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Sunday, May 5 DEVIOUS MOVE OF THE DAY. But Broder has more than redeemed himself (see previous item) with this article, also in today's Post, demonstrating how the GOP sent out letters labeled "REGISTERED CENSUS DOCUMENT" that really contained a partisan message followed by a solicitation for contributions. [posted 1:45 pm] CORRECTION OF THE DAY. From the great David Broder, here's proof that even the most famous journalists in town make some pretty big mistakes: Saturday, May 4 DON EVANS, APOSTLE. Tapped got wind of this e-mail that commerce secretary Don Evans sent out to members of his department. We're simply amazed that George W. Bush and Evans are now quoting St. Paul to federal employees: FROM: Donald L. Evans SUBJECT: National Day of Prayer The first Thursday of May has always been designated as the National Day of Prayer. Whatever our faith may be, prayer serves as a foundation for life - for thanksgiving and for solace. The text of the President's message designating this day as the National Day of Prayer follows: Since our Nation's founding, Americans have turned to prayer for inspiration, strength, and guidance. In times of trial, we ask God for wisdom, courage, direction, and comfort. We offer thanks for the countless blessings God has provided. And we thank God for sanctifying every human life by creating each of us in His image. As we observe this National Day of Prayer, we call upon the Almighty to continue to bless America and her people. Especially since September 11, millions of Americans have been led to prayer. They have prayed for comfort in a time of grief, for understanding in a time of anger, and for protection in a time of uncertainty. We have all seen God's great faithfulness to our country. America's enemies sought to weaken and destroy us through acts of terror. None of us would ever wish on anyone what happened on September 11th. Yet tragedy and sorrow none of us would choose have brought forth wisdom, courage, and generosity. In the face of terrorist attacks, prayer provided Americans with hope and strength for the journey ahead. God has blessed our Nation beyond measure. We give thanks for our families and loved ones, for the abundance of our land and the fruits of labor, for our inalienable rights and liberties, and for a great Nation that leads theworld in efforts to preserve those rights and liberties. We give thanks for all those across the world who have joined with America in the fight against terrorism. We give thanks for the men and women of our military, who are fighting to defend our Nation and the future of civilization. We continue to remember those who are suffering and face hardships. We pray for peace throughout the world. On this National Day of Prayer, I encourage Americans to remember the words of St. Paul: "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." The Congress, by Public Law 100-307, as amended, has called on our citizens to reaffirm the role of prayer in our society and to honor the religious diversity our freedom permits by recognizing annually a "National Day of Prayer." NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim May 2, 2002, as a National Day of Prayer. I ask Americans to pray for God's protection, to express gratitude for our blessings, and to seek moral and spiritual renewal. I urge all our citizens to join in observing this day with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-sixth day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand two, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-sixth. Tapped has two things to say about this. First, we can't believe that Bush is honoring religious diversity by quoting St. Paul. Second, Don Evans is dead wrong in saying that "The first Thursday of May has always been designated as the National Day of Prayer." The truth is that, as the Washington Post reported on May 4, 1995: "A joint resolution of Congress established the National Day of Prayer in 1952 as an ecumenical expression of national unity. President Ronald Reagan further institutionalized it in 1988, declaring the day should fall on the first Thursday in May." Some longstanding tradition that is. [posted 3:20 pm] NICE CALL, UNFORTUNATELY. This isn't exactly the kind of thing that one hopes to be right about. Nevertheless, labor market gurus Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and Thatcher Tiffany of the Economic Policy Institute look pretty good right now. Back in January they predicted 6.5 % unemployment by November of this year. The jobless rate just hit 6.0 %, more than two points higher than its low of 3.9 % in October of 2000. [posted 3:00 pm] TORTURED PROSE WATCH. From the Washington Post today: ANTI-ISLAMOFASCIST LEFT WATCH. Tapped has been doling out credit to those on the left, like Christopher Hitchens and Michael Walzer, who have proudly waved their secularist credentials in the face of violent Islamic fundamentalism. We'd like to welcome Michael Berube to the club. We'd also like to point readers toward the latest story from the Post on the new Talibanic anti-vice police in Indonesia, who have been confiscating alcohol and shaving the heads of prostitutes while crying "God is great!" [posted 2:45 pm] WHEN GOOD BLOGS DO BAD THINGS. Tapped wishes to make something of a clarification/emendation to our last post on Friday about Spider Man. We hope we didn't offend anyone with our quip about Kirsten Dunst (below). Certainly the thought could have been expressed in a better way. But the post came out of Tapped's sense, having seen the Spider Man trailer more times than we can count, that it contains some rather unnecessary shots of Dunst in the rain. Tapped isn't easily scandalized but we were nevertheless a bit suprised at just how gratuitous a few of these shots were. [posted 2:45 pm] Friday, May 3 THE SECRET HISTORY OF SPIDER MAN. This article by Jeet Heer in the National Post explains that one of the Spider Man comic's two creators (by far the lesser known and lesser remunerated one) was a follower of Ayn Rand. Unfortunately, this philosophy doesn't seem to have done Steve Ditko much good: Tapped will be keeping the sad story of Ditko in mind when we see Spider Man (featuring Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst in a wet T-shirt). Somehow, though, we don't think we'll walk out of the theater and buy a copy of Atlas Shrugged. When it comes to thousand-plus page cult books from the 1960s, we greatly prefer The Lord of the Rings. [posted 2:15 pm] JOHN ASCHROFT, CHURCH, AND STATE. Several readers have written in regarding our comment about "the next time John Ashcroft gives a speech about how our inalienable rights come from God, not the Constitution." Eugene Volokh even blogged it, apparently on the assumption that our comment was based on some deep reading of the Constitution, the Founding Father, etc. Let's back up a bit. Tapped had no intention of starting a debate about church, state, or the relationship between liberalism and religion. We were just taking a cheap shot at Ashcroft! Our observation, slightly more cogently and politely phrased, would be this: Ashcroft sounds, to us, like the kind of religious conservative who believes that religious authority is (or should be) the basis for political legitimacy in the United States. Tapped disagrees. Strongly. Now, certain components of the Tapped brain trust are indicating that they would like to expand on the original post, so we may be coming back to this. [posted 1:25 pm] WHY IS THERE NO PALESTINIAN GANDHI? Tapped was watching Crossfire last night. Usually, we're not much of a chat-show junkie. (Believe it or not, some remnant sense of decorum deep down in the well of Tapped's soul finds it hard to watch people shouting at each other.) But Jim Carville asked a question that Tapped has been thinking about for some time: Why haven't the Palestinians embraced nonviolence? We'll be following up on this soon. [posted 1:10 pm] LAST LINE OF DEFENSE. While the environmental policies that the administration pushes are almost uniformly awful, and even the most pro-environment lawmakers can never get any momentum behind green legislation, some hope still flickers that federal courts will protect precious gains made in past years. This morning, the U.S. Court of Appeal for the DC Circuit denied all of the industry petitions to review the EPA's 2007 Diesel Rule thismorning. If you like breathing clean air, this is great news. [posted 12:35 pm] CALIFORNIA FOR BUSH? Since we made much of a Field Poll showing Bill Simon down by double-digits to Gray Davis, we feel compelled to also note that the latest Field Poll also shows that 52 percent of California voters would be inclined to re-elect George W. Bush. Uh-oh. Somebody email us something to gloat about, quick! [posted 11:00 am] KASS-TASTROPHE. Glenn Reynolds's latest column on TechCentralStation nails Bush's farcical President's Council on Bioethics, headed by Leon Kass. Reynolds notes that the president announced a policy on cloning before the council had even finished its deliberations on the matter, which were supposedly meant to advise him. Not to brag, but TAP predicted last September that Kass's council would be a sham. [posted 10:50 am] VAST CONSPIRACY WATCH. Here's more evidence (as if we needed it) from ABC News.com that the right wing is a well orchestrated machine. The focus in this story is on the shadowy Council for National Policy. With its extraordinary penchant for secrecy, no one seems to know how the group raises its money, where it fits into the interlocking directorates of the other right wing groups, or what it actually does. But the reporter, Marc J. Ambinder, calls it a "sausage factory for conservative ideas." Tapped always thinks it's a good idea to keep an eye on these groups, and so look out for more here. [posted 10:50 am] BYE BYE BIRDIE. So House Republicans have all but decided that the military should be exempt from caring about endangered species. We're pretty worried about the tortoises at the Marine training ground at the Mojave Desert, the woodpeckers at Camp Lejeune, and the snowy plovers that venture onto the Navy SEAL training ground at Coronado Island, CA. Tapped also wonders who will be next to ask for environmental exemptions under the guise of national security. [posted 10:35 am] GET THIS MAN AN OP-ED COLUMN. Josh Marshall just put up a record 22-paragraph "post" on Talking Points Memo. Hey buddy, you're not in grad school anymore! Someone oughta just give this guy a full-time pundit gig. Gail? Fred? Get him while he's hot! [posted 10:00 am] MUST READ. Our friends at Reason have done a pretty funny parody of National Review's "The Corner." It's not quite as slick as The Weekly Standard's all-purpose blog parody from a few months back, but it's very good. [posted 10:00 am] GIRL TALK. Speaking of Gale Norton (see below), Tapped is tickled by the following story. It seems Norton, EPA Secretary Christie Whitman and Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman were enjoying one of their regular lunches this week when a lower level EPA administrator issued a letter attacking one of Interior's favored causes -- snowmobiling in Yellowstone. When Norton found out later she felt back-stabbed and called Whitman to rant. Whitman's now ordered that such matters should come through her office. But forget about the policy details: We want to know what Norton, Whitman, and Veneman were talking about at lunch. How Karen Hughes' departure made them think about their own families? Why wasn't Condi invited? And do they have slumber parties too? [posted 9:25 am] NORTON CRITICAL EDITION. Interior Secretary Gale Norton was slammed yesterday for interfering with efforts to fix the current -- and horrifically managed -- system of collecting royalties from oil, gas mining, and grazing on American Indian land and then distributing the money to landowners. A court official said Norton had obstructed the work of special trustee Thomas Slonaker (who is trying to sort all of this out). A contempt ruling is still pending over Norton's over actions. Tapped is looking for a resignation. [posted 9:10 am] OFF WITH THEIR GLOVES. We've been wondering how the Democrats were going to take back the House and keep the Senate if they weren't willing to go after Bush and his Republican brethren. So we're relieved to learn that DNC head Terry McAuliffe has given the go-ahead to push back. A new DNC video is supposed to pave the way attacking Bush for breaking campaign promises (a rather revolutionary thought, no?). McAuliffe is trying to rally the Democrat troops who, as best Tapped can tell, are cowering in the House and Senate cloakrooms. [posted 9:00 am] GEORGE W. BUSH, LORD OF THE THUNDER. How the heck does Dana Milbank get away with this stuff? In today's Post he's got a Page A6 story that begins by quoting a Psalm and proceeds makes a mockery of George W. Bush's "National Day of Prayer" observances by covering the stormy weather outside (including thunderclaps) as they were occurring. This article is a must read. Tapped wonders what's next for the Post: Front page satire? Bring it on! [posted 8:40 am] NEXT OF KINSLEY. Slate's non-editor has a great column on why the U.S. shouldn't be propping up kings, royalty, or anyone else based on ties of kinship or blood-line, including Zahir Shah in Afghanistan. Tapped particularly liked this paragraph: LE COULTER. The latest work by everyone's favorite bomb-throwing pundit is particularly revealing. Ann Coulter goes on a crusade against "liberals" and "Muslim immigrants" in France, but it all but leaves her siding with Jean-Marie Le Pen. Indeed, pretty much the only bad thing she has to say about him is that he has a lot of affairs. (L'horreur!) Meanwhile, there's plenty of fresh anti-liberal hate speech here: Whenever liberals are frustrated, they accuse their opponents of "xenophobia" -- which is admittedly a step up from Muslims who express frustration by strapping dynamite to children. CHILDREN'S CRUSADER. There's news today of a fight brewing within the Pentagon over defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld's plans to scrap the U.S. Army's expensive Crusader self-propelled artillery system. The stories, though, don't give a sense of just how ridiculous this program is. TAP senior correspondent Jason Vest did that in a recent article on various military budget boondoggles, writing: Considering who our enemies are these days, though, Tapped has an even better reason for killing this weapons system: its name. [posted 6:30 am] WHO'S ON CLINTON? Every once in a while, there comes a news story that everybody has to weigh in on. Such was the case with the news that Bill Clinton met with NBC officials in the interest of possibly "deposing" -- Tapped has read this word so many times in connection with this story that we're starting to wonder -- Oprah Winfrey. The Washington Post in particular seems to have really outdone itself. Today the Clinton story was covered by their television writer, Lisa de Moraes, their gossip writer, Lloyd Grove, and to boot, their editorial page. Tapped thinks Grove did the best job. [posted 6:10 am] Thursday, May 2 LEARNING FROM "WEST WING." This story lays out the latest example of Saudi Arabia's theocratically inspired oppression and abuse of women. These tales are a dime a dozen, but today Tapped wants to draw a connection with last night's episode of "The West Wing." As blogger Charles Murtaugh points out, the show contained a rather remarkable speech by C.J. Cregg, foil to Ari Fleischer, against the Saudis for their treatment of women. Murtaugh transcribes the speech; he also notes that Glenn Reynolds has commented that "even liberals" -- Tapped takes it as assumed that "The West Wing" is a liberal show -- are now talking tough on the Saudis. Murtaugh continues: Tapped heartily agrees, and sometimes wonders why we don't see more prominent leftists -- besides Michael Walzer and Christopher Hitchens -- on the anti-Islamofascism beat. In the Prospect's print version, Chris Mooney has explored this question with respect to the anti-Muslim apostate Ibn Warraq, who has been far more widely embraced on the right than the left. [posted 5:10 pm] THAT'S "THE LIBERAL AMERICAN PROSPECT," RUSS. "In addition, Tomasky's once-regular New York forum now appears only sporadically. This may have nothing at all to do with him; the weekly's ditzy editor, Caroline Miller, has similarly stiffed "National Interest" writer Tucker Carlson, preferring to chase the listings magazine Time Out with trivial entertainment and lifestyle content. As a result, Tomasky's been slumming at other publications like The American Prospect and The Nation." In New York Press's "Mugger" column this week. [posted 3:50 pm] THE RISING TIDE. The estimable Chatterbox has taken up the call for some prominent Republican -- Dubya, we're looking in your direction -- to disavow Wayne LaPierre's lunatic comments about Americans for Gun Safety. Our only regret is that AGS, who are inveterate publicity hounds, will get a lot of exposure out of this. But it's a small price to pay for LaPierre's disgrace. [posted 3:50 pm] THERE GOES THE SUN. Tapped notes a pretty devastating take on the New York Sun by Clay Risen in The Morning News. We'll be quoting this sentence to our friends for some time: "It's bad," writes Risen of the Sun, "and not simply in a beginner's bad-luck sense of the word. We're talking state-university-weekly bad." Tapped, of course, would never be so mean ourselves, but we love to quote other people who are. [posted 3:40 pm] THE TRIAL LAWYER AS PRESIDENT. John Edwards may have bored attendees at the Campaign for America's Future dinner recently -- not exactly a death sentence -- but he sure seems to excite other people. We just finished reading Nick Lemann's profile of Edwards in the latest New Yorker. (It's not online, sadly.) It's a good piece. The most interesting part, towards the end, looks at whether a kind of trial-lawyer populism might be Edwards' ticket towards winning a few of the "country-music states" in the South. "Throughout much of the South, trial lawyers are, in effect, the left," he writes. "Big jury verdicts in tort cases are what the South has instead of unions." Edwards' past as a trial lawyer, in other words, might prove to be a useful weapon in 2004 rather than a political liability. As it happens, our friend Josh Green examined this possibility at greater length recently in Lemann's alma mater, the Washington Monthly. Check out his article here. [posted 2:50 pm] TRADING POST. More policy info from Tapped, the blog on steroids! The Senate debate on the trade bill is stalled by a fight over adding health care provisions to protect displaced workers who jobs are moved overseas. The Democrats have drawn a line in the sand, insisting on a substantial subsidy. The Republicans have gotten their backs up. But if recent battles are any indication of what's to come, it's distinctly possible that American workers will get rolled once more, just as they did on the economic stimulus package and the airline bailouts. In both instances, the Democrats made aid to unemployed workers a condition for passing those bills; in both instances, the legislation went through with aid packages for the companies and the rich, but nothing for working people. Tom Daschle seems to be playing hardball this time around (while John Breaux has resumed his accustomed role of undermining the Democratic position). But given their track record in these fights, Senate Democrats need unremitting pressure from the core Democratic constituencies. [posted 2:18 pm] IT'S A TURKEY. Nobody likes the farm bill. A Washington Post editorial points out the hypocrisy of the bipartisan support for legislation that adds $50 billion to the $80 billion that farmers already get. These are Republicans who believe in limited government and a Senate Democratic leadership that believes in a balanced budget. The amount of money in this bill, the Post notes, is worth a third more per year than the current foreign aid budget. Reps Cal Dooley (D-CA) and John Boehner (R-OH) trash the legislation in an op-ed, saying that Congress is on the verge of turning back the clock 50 years in federal farm policy. Rep. Jeffrey Flake (R-AZ), writing in the Wall Street Journal, summarizes the issues well: "...negotiators approved a farm bill expanding payments to farmers by nearly $50 billion over the next decade. The bulk of this increase, more than 90 percent, will go to farmers producing just five crops...two-thirds will go to just 10 percent of farmers...it destroys the free market, wreaks havoc with incentives, further institutionalizes dependency and jeopardizes our export economy..." The Dallas Morning News says the legislation perpetuates the existing rotten system. And believe it or not, that's just the beginning of the criticism. [posted 2:10 pm] YASSER ARAFAT, VAMPIRE? Tapped is strongly averse to political correctness in all its nefarious forms, including hypersensitivity about race and "stereotypes." (As in many things, Tapped thinks a healthy sense of humor goes a long way.) So we will not go so far as to say that this recent cover of the National Review, which depicts a clawed and fanged Yasser Arafat gripping a depleted-looking dove and a wilted olive branch, is racist. It isn't. However. Remember how conservatives complained of liberal hypocrisy when Robert Byrd recieved but a slap on the wrist after letting slip a vulgarism from his youth? In that spirit, we will venture to observe that if this were a caricature of Ariel Sharon, NR would be crucified. So to speak. [posted 1:20 pm] ON DRUGS. Roll Call reports several amusing items in their gossip column today, including that 11 GOP-sponsored House pages were expelled from the program for smoking marijuana, apparently a pretty standard practice. NORML, the pro marijuana legalization group, has offered internships to any of the pages who are at least 18 years old. [posted 12:18 pm] CABLE BILL. From La La land comes a report that Bill Clinton has met with TV executives to talk about hosting his own show. Sure, it's probably not going to happen, but it's pretty amusing to think of the ex-president as the next Oprah. Possible program name: "I Feel Your Pain." [posted 12:14 pm] DUNCE CAP. The Administration's dumb idea of increasing student loan costs has been dumped. The Democrats made political hay out of it and, anxious to avoid this issue hitting the campaign trail, the White House pulled it. Guess the GOP didn't particularly feel like being called the "anti-student" party this year. [posted 12:10 pm] GOING DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN. Tapped can't help but think of how ecstatic conservatives -- especially our friends at the Weekly Standard and the National Review -- were when Bill Simon beat Dick Riordan for the GOP gubernatorial nomination in California recently. An article of faith for wingnuts, you see, is that when Republicans run as moderates, they lose (think Gerald Ford and George Bush Sr.), and when they run as conservatives, they win (think Ronald Reagan). But the latest Field Poll says Simon is down fourteen points from Democratic Gray Davis, one of the least inspiring big-name Democrats in the country. So the real question is, what will Davis do with all the extra money in his campaign account? [posted 11:25 am] UPDATE. At least one libertarian blogger, the eloquent and thoughtful Eugene Volokh, has come out against Wayne LaPierre's attack on Andrew McKelvey. He puts it better than Tapped could: such language "[U]ndermines our ability to live in peace in a constitutional culture that, whether you like it or not, is composed of people with many different views about the Constitution." Bravo. We'll try and remember Volokh's words the next time John Ashcroft gives a speech about how our inalienable rights come from God, not the Constitution. [posted 11:05 am] SHOUT OUT. The Daily Princetonian this morning announces the creation of a summer program for black and Latino high school students planning to pursue journalism in college. The program, whose director happens to be TAP's Richard Just, is aimed at closing the diversity gap in college newsrooms. As Just argued in TAP Online one year ago, the current low representation of blacks and Latinos on the staffs of university newspapers has real consequences -- not just for collegiate journalism, but for campus life at some of America's top schools as well. [posted 11:00 am] PILING ON THE NRA. Andrew Sullivan joins the party -- not surprisingly, since Tories are often pro-gun-control. (In Britain, which lacks the wacky, cowboy-wanna-be gun culture of the American South and West, conservatives rightly are inclined to try and keep guns out of the hands of criminals.) When will the libertarian bloggers come out and admit it's wrong to compare gun-controllers to Osama bin Laden? [posted 10:30 am] WHAT'S SHE WORRIED ABOUT? Slate's Dahlia Lithwick, normally a pretty cool cucumber, has gotten awfully worked up over the trial of Zacharias Moussaoui. "In open court last week," she writes, "he proved he's willing to waive competent counsel and go to the electric chair so long as he can destroy the American legal system by grandstanding at his trial." Destroy the American legal system? Tapped searched for signs of irony in Lithwick's piece, but detected none. Now, we weren't at the trial. But from reading his testimony, we're not too worried. Americans know bullsh*t when they see it. So what if people cheer on the Arab street? We agree with InstaPundit on this one. [posted 10:15 am] LYONS ON SCHMIDT. Writing in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Gene Lyons ridicules Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler for complaining about the mean e-mails that the paper's reporters receive. Lyons points out that the real story is the one Brendan Nyhan revealed in TAP Online -- that according to two individuals who sent her critical e-mails in response to a story, Post reporter Susan Schmidt "researched the domain names the e-mails were sent from and forwarded their e-mails to their employers." [posted 9:30 am] MUST READ. In the latest Boston Phoenix, Dan Kennedy delivers what is essentially a longer version of our own Harold Meyerson's cover story on the foreign policy ineptitude of the Bush administration. Kennedy's piece is titled, "How Dubya lost his groove." Our favorite selection: [posted 9:20 am] THE FRENCH GET PROTECTION. Le Monde's Web site has included this image among a number of other posters and slogans opposing Jean-Marie Le Pen's rightist candidacy for the French presidency. We knew Jacques Chirac was good for something. [posted 9:05 am] POLITICAL SCIENCE, PART II. Meanwhile, following on our last post, the Washington Post's Eric Pianin reports today on the increasingly selective use of data to spin scientific debates by the Bush administration. Pianin quotes Philip E. Clapp of the National Environmental Trust: "Science is only a public relations tool for this White House." The most startling thing about this story -- and the fact that most obviously confirms its dire premise -- is that Bush's science adviser John Marburger is quoted nowhere in the piece, even though his job is (theoretically) to funnel good scientific information to the president while weeding out the bad. But then, thanks to the Bushies, maybe he's too busy pursuing a career as a freelance drama critic (scroll to "Your Tax Dollars At Work"). [posted 7:25 am] POLITICAL SCIENCE. National Academy of Sciences head Bruce Alberts is concerned that in the aftermath of 9/11, there's a push on in Washington to "restrict publication" of federally funded studies for security reasons. "It is being suggested that every manuscript resulting from work supported by federal funds be cleared by a federal project officer before being published, with serious penalties for violations. Another rule could prevent any foreign national from working on a broad range of projects." Tapped doesn't think this is a very good way to make us safer. [posted 7:15 am] WE'RE WAITING. For the Democrats to start making a fuss about George W. Bush's concerted and inexhaustible use of the White House to advance his party's interests in the upcoming elections. Mark Halperin and Marc Ambinder at ABCNews.com say it's becoming conventional wisdom that we're now seeing the "most political White House EVER!" And they say it's going to get worse. [posted 6:55 am] IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE AN INSULT? R. Emmett Tyrrell, of American Spectator fame, is now saying that the Catholic Church scandal vindicates the Boy Scouts' anti-gay policies. Tapped thinks Tyrrell's column needed one more draft. In a passage that's supposed to insult "liberals," he actually does the opposite: Note to Tapped (from self): You dirty forward-looker you! [posted 6:30 am] RACIAL PROFILING, AT LAST. Those conservatives who have been calling for racial profiling at U.S. airports should take note: It's happened in spite of them. As the Post reports of the new employees of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA): The paper also noted that of these new hires, "about 60 percent have military backgrounds." Without necessarily objecting, Tapped simply wants to note that with such a composition of the TSA staff, at least a little bit of racial profiling may happen almost as a matter of course. [posted 5:10 pm] WHAT A GREAT IDEA. The editorial writers at The New York Times must be reading Tapped regularly these days. How else to explain the fact that they too noticed George W. Bush's empty promises when it comes to extending coverage for mental health related illnesses? (Okay, we admit that we can think of some other explanations.) The Times adds this interesting fact: The Congressional Budget Office estimated last year that the Domenici-Wellstone bill would drive up premiums by only about 1 percent. [posted 4:50 pm] FUZZY RADIO. An NPR report this morning called "Broadcasters Miss Digital Deadline" focused on television broadcasters being pressured to "make good on a deal made years ago." No, it's wasn't about broadband or the Internet. It was about whether TV stations send out their signals digitally, and at a high enough quality that people with expensive audio-video equipment can watch a picture in which, as the NPR announcer described it, "you can see every grain of sand, the veins on every leaf." One broadcast rep interviewed said his company wants to meet these customers' "needs and requirements," but that people who can advantage of high-definition broadcasts are scarce. Their "needs"? Call us Luddites, but high-def TV is a luxury -- a hobby perhaps, but not a need. And yet it's being treated like a significant national telecom debate. NPR needed to spend that six-minute broadcast on an issue with consequences beyond the fuzz -- or lack thereof -- on our TV sets. [posted 3:45 pm] HE DOESN'T KNOW THE HALF OF IT. John Ellis is griping about 70-year-old Dan Rather's new contract extension at CBS. Here's a good addendum: A few years ago, at the height of Monicagate, James Fallows proposed an explanation in TAP for why the punditariat was so out of touch, so cynical, so complacent: It was too old. Here's the link; scroll down to the section titled "Geriatric Punditariat." Tapped served as Fallows' research assistant for this piece, and among our duties was to ascertain the ages of some two dozen pundits -- sometimes by looking them up in Who's Who, but usually by calling them. At the time, Tapped's boss had recently been regaling us with Sy Hersh stories. One such story -- possibly apocryphal -- concerned a favorite Hersh reporting tactic, which was to leave recalcitrant sources phone messages containing blatantly incorrect information, thereby spurring the source to return Hersh's call and volunteer the "correct" information. Young Tapped tried this out on Margaret Carlson, leaving her a voice message that said we had pegged her at an (unlikely) 73 years of age. Carlson promptly returned the call and begged to differ. "So can you tell us what is your age?" we asked. "Absolutely not," she replied. True story. [posted 3:25 pm] SHATTERING KRISTOL. Virginia Postrel, linking to Glenn Reynolds, says that Bill Kristol's anti-cloning ad contains outright falsehoods. And she lists a few. [posted 2:30 pm] KILLER ARGUMENT. In National Review Online, Wesley J. Smith has this to say about supporters of assisted suicide: "They are death fundamentalists driven by a cancerous ideology that is as deeply felt as the most sincere expression of religious faith." Considering that those who oppose assisted suicide tend to do so on religious grounds, we think that Smith's words may have gotten away from him a little bit here. Not that National Review readers will necessarily notice -- but that's what Tapped is for! [posted 2:00 pm] TEN YEARS LATER. Tapped hasn't yet said anything about the ten year anniversary of the L.A. riots -- and particularly the devastation they wrought on the Korean community in that city. We think it's time to. Ten years ago, the acquittal of the four police officers who had brutally beaten Rodney King unleashed a maelstrom of violence -- after three days, there were 53 deaths, 3,000 businesses looted and burned. Two-thirds of these businesses were Korean-owned, and the pain and devastation that began on April 29 became memorialized for the Korean-American community in the phrase "sa-i-gu," literally 4-2-9 in Korean. But out of the ashes came a movement of Korean American activists determined to ask hard questions of their communities, build connections with other minorities, and to work toward reconciliation. On May 2, 1992, 30,000 Korean Americans marched for peace and justice in the Rodney King ruling. Countless Korean American "children of sa-i-gu" and other people of color continue that work today, according to renowned Korean American journalist K.W. Lee, despite living in an L.A. still blighted by its memory of the riots. [posted 1:45 pm] TWO YEARS LATER. A 2000 Washington Post investigative series outlined how the Army Corps of Engineers used skewed assumptions to justify its water projects. And yesterday the Corps suspended work on 150 approved projects that involved billions of dollars. This comes amidst growing criticism by the Pentagon, the GAO, environmental groups, some members of Congress, and the President. Does the Corps have any friends these days? [posted 1:40 pm] WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE. At a forum yesterday, Pat Buchanan said the Palestinians have a "just cause." [posted 1:22 pm] PEAS IN A POD. Looks like the idea of big tax breaks for corporations runs in the family. Governor Jeb Bush has proposed, and Florida legislators appear ready to approve, a tax break of some $262 million that is sought by the state's biggest businesses. The reporters on this story, Linda Kleindienst and John Kennedy, raise the right issues: The lawmakers seem less inclined to deal with crowded classrooms, social services and environmental problems. [posted 1:15 pm] WHERE'S SHE BEEN? Carla Marinucci, political reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, doesn't seem to have paid that much attention for the last 500 days. (Yes that's how many days George W. Bush has been president.) How else could you explain her overly loving treatment of Bush's speech yesterday in Northern California? Reading this article literally made Tapped queasy. Marinucci got one thing right, though -- the signature event of the two-day trip was raising $4.5 million for Bill Simon, GOP candidate for governor. [posted 1:00 pm] WE KNEW IT! USA TODAY's interview with Arthur Levitt confirms a lot of what we've been thinking about what Congress has been up to lately. The Michael Oxley accounting "reform" bill does little except give politicians cover, and there remain enormous conflicts of interests between Congress, investment banks, rating agencies and accountants. Calls for the end of the Enron era have been greatly exaggerated. [posted 12:48 pm] SPACING OUT. Who can resist dwelling for a few minutes over these awesome photos from the new Hubble Space Telescope? It's a relief for Tapped's stretched soul and tired eyes. [posted 12:45 pm] MALKIN IT FOR ALL IT'S WORTH. Abercrombie & Fitch's notorious "Two Wongs Can Make It White" line of t-shirts have set off a wave of protests across the country, resulting in A&F pulling them from the shelves. But today the frat boys have finally found their mouthpiece. Forget the aptly named Abercrombie & Fitch spokesman Hampton Carney, who in damage-control mode stated: "The thought was that everyone would love them, especially the Asian community. We thought they were cheeky, irreverent and funny and everyone would love them. But that has not been the case." Now Abercrombie has Michelle Malkin on its side -- an authentic Asian speaking out against those damn student activists. Malkin's theory: As long as one of the designers was Asian, it's okay to market offensive shirts. Hampton Carney can sleep tight tonight knowing that at least one Asian-American commentator is proud towear the shirt. [posted 12:00 pm] SAFIRE DRILL? It's becoming increasingly clear that this notion that Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence prior to 9/11 was off the reservation. (To give credit where credit is due, Media Whores has been on this beat for a while, and as with David Brock, Tapped sees fit to follow.) Perhaps William Safire, former CIA-head R. James Woolsey, and others who have been peddling this theory will now admit they were in error? [posted 10:35 am] NRAWOL. Tapped never ceases to be amazed by how off-the-wall the National Rifle Association actually is. We've been flogging the outrages of their latest convention for two days already, and now, courtesy of Buzzflash, we learn that there was also gay-bashing going on. Just one more reason that Charlton Heston, Wayne LaPierre, and company are out of touch with the rest of America. [posted 9:20 am] NEXT, PLEASE. TAP's friend Mickey Kaus takes on Senator John Edwards at length (scroll down). We have a similar reaction to Edwards as a Democratic presidential contender, though for different reasons. There's just no there there. At the Campaign for America's Future conference in early April, Edwards bored to death 300 progressive activists who had gathered desperately seeking a new standard bearer. Edwards isn't it. [posted 9:10 am] HATCHERY. The Washington Post's cloning guy Rick Weiss devotes a story to Senator Orrin Hatch's recently announced pro-research stand on the cloning of human embryos. A nice Hatch sound bite: "An important aspect of being pro-life is to support the technologies that help the living." How often pro-lifers seem to forget....But what's really interesting here is the report that Hatch, Dianne Feinstein, and Ted Kennedy have added some teeth to their pro-research cloning bill: These provisions were apparently added to satisfy critics who felt the bill didn't do enough to ensure that no cloned embroys would be brought to term. And they further demonstrates that those who have called for a "moratorium" on embryo cloning because they're concerned about whether it will be regulated -- and have set themselves up in opposition to Hatch/Feinstein/Kennedy -- have chosen the wrong horse. The route of "regulation" is clearly the bill that Hatch is now supporting. P.S.: Glenn Reynolds has several posts on the cloning issue and notes that Gerald Ford shares Hatch's position. [posted 7:50 am] HOW LONG WILL THIS ONE STAND? The Interior Department recently issued a ruling on three coal bed methane leases that could halt drilling of thousands of other methane gas wells on some 40 million acres in the West. The decision sets up a confrontation over President Bush's call for an explosion of methane gas production, a key component to his energy plan. We wonder whether the Interior Department finding will be as long-lived as the one issued by the U.S. Geological Survey that stated that drilling in ANWR could significantly harm the caribou. USGS caved in a week's time to White House pressure to reverse its decision. [posted 7:35 am] A FAREWELL TO MANICHAEISM. The Bush administration will now be renewing talks with Kim Jong Il's North Korea. Tapped is pleased by the news. But strictly speaking, we're not so sure how to reconcile this development with Bush's notion that North Korea is "evil." Are we missing something? Does this mean the country has been dropped from the "axis" and will be treated differently from Iraq and Iran? Is there any consistency to the Bush administration's cosmic classification of nations? Tapped's head hurts. [posted 7:35 am] YUCK. So the Washington Post thinks it's just dandy to truck nuclear waste to Nevada. Maybe they didn't notice what happened yesterday in their own backyard when the Capitol Beltway was shut down because of a simple chlorine leaking truck. Imagine that it was something more toxic. In the meantime, Bill Clinton was strategizing at the University of Nevada on Monday night about how to fight the Bush Yucca Mountain plan. It sounded pretty good to us. Rumors are that local citizens want to hire him as their lobbyist. [posted 3:45 pm] "JACKBOOTED THUGS" REDUX. Does Wayne LaPierre, top dog at the National Rifle Association, know when to shut up? Apparently not. At the NRA's annual convention in Reno this past weekend, LaPierre pulled a Jerry Falwell. Attacking Andrew McKelvey and the gun-control group he founded, Americans for Gun Safety, LaPierre urged NRA members to treat AGS as "a shadowy network of extremist social guerrillas" and "political terrorists." But that's not all: MIDDLE EAST MODERATE ALERT, PART II. A Tapped reader writes in to disagree with our previous post on the distinction between criticizing Israel and being anti-Semitic: One more try. The name of that FASB outfit is not the Federal Accounting Standards Board, as first written here, nor the Fiscal Accounting Standards Board, as I "corrected" it recently. It is the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and I promise never to write about it again.
[posted 1:30 pm]MEMORANDUM FOR COMMERCE EMPLOYEES
U.S. officials are considering ways to bridge Sharon's contention that he is not prepared to sign a permanent deal with the Arabs' position that there must be a final agreement resolving all outstanding differences.
[posted 2:50 pm]Now in his 75th year, Ditko by all accounts lives happily alone in his New York apartment. Because his Randian philosophy sanctions behaviour of large corporations, Ditko seems remarkably unbitter about the fact that he receives no royalties for co-creating Spider-Man. Rather than asking for money, Ditko just wants to be remembered for his role in creating one of the world's most famous fictional characters.
When we have tried this sort of thing before, it has sometimes ended in tears. Half a century ago in Iran, a CIA agent shut his eyes, opened the Tehran phone book at random, and chose a family named Pahlevi. (Warning: slight exaggeration.) Before you could say "your majesty," the second so-called shah of Iran had convinced himself that his monarchy dated back thousands of years. He threw himself a huge party full of Hollywood celebritiestoday's real royalty to celebrate that misconception and soon was skewered on his scepter. Iranians decided that, on balance, they would rather be ruled by crazed religious fanatics.
[posted 8:05 am]But liberals don't like Le Pen. They want Muslims to do for Paris what they did for Kabul, and Le Pen stands in their way.
[posted 7:00 am]This 42-ton behemoth -- meant to replace the Paladin self-propelled howitzer -- is a screaming contradiction to the doctrine of "maneuver warfare" that Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki espouses. It is so unwieldy that neither the C-5 Galaxy nor the C-17 Globemaster, the two biggest aircraft in the military's cargo fleet, can carry a complete Crusader system. Although the CBO and the General Accounting Office (GAO) have reported that there is a more cost-effective alternative in the German-made Panzerhaubitze (PzH) 2000 self-propelled howitzer -- replacing the Crusader with the PzH 2000 would save taxpayers $6.7 billion -- the Crusader proceeds apace with an additional $467 million.
Actually, I think that when liberals talk tough about Muslim fundamentalism, they're standing on much firmer ground than are the Straussian-dominated conservatives, whose annoyance with the Saudis is much more realpolitikal than principled.
...In ordinary times, George W. Bush is a very mortal president. He deserves the praise he's gotten for the cool, measured, but decisive manner in which he responded to the terrorist attacks. But if he wants our continued support, he's going to have to earn it.
The last few months' revelations that the Catholic hierarchy covered up for hundreds of priests having sexual relations with perhaps thousands of boys provoked anger all over America. Even liberal forward-lookers are angry, though now they are in the weird position of opposing homosexual priests while favoring homosexual Boy Scout leaders. Embracing such contradiction is for liberals their special art form -- but if it becomes too much a strain, there is a remedy to this contradiction, to wit: Liberals could drop their boycott of the Boy Scouts if the Boy Scouts promise to enlist homosexual priests as Scout leaders.
At BWI yesterday, about two-thirds of the federal screeners were male and the overwhelming majority of them were white -- a striking difference from private sector companies, which hired a large number of immigrants.
The bill includes a new provision requiring all cloners of embryos to first obtain approval of their research by a scientific and ethics advisory board. Federal law currently requires such oversight only if the work is federal funded...[the bill] also goes beyond previous language by outlawing not only the transfer of cloned embryos to a woman's uterus, but also the transfer of cloned embryos to any artificial womb.
In fact, Andrew McKelvey's network kind of operates and sounds a lot like Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda. A billionaire with an extremist political agenda, subverting honest diplomacy, using personal wealth to train and deploy activists, looking for vulnerabilities to attack, fomenting fear for political gain, funding an ongoing campaign to hijack your freedom and take a box-cutter to the Constitution. That's political terrorism, and it's a far greater threat to your freedom than any foreign force.
Here's a link to the video. Now, TAP has been critical of AGS before. They've returned the favor. (Although we find it curious that when AGS communications director Matt Bennett told The Washington Times that TAP's story was wrong, he wasn't able to name any, you know, actual facts we got wrong.) Nevertheless. On general principle, it seems to Tapped that staunch NRA ally George W. Bush, who promised to "change the tone in Washington," should be willing to disavow this lunacy. And does Zell Miller, who also spoke at the Reno convention, also believe gun-controllers are a greater threat to freedom than Osama bin Laden? We're waiting. [posted 3:25 pm]The problem is, look at criticism of Israel. If those who criticize Israel are over the age of 50, did they support a Palestinian state prior to 1967? Do they crit