| Checking the Fact-Checkers [Ramesh Ponnuru]
Richard Cohen's column is mainly about Barack Obama, but it is also about how all of the candidates have fibbed. John Edwards lied about the cost of his haircuts. Fred Thompson lied about lobbying for a pro-choice outfit. John McCain insists that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation." Mitt Romney concocted the story about how his father marched with Martin Luther King Jr. And Rudy Giuliani is a one-man fib machine — everything from why he had to provide police protection for his then-mistress to the survivability rates for prostate cancer in Britain. Now a lot of this is overdone. I think Giuliani is using misleading statistics about cancer in Britain, but I have no reason to think that he himself believes they're misleading. But it's the bit about McCain that's most irritating, since McCain has backed down from that assertion.
First of two reports: FDA's Fast Track designation more help to ...
A decade ago, the Food and Drug Administration introduced a Fast Track designation for drugs in development that was intended to speed the availability of medical treatments for serious diseases. However, a seven-month investigation by The Plain Dealer shows that this government blessing has not increased the number of drugs approved or moved them to market faster. Instead, Fast Track has given the drug industry, which came up with the idea for the designation and lobbied for its passage, a device that promises a lot but delivers little to anyone but investors. The news of Fast Track designation creates a boon for day traders, hedge funds and others looking to make quick money off biotech stocks. Some biotech executives also have tried to turn the FDA's Fast Track designation into personal gain.
Giuliani blusters on despite a duffle bag full of political gaffes and ...
WASHINGTON–For months now, Rudy Giuliani has been hauling his metaphorical duffle bag of liabilities around with him, through Iowa, New Hampshire and other states key to the nomination of the next presidential candidates. It's stuffed with the messy, public divorce, the estranged family members, the videos of him hamming it up, dressed in drag. It's brimming with his views on abortion, gay rights and gun control, which would surely drag him down in the race for the Republican nomination. And still he finds room in that sack for the criminal indictment of the protege he chose as New York police chief and tried to elevate into the George W. Bush cabinet, the endorsement from the evangelical who talks to God, his brusque manner with primary voters and his casual dismissal of his misrepresentation of Canada's health care system.
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