Word: oftens
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...definition, terrorism succeeds by making us feel powerless. It is more often a psychological threat than an existential one. The authorities compound the damage when they overreact - by subjecting grandmothers to pat-downs and making it intolerable to travel. Even though the Christmas bombing suspect had been stopped, stripped and cuffed before the plane landed, we still talk like victims. "[This] came close to being one of the greatest tragedies in the history of our country," New York Congressman Peter King said on CNN, criticizing Obama for not holding a press conference sooner...
...snarkier precincts of the left-wing blogosphere, mainstream journalists like me are often called villagers. The reference, so far as I can tell, has to do with isolation: we live in this little village on the Potomac - actually, I don't, but no matter - constantly intermingling over hors d'oeuvres, deciding who is "serious" (a term of derision in the blogosphere) and who is not, regurgitating spin spoon-fed by our sources or conjuring a witless conventional wisdom that has nothing to do with reality as it is lived outside the village. There is, of course, some truth to this...
...news. The dyspepsia of the left blogosphere is less easily explained, though. It has its roots in an issue the left got right and almost everyone else got wrong: the war in Iraq. There is still intense, unabated anger on the left because its opposition to the war was often ridiculed and almost always ignored in 2003. The anger at so-called moderates - actually, Democratic conservatives like Joe Lieberman - who supported the war is especially intense. This was the anger that fed the Howard Dean movement in 2004, and it sets the emotional parameters for other issues far more complicated...
...that will emphasize Crist's conservative bona fides while casting doubt on those of Rubio - who recently conceded to a Florida television station that he too would have taken Obama's stimulus money. At the same time, Crist will try to avoid giving the impression - as he did often this year, especially as he acrobatically tried to distance himself from the stimulus - that he's cynically apologizing for his moderate principles in order to win conservative voters who may well dominate Florida's closed primary election. (Read "Florida's Senate Seat: The [Premature] Martinez Opening...
...wool conservatives he appointed before that. They've wailed about his efforts to restore voting rights to released felons; but Crist's "Chain Gang Charlie" nickname, which he got for co-sponsoring a law that revived the use of leg irons for prison labor, will probably be heard more often...