AUGUST READING. I’ve read some pretty good magazine articles lately, several of them in the latest print issue of The Prospect. (Michael Lind's piece on using the payroll tax as a transformative policy issue, and Terry Samuel's piece on the new generation of black leaders are just great). Moving beyond our own pages, I’d also recommend these:
- This New Yorker piece about the curious, unsolved murder of Tom Wales, a gun-control advocate and beloved Assistant U.S. attorney from Seattle, and the murder’s weird connection to the firing by Alberto Gonzales of Republican-appointed John McKay.
- New TAPPED editor Phoebe Connelly's old rag, In These Times, has a good piece by David Moberg about John Edwards and labor unions. Edwards must be frustrated as hell: He’s doing and saying all the right things for unions, and it’s not rebounding to his electoral benefit as much as it should.
- And, although in today's media cycle this is now ancient history, Bush speechwriter Michael Scully's takedown of fellow speechwriter Michael Gerson in The Atlantic is a must-read and, if you’re already read it, maybe even worth a quick re-read. (Subscription required.)
--Tom Schaller
