thus did the politics of total resistance become their path of least resistance.
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The cradle-to-grave welfare state diminishes individual initiative and can breed a pervasive sclerosis.
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Though there are some debatable exceptions, sanctions rarely play a significant role in dislodging or constraining the behavior of despicable regimes.
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Only when legislators judge that the risk of continuing to support Trump outweighs the risk of abandoning him will they begin to jump ship.
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You may or may not agree with Obama's policy prescriptions, but they are, by and large, serious attempts to deal with the biggest issues we face: a failing health care system, oil dependency, income stagnation, and climate change.
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The most important newspapers in this country need to exist. Our democracy needs them. Life as we know it would be unthinkable without them.
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Blacks as a group have voted Democratic since the 1930s. The GOP has not courted them in any real way since the 1960s, focusing instead on attracting white constituencies hostile to civil rights and African-Americans in general.
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Sexual signals can be received without being consciously sent.
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In George W. Bush's case, the public paid far too little attention to the role of religion in his thinking. Many voters failed to appreciate that while Bush's religious beliefs may be moderate Methodist ones, he was someone who relied on his faith immoderately, as an alternative to rational understanding of complex issues.
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America's sanctions policy is largely consistent and, in a certain sense, admirable. By applying economic restraints, we label the most oppressive and dangerous governments in the world pariahs. We wash our hands of evil, declining to help despots finance their depredations, even at a cost to ourselves of some economic growth.
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People tend to throw up hands at Michael Jackson's multifarious bizarreness. But is it really so strange? The boy was forced to work by a cruel and physically abusive father starting at the age of 7.
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The use of torture on suspected terrorists after Sept. 11 has already earned a place in American history's hall of shame, alongside the Alien and Sedition Acts, Japanese internment during World War II, and the excesses of the McCarthy era.
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Unlike the Japanese internment, water-boarding was ordered and served up in secret. But it, too, was America's policy, not just Dick Cheney's. Congress was informed about what was happening and raised no objection. The public knew, too.
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To describe the world Michael Jackson has created around himself as a childhood fantasy isn't quite accurate. Thanks to wealth and celebrity, he has been able to live as a superannuated child. With the help of plastic surgery and dramatic affectation, he has made himself look and sound pre-pubescent.