Typical Andrew Sullivan

So I just ran across this on Sullivan's blog,

As Jon Stewart said of John McCain, Giuliani has turned his straight talk express into a bus to bulls**t-town. The Stranger notices the U-turn.

I'm a big fan of Giuliani so I clicked on over to see what the Stranger was talking about. After favoring the assault weapon ban back in '04 he is now endorsing a candidate who opposes it. That's the sell out. From the Stranger:

Speaking to a group of reporters at the Sheraton Hotel downtown, where he was hosting a $1,000—$2,100-a-plate fundraiser for McGavick on Monday, October 9, Giuliani said this: "I don't think [the assault-weapons ban] is one of the most critical issues right now."

That's it. Even though they disagree on an issue, Giuliani thinks that McGavick is still a good choice. Apparently this never happens in Sullivan's world. Which is odd since he's currently supporting Democrats because the Republican party isn't conservative enough. The case that the Stranger wants to make is pretty weak anyway. Earlier in the piece he quotes Giuliani, "Someone who now voted to roll back the assault-weapons ban would really be demonstrating that special-interest politics mean more to them than life-or-death issues,". This is obviously an attempt to paint Rudi as a sell out. But nothing quoted in this article suggests that he's changed his mind on assault weapons, only that he thinks the overall picture outweighs that one piece. It's shoddy reasoning and it's embarrassing that Sullivan would link this approvingly.

Disgraceful

The Strib's coverage of the congressional race in my district has been pretty poor. Serious accusations about Ellison (DFL) have gone unresearched. Apparently anything goes as far as his main opponent Fine (GOP). Yesterday the Strib had a front page piece about a domestic dispute Fine had with his then wife back in '95. There was a he said/she said charge that was dropped without ever going to court. Not mentioned in the article, but important, is that Fine was awarded custody of their child when they split up. It's highly doubtful that the court system would award him custody if they believed he had beaten his wife.
The piece seemed slanted to me. The final paragraph:

After state Rep. Keith Ellison won the DFL nomination, Fine launched a persistent attack on his character, focusing on his past ties to the Nation of Islam. Fine has repeatedly said "character matters."

This seems like a gotcha to me. But fair people can argue that this is an important thing to know about a possible elected official. There are also questions about how the Strib got ahold of the records.
My outrage came when I read this on Powerline.

If the Strib thinks it's front page news that a Congressional candidate has been involved in a 911 call--hey, even if he made the call himself!--then it wouldn't have to go back to 1995 for a story. No, it could have reported on a 911 call that a young woman made on May 16, 2005, saying that she had been assaulted by Keith Ellison: CLR RPT'G [Caller reporting] SHE WAS ASL'TD BY ELLISON/KEITH/BM/41/WRG SUIT LS [last seen] LEAVING APT …UNK DIR [unknown direction]…NO EMS [emergency medical services needed]…CLR WANTS TO SEE SQD [police squad]

So Ellison has been involved in a similar situation in the past year. The Strib has been strangely quiet about that. Maybe not so strange after all.