Day: October 11, 2014

Is It an ‘Attack Ad’ When It’s True?

Jon Ponder

Pundits and pols on the left and right are expressing outrage over a new ad from Democratic candidate Wendy Davis in the Texas governor race. The ad points out that even though her opponent, Attorney General Greg Abbott, sued and won a settlement after an accident left him paralyzed from the waist down, he has spent his career fighting against personal-injury settlements for others who’ve found themselves in similar circumstances.

If everything in the ad is true, how can it be an “attack ad?”

Here’s the script and explication from the Davis campaign:

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Police Report Offers New Details on Palin’s Drunken White-on-White Brawl

Jon Ponder
Prior to the drunken brawl, the Palins rolled up to the party in white stretch Hummer similar to this one
Prior to the drunken brawl, the Palins rolled up to the party in white stretch Hummer similar to this one

As we noted earlier, we have an unwritten policy against taking the bait when Sarah Palin begs for attention by making stupid, inflammatory statements in public forums. Not that it matters much if we do. The writers and editors in what she calls the “lamestream” media apparently find her “pull my finger” tactics irresistible.

But now that she is embroiled in a scandal as a result of her family’s drunken brawling at a party on Sept. 6, coverage of the white-trash folks that Sen. John McCain sought to install in the Naval Observatory, the vice presidental residence in Washington, is fair game. As Talking Point Memo’s Josh Marshall put it:

The Violence, The Booze, The Out-of-Wedlock Births, the Snowmobiles: Pity the state of the white family in the 21st century. The official Anchorage PD report on the Palin Clan white on white violence incident is out.

TPM lists seven new revelations from the police report that suggest that the Palins were even more inebriated and white-trashy than we knew:

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