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Timothy Dolan came to town with a hammer in his hand. Of course, it wasn’t really much of hammer: just a little tappity-tap kind of thing, a tack hammer with a bright blue head, which he used it to rap on the door of St. Patrick’s Cathedral as part of the traditional ceremony for the installation of a new archbishop in New York. That was back on April 15, the Wednesday before Easter. In the six months since, Archbishop Dolan has done hardly any public hammering — until now. On Oct. 29 he used the archdiocese’s website to publish a...

New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan has condemned The New York Times -- blasting the Gray Lady and its columnist Maureen Dowd for what he says are examples of unfair, prejudicial and just downright mean anti-Catholicism. Dolan used his blog last Thursday on the Archdiocese of New York's Web site to rail against the Times a day after the paper refused to print his critique as an op-ed piece. He singled out Dowd -- a poison-penned, Pulitzer winner and former Catholic-school girl -- for "the most combustible," "intemperate and scurrilous" "diatribe" she wrote on Oct. 25, which "rightly never would have...

Where is Tom Hanks when you need him? Something sinister is happening in the Catholic Church, at least according to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. And the way she writes about it, it reads like the beginning of a treatment for a Dan Brown extravaganza. Her plot, you see, is just that absurd. Dowd was convinced that Catholic religious sisters were unhappy when she was in the fifth grade, and she remains adamant. She writes: “Nuns were second-class citizens then and — 40 years after feminism utterly changed America — they still are.” I can’t speak for “the formidable...

There is no better temperature gauge of the Left’s derangement syndrome — the object of the hatred is irrelevant — than the New York Times’s liberal op-ed columnists. So when Maureen Dowd goes into full-rant mode over Liz Cheney (and her political-consultant sister), you pretty much know the object of the next spasm of liberal venomous paranoia. And as it usually is, the rant is more revealing of the ranter than the intended victim... READ THE REST AT COMMENTARYMAGAZINE.COM

Congressman Joe Wilson’s “You Lie!” charge against President Barack Obama has elicited a curious response from various figures – that Wilson’s action both comes from and evidences racism. Perhaps New York Times’ Maureen Dowd made the most provocative allegation while former President Jimmy Carter couldn’t resist the opportunity to top it off with his own contention that racism underlies many whites’ criticism of President Barack Obama. This is not to ignore similar utterances from such less relevant voices as Janeane Garofalo that restate the racist charge with no support other than an attitude of arrogant certainty. These very accusations cover...

Angry. Bitter. Desperately trying to avoid irrelevance. Clinging to past glories. The average American, the beleaguered taxpayer in the age of Obama? No, welcome to the world of Maureen Dowd. Dowd is the signature columnist for The New York Times and Cardinal Richelieu to the King Moe (a dynastic line that includes Larry and Curly) of its publisher, Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. Dowd faces a new information age in which readers continue to turn their backs on her and her employer of 26 years, leaving a shrinking readership of aging elites from academia, politics and media. Her readers are disappearing...

Check out this parody of Maureen Dowd's Joe Wilson column. [NOTE: It is a copyright violation to copy and paste this post in its entirety, so please click on the link to read it.]

Nasty piece of work, Maureen Dowd. In the Barack Obama-worshipping New York Times over the weekend, she insinuated that Congressman Joe Wilson’s “you lie” outburst during the presidential address was inspired by racism: The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind. Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t. But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy! “Boy”, of course, is how...

Discourse: The reaction to the congressman's outburst shows what happens when you judge this president by the content of his character. In a post-racial presidency, charges of racism are the new last refuge of scoundrels.When Joe Wilson, the decorum-challenged South Carolina Republican, reacted to President Obama's assertion that there was nothing in health care legislation giving coverage to illegal aliens by shouting "You lie!" he knew, as his critics ignore, that there was nothing requiring proof of citizenship either. A nonpartisan Congressional Research Service study found that the House health care bill at that moment did not restrict illegal immigrants...

Here is video of White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs yesterday on with CNN's John King. King asked Gibbs if Obama agreed with the New York Times' Maureen Dowd that many of those opposing ObamaCare are doing so because Obama is a "black President." Gibbs disagreed with Dowd: "I don't think the President believes that people are upset because of the color of his skin." Yet, Obama's pack of enablers in the media just keep saying this. It was a theme all weekend, because they are desperate to dismiss all opposition as just being from the fringes of society. We'll...

MAUREEN DOWD'S New York Times columns used to be fun. Whether you agreed with her or not, they were witty and incisive. Sometimes they were even insightful. But recently, many readers are asking the same question as a letter writer to the Denver Post: "What has happened to Maureen Dowd lately? . . . she is no longer informative, clever or entertaining, just childish and vindictive." The truth is, Maureen Dowd hasn't changed; the times have. She's always been a formulaic writer, but the formula has never been less appropriate (and therefore more conspicuous) than it has since September 11,...

The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind. Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t. But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind. Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t. But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind. Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t. But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy! The outburst was unexpected from a milquetoast Republican backbencher from South Carolina who had attracted little media attention. Now it has made him an overnight right-wing hero, inspiring “You lie!” bumper stickers and T-shirts. The congressman, we learned,...

As soon as I started covering Barack Obama, I knew he was going to be trouble. Not Global Trouble, like W. and Dick Cheney. Or Hanky-Panky Trouble, like Bill Clinton and John Edwards. Or Tedious Trouble, like John Kerry and Michael Dukakis. He was going to be the kind of guy who whipped you up and then, when you were all excited, left you flat, and then, when you were deflated and exasperated and time was running out, ensorcelled you again with some sparkly fairy dust. It’s an irritating pattern. Not as puerile as Bill Clinton’s pattern of wasting time...

If I read all the vile stuff about me on the Internet, I’d never come to work. I’d scamper off and live my dream of being a cocktail waitress in a militia bar in Wyoming...That’s why I was interested in the Case of the Blond Model and the Malicious Blogger.

Aging Maureen Dowd cannot seem to help herself when it comes to Governor Palin. It was first thought of as irrational envy. You have a strong, intelligent, attractive, self-made, non-Ivy League educated, happily married, mother of five verse a wrinkled old shrew. Her continued attacks are more then comical and it seems she is now fixated on Governor Palin. Mark Finkelstein, of NewsBusters, describes Maureen Dowd quite accurately: Nothing like a presidential assassination metaphor to spice up an otherwise insipid Sunday column . . . Churning out yet another anti-Sarah screed, Dowd descended to this today [emphasis added]: "At the...

"Gryphen" a/k/a Alaska blogger Jesse Griffin, decides apparently at random to unload on Trig Palin again: Sarah Palin has used this heartrending diminutive prop with such careless abandon, that even people who once supported her are embarrassed at her apparent disregard for the well being of this baby. Leaving behind all of the questions about Trig's parentage, the question we must now ask ourselves is how well is he currently being cared for? I believe that many people have very powerful concerns for this child. We see him trotted out when Sarah wants to make a political point, or create...

"Gryphen" gets an extension on his 15 minutes of fame courtesy of the New York Times columnist: Palin is still obsessed with the blogosphere, which recently lit up with a rumor -- started by a fellow mavericky Alaskan, who also no longer has his job -- that she and Todd were Splitsville. Excuse me, Ms. Dowd, but is Palin "obsessed with the blogosphere" or is it the other way around? And don't you share that obsession? Furthermore, ma'am -- speaking of "Gryphen" a/k/a former Anchorage kindergarten teaching assistant Jesse Ray Griffin -- is it the usual practice of the New...

Here is video of New York Times Columnist Maureen Dowd talking this morning with MSNBC's Willie Geist about her column today in which she compared Gov. Sarah Palin with Richard Nixon, calling her a "bizarre babe-at-large." Dowd, in her usual snarky way, said she "loves Sarah Palin," because she's the best story ever for a jounalist. Dowd said she believes Palin could win the GOP Nomination in 2012 because "she plays to people's darker impulses." Maureen Dowd is the classic Eastern Liberal, who has no idea what average Americans are like, or how they think. She spends her life belittling...

The one-two punch thrown by Democrats and their counterparts in mainstream media have probably cost Alaska the governorship of Sarah Palin. Sarah has provided two reason for stepping down as Alaska's governor: 1) The money she and the state have had to spend defending against 15 ethics complaints, all dismissed, and 2) The endless attacks against her spouse and children by Democrats, the media and those in pop culture. Politics is officially a rich person's sport -- so long as you are rich enough to defend yourself against a string of baseless complaints you can stay. Also, the children of...

Much has been said about Maureen “I wanted to weave the idea into my column” Dowd’s latest take-down of Sarah Palin (“Caribou Barbie is one nutty puppy.”) Her hit-piece is a self-parody. Instead, of seriously critiquing the wisdom or folly of Palin’s controversial decision to step down from the governorship, we get child-like sentences on spec like this: "On the shore of Lake Lucille, with wild fowl honking and the First Dude smiling, with Piper in the foreground and their Piper Cub in the background, the woman who took the Republican Party by storm only 10 months ago gave an...

If, somehow, by the grace of God...or in this case...by the grace of NOW...these two were...just...maybe...able to combine their DNA (again to the well of mad science, he goes!), the results would be astounding.

No one understands me. It’s like I’m speaking some Eskimo dialect or something. Andrea Mitchell follows me all the way to Kanakanak Beach and I get a French manicure and set up this huge photo op for her, even though she spooked the salmon. Todd and me are in our cool fishing bibs. Piper’s helping out on the boat. It’s an amazing day that shows how our Creator favored my beloved Alaska, gatekeeper of the continent, and makes a great shot for all the network reporters up here to milk. This progresses me away from my image as some kind...

When a politician drops a bombshell, it is natural that there be all sorts of puzzled queries as to the meaning of that surprise announcement. Sarah Palin, in her first gubernatorial term, announced her resignation as Alaska's governor on Friday. Immediately the speculation started as to what could be behind such a sudden decision. All this is understandable and very much expected. What isn't expected, what isn't natural, what is downright despicable, however, is how some liberals like The New York Times' Maureen Dowd reacted. Understandably all sorts of ideas, however far fetched, were floated as to the possible motive....

Now, Sarah’s Folly By MAUREEN DOWD Published: July 4, 2009 WASHINGTON Sarah Palin showed on Friday that in one respect at least, she is qualified to be president. Caribou Barbie is one nutty puppy. Usually we don’t find that exquisite battiness in our leaders until they’ve been battered by sordid scandals like Watergate (Nixon), gnawing problems like Vietnam (L.B.J.), or scary threats like biological terrorism (Cheney). When Lyndon Johnson was president, some of his staff began to think of him as “a sick man,” as Bill Moyers told Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Moyers and his fellow Johnson aide Dick Goodwin even...

(LOTS OF GREAT PHOTOS) Catherine provided the entertainment - the Chicago actress performed dressed as a 1920s flapper as she showed off her dancing skills onstage. The 39-year-old, who has two children with Douglas, had earlier arrived hand-in-hand with her husband. On the red carpet she wore a flowing scarlet bustier dress, with a thigh-high split.

The fun police are patrolling Pennsylvania Avenue. Given the serious times, the chatter goes, should Barack Obama be allowed to enjoy date night with Michelle in New York, sightseeing in Paris, golf outings in D.C., not to mention doing a promotion for Conan O’Brien and a video cameo for Stephen Colbert’s first comedy show from Iraq? Some White House officials fretted that the Obamas’ Marine One and Gulfstream magic-carpet ride to dinner in Greenwich Village and a play on Broadway was too showy. I loved the “Pretty Woman” romance of the New York tableau, the president, who had not lived...

The fun police are patrolling Pennsylvania Avenue. Given the serious times, the chatter goes, should Barack Obama be allowed to enjoy date night with Michelle in New York, sightseeing in Paris, golf outings in D.C., not to mention doing a promotion for Conan O’Brien and a video cameo for Stephen Colbert’s first comedy show from Iraq? With two wars and G.M. in bankruptcy proceedings, shouldn’t the president be glued to the grindstone, emulating W.’s gravity when he sacrificed golf in 2003 as the Iraq insurgency spread? “I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the...

IT has been a busy week or two for the ethics police — those within The Times trying to protect the paper’s integrity, and those outside, ready to pounce on transgressions by Times journalists. Thomas Friedman, the star columnist, returned a $75,000 speaking fee after accepting it from a California government agency in violation of a Times guideline. Maureen Dowd, another star columnist, was roughed up on the Internet for using a paragraph from a blogger without attribution. And Edmund Andrews, an economics writer, began promoting a memoir describing how he took out subprime mortgages he couldn’t possibly repay even...

It isn’t so much that Dick and Rummy are back. It’s that they never left. They had no intention of turning America’s national security over to the Boy Wonder. The two best infighters in Washington history weren’t yielding turf to a bunch of peach-fuzz pinkos who side with terrorists. Let W. work out at the S.M.U. gym in Dallas, waiting for history to redeem him; Dick and Rummy are leaning forward into history, as they always do. Cheney is tawny with TV makeup; there’s no point taking it off. The gigs are nonstop, and he has a big Obama-bashing speech...

In many ways, Maureen Dowd and Joshua Micah Marshall personify new and old media. One is former political reporter and venerable columnist who dispenses bon mots from the New York Times editorial page once a week. The other is a blogging wunderkind who has blazed a trail with the liberal TalkingPointsMemo site. So when thejoshuablog (who's not Marshall) blogged over the weekend that Dowd had lifted, almost word for word, a slab of text from a blog by Marshall last week it was inevitable it would become a big deal. Unfortunately for Dowd, the furore shows little sign of abating...

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has admitted to using a paragraph virtually word-for-word from a prominent liberal blogger without attribution. Dowd acknowledged the error in an e-mail to the Huffington Post on Sunday, the Web site reported. The Times corrected her column online to give proper credit for the material to Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall. The newspaper is expected to issue a formal correction Monday. A request for comment from The Associated Press was not immediately returned by the Times late Sunday. The error appeared in Dowd's Sunday column, in which she criticized the Bush administration's use...

The strangest thing about Josh Marshall’s observation on the suspicious timing of enhanced interrogations is not that Maureen Dowd’s friend passed it off as her own before Maureen Dowd did the same; it’s that anyone would want to take credit for this bit of illogical paranoia. Here’s the twice-published line:

NEW YORK — New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has admitted to using a paragraph virtually word-for-word from a prominent liberal blogger without attribution. Dowd acknowledged the error in an e-mail to The Huffington Post on Sunday, the Web site reported. The Times corrected her column online to give proper credit for the material to Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall.

“This crisis was caused by the irrational behavior of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything and now demonstrate that they know nothing,” charged the brown-eyed, bearded socialist president [Lula of Brazil]. As the brown-eyed Brown grew a whiter shade of pale, Lula hammered the obvious point that the poor of the world were suffering in the global crash because of the misdeeds of the rich. “I do not know any black or indigenous bankers,” said Lula. He also told CNN he would press this theme at the G-20 meeting in London this week....

Earlier, Bill Dupray detailed a list of prominent Democrat leaders who may be influenced to vote against President Obama's budget plan: So here is the list of Democrat Senators who may possibly be influenced with calls and emails. Evan Byah (Indiana), Mary Landrieu (Louisiana), Mark Warner (Virginia), Bill Nelson (Florida), Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota), Mark Pryor (Arkansas), Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), Robert P. Casey Jr. (Pennsylvania), and Blanche L. Lincoln (Arkansas), Claire McCaskill (Missouri), Mark Begich (Alaska), as well as Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.). Senator Jon Tester (Montana) is not officially in the group, but the article details his discomfort with...

Maureen Dowd's latest column had the predictable expressions of both Bush Derangement Syndrome and Obama Worship Disorder. But at the end Ms. Dowd's screed had an incredible claim. Barack Obama is Mr. Spock. "Speaking of the Enterprise, Mr. Obama has a bit of Mr. Spock in him (and not just the funny ears). He has a Vulcan-like logic and detachment. Any mere mortal who had to tell liberals that our obligations in Iraq and Afghanistan are far from over and tell Republicans that he has a $3.6 trillion budget would probably have tears running down his face." One can just...

Sign of the Apocalypse, or perhaps that I’ve temporarily misplaced my marbles? I just read a Maureen Dowd column . . . and most of it made sense to me. I mean, what’s not to like about Maureen: * essentially telling Bill Clinton to stuff it; * knocking Barack Obama’s inability to communicate the mood of the moment; * rapping Eric Holder’s Americans-are-cowards rap on race? Excerpts:

Barack Obama’s grandmother told him to smile more. Bill Clinton tells the new president to strut more. As the country takes a bullet train to bankruptcy, the last Democratic president urged the current one to “embody” that old American spunk. That spirit of — as they sing in “Oklahoma” — “We know we belong to the land and the land we belong to is grand! A-YIP-I-O-EE-AY!” “It’s worth reminding the American people that for more than 230 years everyone who bet against America lost money,” Clinton told Chris Cuomo on “Good Morning America.” “I just want him to embody that...

What a start for Obama By Ralph R. ReilandMonday, February 9, 2009 "Well, That Certainly Didn't Take Long" was the headline on Maureen Dowd's column in The New York Times last Wednesday.Dowd, unswervingly a Bush-basher and pro-Obama over the past two years, was referring to Obama's success in knocking himself off his elevated pedestal within two weeks of his inauguration.Obama and his "arrogant attitude" went "SPLAT" (caps in Dowd's original) after a "cascade of appointments who 'forgot' to pay taxes" and the development of a "helter-skelter stimulus package." Rasmussen Reports survey on Feb. 2 found that only 37 percent of...

WASHINGTON: As President Obama spreads his New Testament balm over the capital, I’m longing for a bit of Old Testament wrath. Couldn’t he throw down his BlackBerry tablet and smash it in anger over the feckless financiers, the gods of gold and their idols — in this case not a gilt calf but an $87,000 area rug, a cache of diamond Tiffany and Cartier watches and a French-made luxury corporate jet? Now that we’re nationalizing, couldn’t we fire any obtuse bankers and auto executives who cling to perks and bonuses even as the economy is following John Thain down his...

I visited the future, and it was wearing a bow tie and calling itself “Thomas Edison.” The newspaper business is not only crumpling up, James Macpherson informed me here, it is probably holding “a one-way ticket to Bangalore.” Macpherson — bow-tied and white-haired but boyish-looking at 53 — should know. He pioneered “glocal” news — outsourcing Pasadena coverage to India at Pasadena Now, his daily online “newspaperless,” as he likes to call it. Indians are writing about everything from the Pasadena Christmas tree-lighting ceremony to kitchen remodeling to city debates about eliminating plastic shopping bags. “Everyone has to get ready...

Sarah Palin represents a huge historic leap forward for women.(snip)But Sarah Palin can come across as utterly unready to lead the world — or even find the world on a map — and that doesn’t reflect poorly on the rest of us.It only means that she doesn’t have enough mind grapes or thoughtsicles, as Tracy Morgan refers to brain droppings on “30 Rock,” to be president soon.

Maureen Dowd has never been known for her consistency of logic, but the poor dear is getting on in years and it’s becoming increasingly clear that her memory has started to slip. Read more here.

With modernity crumbling, our thoughts turn to antiquity. The decline and fall of the American Empire echoes the experience of the Romans, who also tumbled into the trap of becoming overleveraged empire hussies. As our sand-castle economy washes away under the tide of bad gambles and debts, this most self-indulgent society lurches toward stoicism (even bankrupt Iceland gives us the cold shoulder and turns to a solvent superpower). It’s going to require more than giving up constant infusions of stocks, Starbucks and Botox. As Seneca, the Roman Stoic who advised treating the body “somewhat strictly,” wrote in a letter: “Avoid...

The New York Times and John McCain really don't seem to like each other all that well and it appears the disagreement may have spilled over into a campaign plane ban for Times columnist Maureen Dowd. McCain Campaign chief Steve Schmidt scalded the New York Times just last week in a conference call where he ripped the paper and screamed bias. "Whatever the New York Times once was, it is today not by any standard a journalistic organization. It is a pro-Obama advocacy organization," Schmidt said. "This is an organization that is completely, totally, 150 percent in the tank for...

Barack Obama's desultory debate performance has left Maureen Dowd in the dumps. Her weekend column is a laundry list of woulda-coulda-shoudas that, had only Obama followed, would have led him to victory. Dowd's biggest beef is Obama's failure to have goaded McCain into a damaging display of ill-temper. Just for fun, let's meander through Maureen's analysis. "The president . . . is so insecure that he could only choose a vice president he knew would never hold his title." The MSM portrayed Bush 41 as lacking in self-confidence by taking, in Dan Quayle, a VP who wouldn't overshadow him. Now...

Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has ventured to Alaska to better understand the life of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. "I feel like Jack London," she said from her hotel room as she finished her Kegel excercises. "This place is dreadful. Yesterday, I broke a heel on my Manolo pump and I was horrified to discover there is not a Saks anywhere in Wasilla." Dowd was forced to continue wearing the broken shoe rather than face the horror of shopping at Walmart. She also complained about the lack of good men in the small town, despite...

I’ve been in Alaska only a week, but I’m already feeling ever so much smarter about Russia. I can’t quite see it from my hotel window, but, hey, I know it’s out there somewhere, beyond all the stuffed bears and cruise ships and glaciers and oil derricks. The proximity of the country from which William Seward bartered to buy Alaska for $7 million — Seward’s icebox — is so illuminating that I suddenly realize that we would commit a grave error by overestimating Russia’s economic strength. After all, it represents only 2.8 percent of the world’s G.D.P., even though its...