Not too many people noticed. But yesterday on Meet the Press, the always on-message Michael Steele managed to stumble his way into endorsing a Bush/torture Truth Commission. He even said a lot of other Republicans are calling for one too.
As you can see, over the weekend we rolled out a new front page design here at TPM. First and foremost we’d like your feedback. Let us know what you think, how you like or don’t like it and particularly whether you see any formatting problems. When you do a new design, you try it out on lots of different browsers. But there’s nothing quite like a live test. So let us know if there’s anything you see.
Next, a big thanks to TPM’s Al Shaw, our Associate Publisher, who coded this redesign from the ground up over the last six weeks or so ago. We’re really excited with the result.
Now, let me say a few things about the thinking behind the redesign. First, a lot of the changes won’t be evident on the first look because a lot of this retooling was about creating more layout flexibility on the back-end. Rather than having one template with feature on the top and then two long columns beneath, the news editors can rearrange the layout depending on what the news of the day is — a few big features for big news, a lot of smaller items, etc. So a lot of that you’ll only see over the coming days and weeks.
Another change is that you’ll see there’s a news wire section on the right of the main news feature. We did this because we want you to be updated on all the big news when you come to TPM through the day, not just the main story that we’re highlighting in the feature well. So we wanted more news headlines above the fold.
Then lower down on the page you’ll see we’ve open a news Voices section where we’re highlighting commentary pieces from TPMCafe and other venues around the web, in addition to the most recommended ‘reader blogs’.
Take a look and let us know what you think.
Bob Reich says the Dems and the White House are caving in on health care reform.
We’re listening to the brief press availability President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu are holding between meetings in the White House. The audio for some reason why pretty poor, especially at the beginning. So not all of what was said was clear. We’ll bring you more shortly.
Meanwhile, Jo-Ann Mort looks at whether Netanyahu might prove to be more flexible than his hawkish reputation suggests. My hopes for Netanyahu are very very low. But I’d love to be proved wrong. And there are some precedents.
Big story of the day on Fox News: the coming (read: hoped for) ‘coup’ against Nancy Pelosi. They’re trying to compare now to the fall of Gingrich and Lott.
Wishful thinking based reporting brought to new heights, even for Fox.
From the AP: “The Belgian bodybuilding championship has been canceled after doping officials showed up and all the competitors fled.”
Let me get this straight. First on Fox and now — according to a friend — on MSNBC we’re hearing on-going chatter about a potential ‘coup’ brewing against Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And as near as I can tell it all stems from an article on Politico by John Feehery, Denny Hastert’s former Press Secretary. Doesn’t take much.
Here’s the transcript of the Obama-Netanyahu press availability at the White House.
Plus video highlights.