The American Spectator

What gives with The New Republic? What was once a serious neo-liberal magazine increasingly reads like a blog post at DailyKos.

Exhibit A is its recent attempt to brand Senator George Allen a racist because he once displayed a Confederate flag at his home and wore a flag pin on his high school jacket lapel. Anyone remotely familiar with the culture of the South likely found that hilarious and could be forgiven for thinking that TNR was reprinting a scoop from TruthOut.org.

p>Apparently we’ll be seeing more political dirt-slinging from TNR , if the editorial published last week is any indication. The editors take after anyone who dares question Al Gore’s new movie, An Inconvenient Truth . But they are past arguing with Gore’s critics, preferring to libel them. Last year I wrote the following about how environmentalists treated their opponents on global warming: br> /p>

Unable to win the public policy debate fair and square, environmental groups are falling back on an old stand-by — they attack the integrity of their opponents by dragging a corporate bogeyman out of the closet. Disgruntled green groups failed to win passage of global warming regulations in the recently passed energy bill, so they are resorting to claims that ExxonMobil buys off everyone who doesn’t take their side. Some strategy.

br> You would expect this from Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council, but not