The Times had an article this morning about the effort by stock exchanges to merge across international borders. At one point, it comments about fears that this trend could make it easier for companies to shop among stock markets in order to list their shares in the country with the least restrictive accounting and reporting rules.
This is a reasonable concern. It is a safe bet that if companies can evade regulations that cost them money, they will.
JUST POSTED ON TAP: WHO�S YOUR DADDY PARTY.Francis Wilkinson�s cover article on the end of the GOP masculinity monopoly is now online. The rest of the June issue is also available, and subscribers who prefer to print out the magazine can download the PDF here.
THE HORSE'S MOUTH. Fans of Greg Sargent's contributions to Tapped, take note: As part of the Prospect's ever-expanding blog empire, we're now hosting Greg's own blog on media and politics, The Horse's Mouth. You'll want to make it a regular part of your daily TAP online intake. (Greg won't be a stranger to Tapped, however -- have no fear.) Meanwhile, those Tapped readers who haven't yet made Midterm Madness a daily destination as well really need to consider doing so. There's great stuff over there, and when it comes to the midterms, they know what they're talking about a hell of a lot more often than us Tappers do.
THE RETURN OF EVIDENCE-BASED MEDICINE. It's easy to forget how much of American medicine is a guessing game, how your treatments are a composite result of your doctor's experiences, biases, treasured anecdotes, and personal reactions to his own training. Most folks think medicine operates off a rigidly defined set of standards: If you have symptom A, your doc orders tests B, C, and D. Not quite. According to a new study, doctors are ordering useless tests for asymptomatic patients at staggering rates. Of tests that aren't recommended for patients with a particular batch of complaints, we're spending between $12 million and $63 million.
SHOW ME THE BOOK! Lord am I tired of all this whining about how liberals aren't reviewing Ramesh Ponnuru's book, The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life. I think Kevin Drum already wrote the definitive take on this, but I'll reiterate.
ISRAEL LOBBIES. Subscription-only CQ reports on the looming showdown between the House and the Bush administration over a draconian bill imposing across-the-board sanctions against the Palestinian Authority and limiting the president's waiver authority (which normally gives him some flexibility to override the directives).
THE HISTORICAL MOMENT? I think I agree with about half of Ezra�s post below. Just as the Democrats were purged of their southern roots in 1994, so too might an overdue regional realignment visit the northeast in 2006. If, for example, voters in Connecticut remove Chris Shays, Rob Simmons, and Nancy Johnson from office, then November 2006 could be the moment that future historians cite as when the bluing of blue America caught up with the reddening of the red states.
AND I WOULD'VE SUCCEEDED, TOO, IF NOT FOR THOSE MEDDLING SITCOMS.Stanley Kurtz's hysterical post unveiling the "the entirely unsecret conspiracy against patriotism, tradition, and religion hiding in plain sight on our movie and television screens, in our universities, and on the pages of the mainstream press" is a peculiar piece of argument.
NEW COUNTRY ON THE BLOCK. It looks like we'll soon be welcoming Montenegro into the family of sovereign states. But don't believe everything you read in the newspapers: "For supporters of Montenegrin independence, the results, however narrow, are the fruition of a decade-long struggle to enable Montenegro to reclaim its status from 1878 to 1918, when it was a republic and an internationally recognized state." Nope.
CAN'T WIN FOR WINNING.LB is right -- the conventional wisdom is shifting against the Democrats. As today's Washington Postshows (and as Samnoted), the GOP is setting up victory as merely keeping Congress in 2006. Of course, with gerrymandered districts and the natural benefits of incumbency, losing Congress is a virtual impossibility.
