Times Takes 'Far Right' Angle on G.O.P. Senate Candidate from Nevada

"But on the other hand some of these women are, like in Nevada, against Harry Reid, Sharron Angle has, she's a Tea Party candidate who's given Democrats renewed hope of saving Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, from what was looking to be near certain defeat, because she is so extreme. So much so that some of the Republicans in the immediate aftermath have started distancing themselves from her....The Democrats generally at first blush on Wednesday morning when the results were in were happy that both Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, looks newly secure because the Nevada Republicans had nominated such an extreme, Tea Party-type member." - Reporter Jackie Calmes in a June 10 "Political Points" podcast.

"Among her detractors and her supporters she is known as a far-right conservative and a thorn in the side of both parties, routinely voting no on almost everything that came before the Legislature." - Reporter Jennifer Steinhauer, June 10.






"Some critics are already asking Republican leaders how they managed to let a promising election season get so mightily out of control." - June 10 front-page teaser to a story by Matt Bai on Republican election prospects for November.







"In one of those classic campaign gaffes, Carly Fiorina, the Republican nominee for the Senate seat held by Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat, was caught mocking Ms. Boxer's hair into an open microphone on Wednesday. She also had a few tough words about the newly minted Republican candidate for governor and her B.F.F.-on-the-stump, Meg Whitman. Ms. Fiorina's comments were, all told, really no more incendiary than a bit of warm pasta salad - who hasn't indulged in some off-the-record chitchat about the grooming habits of others now and then? But they presented her with a political problem that could haunt her throughout the campaign....They both inform and confirm the image from her days as chief executive at Hewlett-Packard that she is tart and unpleasant."- Jennifer Steinhauer, June 11. The Times never mentioned Democratic candidate for governor Jerry Brown likening his G.O.P. opponent Meg Whitman to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.






"If there were a 'Ms. Globalization' title, it might well go to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali woman who wrote the best-selling memoir 'Infidel.' She has managed to outrage more people - in some cases to the point that they want to assassinate her - in more languages in more countries on more continents than almost any writer in the world today....she is by nature a provocateur, the type of person who rolls out verbal hand grenades by reflex....Since Hirsi Ali denounces Islam with a ferocity that I find strident, potentially feeding religious bigotry, I expected to dislike this book. It did leave me uncomfortable and exasperated in places....Her memoir suggests that she never quite outgrew her rebellious teenager phase, but also that she would be a terrific conversationalist at a dinner party." - Columnist Nicholas Kristof reviewing "Nomad," a memoir by Somali-born feminist intellectual Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is combating Islamic intolerance, for the May 30 Book Review.






"The mistaken belief that the Dartmouth research proves that cheaper care is better care is widespread - and has been fed in part by Dartmouth researchers themselves. The debate about the Dartmouth work is important because a growing number of health policy researchers are finding that overhauling the nation's health care system will be far harder and more painful than the Dartmouth work has long suggested. Cuts, if not made carefully, could cost lives....there is little evidence to support the widely held view, shaped by the Dartmouth researchers, that the nation's best hospitals tend to be among the least expensive." - Reed Abelson and Gardiner Harris, June 3.



"Researchers at Dartmouth Medical School have found large variations in the amount of hospital care and other services that people with the same condition receive in different parts of the country. In some regions, where doctors favor more intensive treatments, Medicare spends much more without getting better results for patients." - Health reporter Robert Pear, March 3, 2008.

"These numbers come from the wonderful Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care. The Dartmouth researchers adjust the numbers to take into account age, race and sex, which is another way of saying that there is no good explanation for the huge variations they find." - From a June 6, 2007 column by Times economics writer David Leonhardt.








"Evoking the spirit and language of predecessors who used the same setting to send troops into harm's way, Mr. Obama cast the effort to cap a well as part of the American determination to shape its own destiny." - From Peter Baker's June 16 lead story on Obama's Oval Office address on the BP oil spill.






"Far from the typical New York book party, this was more a bunkering of the conservative intellectual elite, a group that domineered its way through the Bush years but is now sidelined, a somewhat baffled shadow of its former blustery self. Whither the conservative establishment in today's bilious political landscape? Certainly the typical Tea Party denizen, with his 'I Wanna Party Like It's 1773' T-shirt and 'You Lie!' trucker hat, would seem out of place on the Frums' well-tended grounds, nibbling chicken skewers and mini-B.L.T.'s. In the presence of Ms. Hirsi Ali, at least, there was a sense of shared purpose." - Pamela Paul in the June 13 Sunday Styles section, profiling a D.C. dinner party thrown by former Bush speechwriter and anti-conservative media favorite David Frum.






"A place once righteously confident in its world view and harsh in its judgment of places that seemed to have gone off the tracks in the 1970s - like New York City and the Rust Belt - is now more diverse and tempered by an influx of newcomers, and perhaps from hard times as well during the recession....While steadfast belief in the death penalty may have eroded for some, the fierce ethos of eye-for-an-eye - whether based on religion or the code of the West - is alive and well." - Western-based reporter Kirk Johnson in a June 17 story on an execution by firing squad in Utah.





"The extent to which immigration has, in the view of many Republicans, hijacked this contest has stirred worry that the nominee chosen next week will be weakened in the general election against Jerry Brown, a Democrat and former governor." - Adam Nagourney on California's race for governor, June 5.






"The press traveling with Obama on the campaign never had a lovey-dovey relationship with him. He treated us with aloof correctness, and occasional spurts of irritation. Like many Democrats, he thinks the press is supposed to be on his side." - Columnist Maureen Dowd, June 13.