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Mon, June 24 | Tues, June 25 | Wed, June 26 | Thurs, June 27 | Fri, June 28 | Sat, June 29 | Sun, June 30
(For more info on "Tapped," our permanent link, or to e-mail us, click here.)
Friday, June 28 AND ANOTHER THING... Brilliant David Greenberg column on the history of conservative efforts to add "Under God" to the Pledge. [posted 5:10 pm] NOTE TO DENNIS HASTERT, DAVID KEENE, AND OTHERS. The judge who wrote the dastardly opinion on the Pledge was appointed by a Republican. So if, like most Beltway conservatives, you think we should do our best to keep such men off the bench, the proper response is obvious: Oppose George W. Bush's nominees! Now that kind of bipartisanship Tapped could live with. [posted 4:30 pm] FACT CHECK ANN COULTER! Okay, this isn't from Slander. It's from Coulter's appearance on Hardball, guest-hosted by Mike Barnicle. We missed this gem, but reader R.L. passed it along:
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[Link]I will guess that the judges who said the Pledge of Allegiance violates the constitution were appointed by Democrats and not Republicans. I haven't looked at the decision. I haven't even heard about the decision because I've been busy today, but that's a wild guess I'm going to make....Oh, I'm just waiting to see if anyone will take any bets on me on whether the judges who wrote the decision were appointed by a Democrat or Republican.
We think we can safely assume the implication here. In actuality, of course, only one of the two judges was appointed by a Democrat -- Judge Stephen Reinhardt, a Carter appointee. The other was Judge Alfred T. Goodwin, who was appointed by that great liberal, Richard Nixon. This really speaks volumes about just what a hack Coulter is; it requires no elaboration on our part. But perhaps now the chat shows will stop billing Coulter as a "constitutional lawyer." No wonder the profession is held in such low regard. [posted 4:30 pm]
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TAPPED GETS RESULTS! A number of bloggers have responded to our call to take up the cudgel against Cal Thomas. How gratifying! Hats off to MaxSpeak, Atrios, Dodgeblog, Adam Magazine, and Writer of Fortune. [posted 4:30 pm]
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THE BIG, BAD, UNITED STATES. This column from the Times of London puts together quite a strong litany of complaints about the United States. It concludes:
By weakening Mr Bush, discrediting the US economic model and undermining America's moral authority, these scandals will confirm a trend which began with the Axis of Evil speech and Mr Bush's over-enthusiastic embrace of Ariel Sharon. By threatening to go to war against countries which have never attacked the United States, and boasting about his power to dispose of any political regimes not to his liking, Mr Bush has lost the respect of both America's military enemies and its allies. Now the loss of international respect for the United States is moving a step further.America has forfeited its global military leadership by blustering against President Saddam Hussein and failing to curb Mr Sharon. It has forfeited its global diplomatic leadership by abrogating treaties on climate change and criminal justice. It has forfeited its globaleconomic leadership by protecting its steel companies and increasing subsidies to farmers. Now America is forfeiting its global business leadership by failing to enforce proper financial practices and ethical standards. This loss of American leadership will probably be the most enduring legacy of the scandals on Wall Street.
These European attacks on the U.S. always put Tapped in an awkward position. That's because opinions about the extent too which they're correct vary significantly within our own ranks. We're not sure that the latest corporate scandals will be the end of U.S. hegemony (we rather doubt it), but we do know that the piece is worth reading for U.S. liberals, if only to find out for yourself how strongly you agree (or disagree). [posted 1:40 pm]
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THE COURT ON JUDICIAL ELECTIONS. Buried under the much higher profile of the Supreme Court decision on vouchers was another important ruling on judicial elections. The court ruled that some restrictions on what judges can say while they are campaigning are unconstitutional. The core issue here -- how can judges rule fairly on cases if their positions are made known as part of an effort to get elected? -- does present a conundrum, so Tapped thought we'd try and sort it out a bit.
We've never subscribed to the myth that judges are impartial beings. They're not. We need to know what they think on a range of issues before voting for them. If we're going to have judicial elections, we should allow judicial candidates to talk about issues facing the court, and not just their own personal qualifications. They all come with their own political backgrounds, beliefs, philosophies. So why not pull back the curtain and have it all be out in the open? And if we're going to allow judicial candidates to talk about the issues, that should be considered an even greater incentive for public financing of judicial elections -- which will be necessary to remove the perception that the candidates are taking stances to please their big contributors.
We know that many progressives think we should treat judicial elections differently, and try to take the politics out of them. But we believe that underneath the surface of that argument is the view that judicial elections are fundamentally wrong and that "merit" selection (i.e. appointment of judges by politicians) is better. But while that might be true in an ideal world, we think merit selection is just as tainted as the election route. After all, those who are ultimately selected have also done their best to curry favor, in a myriad of ways, with those who select them. [posted 11:35 am]
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ELECTION YEAR ISSUES. Congress had a busy day yesterday -- mostly in election year posturing. We are ever so happy to report that they had the time to rename the post office in Frank Sinatra's home town of Hoboken, New Jersey after him. One of the few bills they've passed that might become law. [posted 11:30 am]
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BEST PIECE ON THE PLEDGE SO FAR. Is by Scott Rosenberg in Salon. (Hint: Rosenberg explains why the Ninth Circuit ruling was absolutely correct.) Tapped recommends that Ralph Neas of People for the American Way -- which, unlike the ACLU, has been unwilling to stand up for the rights of the minority in this case -- read his piece immediately. [posted 11:25 am]
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THE BUSH TWINS SHOULD READ WASHINGTONIAN. If they had, they'd know -- from the mag's recent "Great Nights Out" issue -- that Stetson's is a Democratic bar. [posted 10:00 am]
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WHO'S "ROD PAIGE?" His bio in this Washington Post article says he's Secretary of Education, but Tapped has never heard of him. (Note to literalists: We're joking.) [posted 10:00 am]
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TWO HOT RACES. The Wellstone-Coleman Minnesota senate race remains neck and neck according to the latest polls. The spoiler Green Party candidate polled at 3 percent -- enough to make a heck of a difference. Only 5 percent of the voters polled had no opinion in that race that could tip the balance in the Senate. Meanwhile, in North Carolina, Elizabeth Dole seems to have a slight edge over the likely Democratic nominee, Erskine Bowles. Also to her advantage according to the Times -- though not, we think, to the advantage of voters in the state -- is the fact that the primary election, originally scheduled for May 7, has been postponed indefinitely because of legal challenges to the state's redistricting plan. That's good for Dole because it puts off the general election, and it appears that the more exposure Dole gets statewide the less people like her. [posted 10:00 am]
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TIME STANDS STILL FOR ANN COULTER. Okay, this isn't exactly a "fact check" of Coulter's new book. It's almost too obvious for that. Nevertheless, we couldn't resist pointing out something this glaring. On page four of her book Slander, Coulter writes that "after the September 11 attack on America, all partisan wrangling stopped dead," and soon continues:
The bipartisan lovefest lasted precisely three weeks. That was all the New York Times could endure. Impatient with the national mood of patriotism, liberals returned to their infernal griping about George W. Bush -- or "Half a Commander in Chief," as he was called in the headline of a lead New York Times editorial on November 5, 2001. From that moment on, the left's primary contribution to the war effort was to complain.
Sorry, Ann, but last we checked, November 5 was just under two months after September 11. [posted 9:30 am]
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WE CAN'T BELIEVE THIS. You can say a lot of things about the Pledge of Allegiance ruling released the other day. But never did Tapped believe that anyone -- even Cal Thomas -- would say this:
On the eve of our great national birthday party and in the aftermath of Sept. 11, when millions of us turned to God and prayed for forgiveness of individual and corporate sins and asked for His protection against future attacks, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has inflicted on this nation what many will conclude is a greater injury than that caused by the terrorists.
So although he hedges slightly, it seems that Thomas basically thinks the pledge ruling is worse than 9/11. This is simply stunning -- and at least as bad as dumb statments by Falwell/Robertson on the right or Chomsky on the left. The blogosphere ought to get itself whipped into a frenzy about this one. [posted 9:20 am]
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MORE BUNKUM FROM THE MARRIAGE MOVEMENT. The National Marriage Project at Rutgers University has just released its annual survey, The State of Our Unions: The Social Health of Marriage in America 2002,and once again a member of the Institute for AmericanValues (IAV) is using a tiny study as an opportunity to spread bogus assertions that seem intended to freak single women out. (Click here for TAP's debunking of IAV board member Sylvia Ann Hewlett's recent book.) "Once a woman gets into her 30s," study author and IAV Council on Families member David Popenoe told Reuters yesterday, "it's more likely that she will have to marry a man who was married earlier. It's more likely that she will marry a man who brings kids (into the marriage) and more likely that she will have a child by herself."
Alas for Popenoe, that's simply not the case. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, having a child outside of marriage is almost entirely a behavior of younger women: "83 percent of births to teenagers in 2000 were out-of-wedlock ... with the proportion declining to 13 percent for women 30 years and over," concluded the Bureau. So according to the national data, a woman in her 30s ismuch less likely, not more likely, to "have a child by herself" than a younger woman. Tapped, who grew up in an intact family and supports marriage as much as thenext single gal, would like to make a modest proposal to the members of the marriage movement: The next time you feel a need to spout off about your research, do a quick comparison check of the national data first. Because with mistakes like this, you're just undermining your own cause. [posted 9:10 am]
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Thursday, June 27 To having, on several occasions over the past several weeks, tried desperately to extract larger meaning from the World Cup, a practice that Reason's editor Nick Gillespie finds not always very illuminating. Yes, we learned the lesson from Monty Python that "life is like a game" is not exactly the cutting edge of wit or wisdom. But we couldn't resist, dammit! (Warning: There might even be a tad more in store before we burn out on this pop sociological fixation.) Gillespie's piece is also good for his debunking of the notion that soccer has failed to catch on in this country -- in fact, as he illustrates, to a significant extent it already has. [posted 4:25 pm]
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THE ARTICLE YOU'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR. The American Prospect's revealing profile of Steven Hatfill, the bioweapons expert whose apartment was recently searched by the FBI in connection with the anthrax probe, is now up. For that matter, we've also got two more excellent web-only pieces today: Adam B. Kushner eviscerates Bush's latest Mideast moves, and Brendan O'Neill reports from England on why U.S. and British troops in Afghanistan hate each other. Don't miss it! [posted 3:00 pm]
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SUPREMELY BAD IDEA. The Supreme Court today said that school vouchers are constitutional. As might be expected, the responses to this landmark decision divided neatly along ideological lines. Predictably enough, we agree with Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way, when he states, "This decision represents a serious crack in the constitutional wall between church and state." Tapped thinks we would have much preferred the Ninth Circuit's ruling in this case. How amazing, though, that the politics of church and state are suddenly front and center, after having been completely off the radar for so long. Maybe that Paul Kurtz profile in The New York Times that we mentioned earlier this week wasn't so poorly pegged after all. [posted 3:00 pm]
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PILLOW TALK. USA Today has uncovered a new way to curry favor with lawmakers -- putting their spouses on corporate boards. Mrs. Richard Shelby served on the board of a defense contractor, a clear conflict of interest with her husband's job. Similar conflicts were noted with numerous other spouses including Wendy Gramm, Elaine Chao, Anne Bingaman, Ruth Harkin, and Richard Blum. Okay, time for the Dick Van Dyke double bed arrangement for these couples.... [posted 3:00 pm]
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GIVE THEM THIS: AT LEAST THEY KEEP TRYING. To debunk Geoffrey Nunberg's recent article on media bias in The American Prospect, that is. This time, the would-be debunkers are the conservative Media Research Center, who have done a study in which they claim that the word 'conservative' was used four times more frequently than the word 'liberal' in the last five years on certain network news programs -- and that this means that "reporters are actually four times more likely to label conservatives than liberals." Nunberg isn't having any of it. [posted 2:35 pm]
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FACT CHECK ANN COULTER, PART II. We've got some competition! One Scoobie Davis has devoted an entire blog to Slander. He's already come up with a few things from the book's first chapter, although they seem to fall under the heading of "gross exaggeration/distortion" rather than "outright lie." Check out his analysis here. [posted 1:15 pm]
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HERE COME THE BAD ARGUMENTS ABOUT THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE. Guess what, folks: The fact that the Declaration of Independence refers to a "Creator" is not a very good argument when it comes to asking whether it's constitutional for the Pledge of Allegiance to invoke God. Why? Well, the itsy bitsy fact that the Constitution came later and was a deliberately and markedly secular document. The Declaration isn't irrelevant -- far from it. But neither is it the law of the land. What we're talking about here is the Constitution's establishment clause, and references to the Declaration in this context tend to muddy the waters and confuse the issue. Can somebody tell that to James Taranto? [posted 1:10 pm]
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BUT DON'T TELL ME ANYTHING I DON'T WANT TO HEAR. National Review's Rich Lowry wants to do a column about "how logging is good for forests" and has invited readers of The Corner to email him evidence to that effect. The pundit mind in action! Blogger Charles Murtaugh spanks'em here. [posted 12:20 pm]
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FACT CHECK ANN COULTER, ADDENDUM. Several readers have suggested that, rather than buy Coulter's book -- and put money in her pocket -- participants in our "Fact Check Ann Coulter!" reader contest check the book out at the local library. We heartily agree. [posted 12:20 pm]
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COULD IT BE WORSE? This is not looking like a story with a happy ending. First, some measure of campaign finance reform is signed into law. Now, months later, the obits can almost be written.
The New York Times editorial board wants us to believe that when John McCain and Russ Feingold take the rotten rules that the FEC has written back to the Senate (scroll down), they are going to inspire their colleagues to overrule them. Hold on: Have we completely forgotten how difficult it was to get the Senate to pass even this modest bill in the first place? It's hard to imagine that things could get worse in this new process, but at this point, we'd bet on it. And lawsuits to remedy what the FEC has done don't seem likely to work either. Remember, the courts are packed with conservatives. Equally flawed is the notion of restructuring the FEC. Why would a majority of lawmakers want to tamper with a regulatory structure that works perfectly for them?
The current approach to campaign finance reform looks like a dead end to Tapped. We admire the fight in McCain, Feingold, and others, but to engage this battle only within the Beltway is a loser. Still, when you think of how the average American feels about politicians and the campaign money-flinging CEO class, you can just see the misty outlines of a viable message for a presidential candidate.... [posted 11:15 am]
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LEAHY NO STONE UNTURNED. There are several reports this morning on the tough review that Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Pat Leahy gave the president's homeland security bill. Leahy was particularly concerned about exemptions that are buried in the legislation regarding laws on conflict of interest, public access to information, and whistle-blower protections. Some more details from the Times:
The administration has proposed that information that companies voluntarily turn over to the government about the vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure not be subject to public disclosure. It also wants corporate officers to be able to serve as advisers to the department and not be subject to the same screening as permanent government employees.Mr. Leahy complained that the department would be able to set up private advisory committees that could operate in secrecy and be "staffed by outside corporate officers with financial interests in the outcome giving recommendations to the new department."
What's more, Leahy appears serious about getting changes.
Having been involved in numerous government reorganizations in its past, Tapped knows the kind of mischief that can be made under the name of "consolidation." But this issue is particularly sensitive in an administration that has already proven itself incredibly resistant to public inquiries. With the heavy push they are making to approve this new department quickly, we hope Leahy will stay the course he charted yesterday. [posted 9:45 am]
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COUNTERPUNCH DRUNK. We've severely criticized Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair's radical newsletter Counterpunch before. But this spoof, "Arafat Calls for Democratic Elections in the United States," is not bad as satire (though we're not sure about some of the "facts" alleged in the item). To quote:
"Mr. Bush is tainted by his association with Jim-Crow-style selective disenfranchisement and executive strong-arm tactics in a southeastern province controlled by his brother," said Mr. Arafat, who was elected with 87% of the vote in 1996 elections in the West Bank and Gaza, declared to be free and fair by international observers, including former U.S. president Jimmy Carter. "Our count shows that he would have lost the election if his associates hadn't deprived so many thousands of African-Americans, an oppressed minority, of the right to vote..."[posted 9:10 am]Bush was not without his supporters, however. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, elected head of a country that legally discriminates among its citizens on the basis of religious belief, forbids political candidates from advocating an end to that discrimination, and disenfranchises an entire people through military occupation, dismissed the call as 'absurd.'
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ONE NATION, INDIVISIBLE. It seems that it's cool this morning to make fun of the Ninth Circuit for ruling that the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional. Certainly that's what cowardly Democrats have been up to. But the fact is that, even if it doesn't matter much (we don't think the pledge is very oppressive), the ruling is eminently defensible. Don't ask Tapped, ask UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh:
So this isn't some liberal court creating some new constitutional right, or defying Supreme Court precedent. The Ninth Circuit's decision wasn't dictated by the Court's precedents, but it was certainly a plausible application of them.
We hope our readers will read the rest of Volokh's post, because it goes through the arguments in some detail and concludes that this issue will, in all likelihood, make it to the Supreme Court, where a 5-4 ruling one way or the other can be expected. And that projected margin, in itself, is proof that the Ninth Circuit wasn't behaving in a roguish manner. Quite frankly, it's just plain Orwellian to argue that the phrase "under God" in the pledge doesn't have anything to do with religion. [posted 8:30 am]
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ANN COULTER READER CONTEST! We'd almost run out of things to say about that nutty gal, Ann Coulter. But then she went and wrote another book. But it may not be much of a book. Tapped reader U.R. reports that one chapter into Coulter's book -- "I only managed to get through the first chapter," he writes, because "I can't read the book more than a few minutes at a time" -- he's already found two obvious factual errors. On page 7, Coulter writes that Jim Jeffords "opposed Reagan's tax cut, supported the elder Bush's tax hike, supported Clinton's tax hike, and opposed the younger Bush's tax cut." She's right about the first two. But we checked, and Jeffords -- like all Republicans at the time -- voted against Clinton's 1993 budget (which included the tax hike) and for George W. Bush's recent tax cut. The latter is a pretty glaring error, both because it was so recent and because Jeffords' refusal to oppose the cut was a major blow to liberals who thought his party switch would help them defeat it.
(On the same page, Coulter also writes that Jeffords "voted against Clinton's impeachment" -- which is impossible, as the Senate never voted on impeachment. The House has the power to impeach; the Senate only votes on whether or not to convict. Jeffords did, however, vote against conviction. So maybe we're quibbling.)
If Coulter is going to title her book Slander, it would be nice if she would also go to the trouble of proofreading it. But maybe she didn't have time. (She is, after all, a busy girl.) So we've decided to help Coulter out. Starting today, Tapped will hold a reader contest: Fact Check Ann Coulter. We invite our readers to slog their way through Slander and email Tapped with examples of factual errors. Include the page number; we'll take a look in our own copy and post the ones we can verify. As a reward for this difficult, dirty task, the Tapped reader who emails in the most examples will get a free year's subscription to The American Prospect. Let the fact-checking begin! [posted 7:40 am]
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TNR ONLY HAS ONE ENDORSEMENT. That would be Al Gore. But the always-enjoyable Mugger seems to think that a recent spate of TNR profiles -- on John McCain, John Kerry, and Howard Dean -- each "tout" the respective candidates. That's odd. Michael Crowley's Kerry profile wasn't particularly favorable; Jonathan Cohn's Dean profile was pretty neutral. Only Jonathan Chait's McCain piece was implicit or explicit about advocating for the guy in question. [posted 7:40 am]
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Wednesday, June 26 Those lawsuits against the campaign finance law are moving forward, at the same time that John McCain is threatening a new lawsuit against the FEC over the new soft money regulations that have just been finalized. The Republican National Committee is really behaving outrageously in the extent of the information they are requesting in their subpoenas of political groups like EMILY'S LIST, NARAL and the League of Conservation Voters. Indeed, John Ashcroft has objected to the request for information that the NRA (another group fighting alongside the RNC to overturn the law) sent to the Justice Department on the grounds that it was overly broad. We guess the groups on the left can use this reasoning too. We also imagine that Ashcroft must be squirming in this fight with his longtime political bedfellows. [posted 3:25 pm]
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KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE GRAND OL' FLAG (AND JOHN ASHCROFT). Maybe it's the fact that summer has really hit in Washington -- temperatures have hovered over 90 degrees the last few days. Or maybe it's attorney general John Ashcroft's ever present face on television. But for whatever reason, Tapped has been thinking about the 4th of July and what it means to be a patriot. And we were intrigued by Nat Hentoff's report in The Village Voice on civil libertarian activism and political organizing against the USA Patriot Act. Petitions are being circulated in liberal enclaves throughout the country like Northampton, Ann Arbor, Berkeley, and Cambridge that call on federal lawmakers to monitor the implementation of the act and to repeal those sections that are clearly unconstitutional. This leaves Tapped feeling pretty good on the eve of this holiday. [posted 2:50 pm]
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COMING UP. A teaser: Pretty soon TAP Online will be publishing a profile of Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, a biological weapons scientist whose apartment near Fort Detrick was just searched by the FBI as part of the anthrax investigation. Stand by for more. [posted 2:30 pm]
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ON THE HORIZON. With the latest Worldcom mess, it's hard not to wonder whether the stench from the growing corporate mess will reach the November elections. Howard Fineman's latest article in Newsweek certainly suggests that possibility. Granted, there are naysayers. Fineman reports on a meeting between Howard Dean -- the would-be Democratic presidential candidate, see our profile here -- and Bill Clinton in which Clinton urges Dean not to attack the rich (doesn't everyone want to be rich?) but rather to advocate broad based reforms. Sounds like Clintonesque advice to Tapped: Play it safe.
But we think issue of corporate rip offs, combined with the Republicans' mild-mannered response to Enron, Andersen, ImClone, and so forth, will resonate with the public. Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg believes that the "CEO culture" can be a thread that ties together a lot of Republican weaknesses, especially in light of tougher economic times and a falling stock market. Still, taking on the corporate culture is going to be tough for the Democrats because they are in hock to business for their political fortune. The Dems get six times as much money from corporate America as they do from labor unions. [posted 12:55 pm]
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THE YUCCA FACTOR. With the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste fight in high gear, one would think that the issue of how the waste is to be transported there would have been as thoroughly studied as the viability of the waste site itself. But apparently that is not the case. As former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board and now a consultant for the state of Nevada told the Post, "They're trying to slip this through before (the transportation questions) are focused on by the American people." TomPaine.com highlights many of the problems. [posted 12:40 pm]
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YOU DON'T SAY. Three money and politics tracking groups -- the National Institute on Money in State Politics, the Center for Public Integrity, and the Center for Responsive Politics -- teamed up to study soft money in the states in the last election cycle. This study is certainly timely, since the implementation of the new campaign finance law has been fully undermined by rulemaking at the Federal Election Commission and it can be safely predicted that the states will be a key avenue for the raising and spending of soft money in the future. In 2000, the study revealed, $570 million was collected by state parties, about half collected from the national parties. Now that the national parties won't raise soft money any more, what the state parties collect will likely be beyond even Tapped's (vivid) imagination. For state by state totals check here; for top donors check here. [posted 10:00 am]
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ANOTHER CFO BITES THE DUST. Tapped has been afraid to read the business pages of the papers every day, but now we don't even have to go that far to get the bad news. This front page story tells us that WorldCom Inc., the second largest long-distance telecommunications company in the nation, fired its chief financial officer after an internal audit found improper accounting of more than $4 billion in expenses over five quarters. More than 17,000 people are going to be laid off. Guess who their auditor was? [posted 9:50 am]
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Tuesday, June 25 HOW GOOD IS THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S PROPOSAL? Not very good. Frankly, it seems half-assed -- something that Karl Rove came up with to try to thread the needle between various neoconservative, evangelical, and pro-Israel lobbies. While we're waiting for the inevitable (and inevitably excellent) Robert Wright column thinking through all this, Tapped encourages you to check out two smart, lucid posts from Talking Points Memo. One concerns the drawbacks of the current plan. (Basically, it makes a mockery out of the notion of Palestinian statehood -- we'll decide who your leaders are, thank you!) The other talks about why removing Arafat ain't so sweet. TPM, being a Doctor of History, reminds those with short memories (like Tapped!) that we didn't just end up with Arafat because he was swell. We ended up with him because he was the best Israel and the West could do.) [posted 5:25 pm] JONATHAN CHAIT ISN'T GOING MAD! Not yet, anyways. But he didn't write the Notebook item we referenced earlier. However, he did write the earliest "trifecta" piece for TNR, so as long as we're going to plug our friends at Spinsanity, we're going to plug our friend Chait. Here's his piece. [posted 4:00 pm]
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JONATHAN CHAIT IS GOING MAD! At least, that's how we interpret this Notebook item from The New Republic, an item which we presume was written by Chait, TNR's excellent tax-and-budget wonk. The topic is George W. Bush's continued and unabashed dishonesty regarding the "trifecta." Chait has been covering the general topic of Bush's fiscal dishonesty for some time now, so it no doubt annoyed him that the media wasn't picking up on a massive, obvious lie. But Milbank's piece should cheer him up. [posted 1:00 pm]
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ADVERTISING, TODAY AND TOMMORROW. Rob Walker has a good piece in Slate about "those creepy Gap ads" in Minority Report -- the ones that jump out at you, if you've seen the movie. What he doesn't mention is that Slate is halfway there! A few times recently, Tapped has clicked over to Slate and found the whole table of contents covered with a gigantic add for Quest or something. Fine. But then we clicked onto Slate and were treated to an animated car streaking across the middle of our screen and sending a loud "VROOM!" noise through our speakers. Tapped almost fell out of our chair. [posted 1:00 pm]
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PROSPECT ROUNDUP. We just posted two timely articles on the main page. The first piece, by TAP's Nick Confessore, is about whether the Dems can win on prescription drugs this year, as they've been trying to do for two election cycles now. The other, by Daniel Franklin, takes a skeptical look at FBI "reform." Check'em out. [posted 1:00 pm]
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"A GROUP CALLED SPINSANITY." Brendan Nyhan's campaign to expose the fact that Bush never actually made his oft-repeated "trifecta" remark has now been taken up by Dana Milbank in The Washington Post. Milbank credits "a group called Spinsanity" for digging into this issue. Does anybody else think that this sounds oddly sinister? We can just see the next Post mention for Nyhan et al: "A group called Spinsanity claimed responsibility for the latest embarrassment to the Bush administration...." Written this way, you wouldn't know that much of the Spinsanity trifecta-hunting has taken place in Salon. [posted 11:25 am]
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MCCAIN PLAYING HARD BALL. Looks like John McCain is starting to get some revenge for what the FEC did to the soft money rules enacted under his campaign finance reform law. He's threatening to block confirmation of all Bush nominations until the replacement for Karl Sandstrom, a lame-duck Democratic appointee, is approved. What's curious to Tapped is this: The replacement is Ellen Weintraub, who has worked for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee through her law firm. Why would McCain think she'd be any better than Sandstrom? [posted 10:45 am]
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THEODICY ALERT. As you may have heard, there was a tragic crash in Texas yesterday, in which a chartered bus that was taking children to a church camp hit the pillar of an overpass. Five were killed and thirty six injured, according to this Associated Press report. Perhaps because this was a church-related function, the article ends by quoting a deacon, Sean Burns, whose words of "consolation" left quite a lot to be desired:
Sean Burns, a deacon at Metro Church, said counselors were helping family members handle their grief."God's ways are higher than our ways, obviously, and we've just got to trust in God," Burns said. "There may be a reason why this happened."
A reason why young and innocent children died in a car crash? God, we hope not. [posted 10:35 am]
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Monday, June 24 How is Enron like Watergate? "This time the cancer is not on the presidency but on the economy, where the malignancy is a flood of corporate transgressions whose scope and scale, in the words of The Wall Street Journal this week, 'exceed anything the U.S. has witnessed since the years preceding the Great Depression,'" began Frank Rich in his most recent Saturday column.
If there was ever a call to action, it is this one. To date, we've seen little evidence that anyone is moving forward to whip up the public around these broad issues of fairness -- to put "those on the shop floor against those on top floor" (to paraphrase President Bush himself). But the issue of a two-class America goes way beyond the typical paradigms of left and right, and Tapped continues to believe that, with the right champion, it has the potential to ignite a real reformist fervor throughout the country. [posted 3:40 pm]
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KURTZ TIL IT HURTS. Tapped's former boss, atheism and skepticism guru Paul Kurtz, the publisher of both Free Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer magazines, was profiled recently in The New York Times by Dinitia Smith. One thing that's interesting about the piece is how the writer tries valiantly to give it a news peg, whereas the same article about Kurtz probably could have been written five or even ten years ago. Thus, Kurtz complains about paranormalist summer blockbusters like the upcoming Mel Gibson film Signs -- which, at least according to its previews, appears to makes the crop circles out to have been created by UFOs (they were, of course, a hoax). But such films are a dime a dozen, and have been for some time.
At the end of the piece, though, the writer points out where Kurtz's secular humanist approach really does have a lot of currency, if not urgency: the secular critique of Islam. Kurtz's publishing house, Prometheus Books, put out Ibn Warraq's Why I Am Not a Muslim, which may be the most daring modern critique of the faith. Indeed, it's no coincidence that Christopher Hitchens, one of the most outspoken critics of political Islam in the wake of 9/11, was (and for all Tapped knows still is) a columnist for Kurtz's Free Inquiry magazine. As the Times's reporter quotes Kurtz:
"Islam desperately needs a Protestant-like Reformation," he continued. The Islamic system is the product of "a nomadic, agrarian society, pre-modern and pre-urban, which they are trying to apply to the contemporary world."[posted 3:30 pm]
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IT'S A BIRD, IT'S A PLANE.... It's Superlobbyist! That's right: Today's Washington mercenary culture -- to borrow a line from Charles Lewis, head of the Center for Public Integrity -- has finally bred a seemingly superhuman political animal. Part lobbyist and part fundraiser, well-connected to both Republicans and Democrats, Ed Gillespie is a terrifying chimera that not even the most deviant mad scientist could dream up. Read this article and fear him! [posted 12:55 pm]
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WE ALREADY GOT THAT MESSAGE. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill tells us that we should be outraged by the recent behavior of corporations and their executives. Come again? We are outraged. We're also outraged by lackluster efforts at reform in the wake of the Enron-Andersen scandal. If O'Neill really means what he says, we'll be waiting for him to tell his corporate buddies to get lost -- and then press Congress hard for real accounting and other reforms for the financial industry. [posted 12:50 pm]
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JEFFORDS JOINS THE FIGHT. More on the New Source Review (NSR) front. Senator Jim Jeffords is going to issue subpeonas to the EPA this week for the paper and e-mail trail on the administration's recent NSR decisions. The EPA says it wants to wait until the proposals have had their final vetting at the Office of Management and Budget before releasing this information. But Jeffords is right to insist on the backup material now -- i.e., before John Graham, OMB's regulatory attack dog, gets his bite out of the regulations. The regulations may be easier to fix now than later, and exposing the information immediately -- especially if it contains the pro-industry tilt we all suspect it does -- could create a backlash against the proposed rollback. [posted 10:50 am]
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NEW CONTENT. We've got three new items today that have just gone live on our homepage. Two of them are features from the current issue of the Prospect: Dusko Doder's article on how not to take out Saddam Hussein, and Rick Perlstein's piece on The Historical Society, an alternative organization that has sprung up to rival the more mainstream American Historical Association (AHA) and the Organization of American Historians. Finally, we've posted Robert Kuttner's new column on how the GOP is running away from its previously endorsed campaign to "privatize" Social Security. Enjoy! [posted 10:20 am]
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THE POST ON NEW SOURCE REVIEW. In a great editorial this morning, the Post comes out strongly against the Bush administration's proposed rules to modify the New Source Review (NSR) provision of the Clean Air Act in a way that would make it easier for industry to avoid pollution controls. This is, of course, the topic of a recent online piece by TAP's Natasha Hunter. Like Hunter, the Post debunks administration claims that the modified version of New Source Review would actually create voluntary incentives for industry to pollute less:
EPA officials argue that the existing regulatory scheme created perverse incentives that in some cases discouraged potential improvements. More clarity, they say, could open the way for voluntary gains. Maybe, but you'll have to take the case on faith because it's built on anecdotal evidence, not on numerical analysis of what the existing program has produced or how the proposed changes would affect actual emissions.
And there's more to it than that: Polluting companies also claim that NSR has a chilling effect on modernizing old utilities. In other words, plants balk at making modifications that would reduce emissions because of the legal hurdles they would face from NSR. This, too, has no basis in reality. NSR is not activated when any major modification is made, and certainly not if that change would improve emissions. It comes into effect only when that modification results in significant pollutionincreases. [posted 9:45 am]
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KUTTNER VS. BROOKS, PART II. Round two of their debate is now live on the PBS Frontline website. Click here and scroll down. [posted 9:20 am]
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AND SPEAKING OF JEB. The weather was so bad in central Florida this weekend that Tapped, visiting elderly parents, was forced to read The Orlando Sentinel, one of the worst newspapers in the country. (One exception to that sweeping statement is their columnist Myriam Marquez). To our surprise, however, the paper contained a terrific page one education story that both confirms conventional wisdom -- poor kids go to the worst schools -- but also offers hard evidence that Governor Jeb Bush is as about in touch with his state as his brother is with the rest of the country. It's worth reading. [posted 9:15 am]
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WE'RE EVER SUSPICIOUS. When the $8 billion deal wasannounced in December of 2000 to clean up the Everglades -- and there were smiles from Florida's sugar industry, Governor Jeb Bush, President Bill Clinton and a host of others -- a lot of people were probably confused. Those in Washington, for example, knew that Big Sugar had successfully thwarted the clean up for years. So what was going on?
The answer is provided by Michael Grunwald's ongoing series in The Washington Post that takes that deal apart. For example, he writes:
... it's not remotely clear whether the Everglades restoration plan will actually restore the Everglades. Most of the plan's ecological benefits for the Everglades are riddled with uncertainties and delayed for decades, though it delivers swift and sure economic benefits to Florida homeowners, agribusinesses and developers.A Washington Post investigation, based on more than 200 interviews and thousands of pages of documents and e-mails, found that the plan has been shaped by intense political pressures brought by commercial interests ... Jeb Bush and his aides -- backed by developers, agribusinesses, water utilities and, at times, Indian tribes -- have fought consistently and successfully to make sure the plan does not put nature ahead of his constituents.
Watch for the rest of these installments, including today's. Grunwald's series promises to be one of the great reporting jobs explaining how things really work. [posted 9:10 am]
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JONAH AMONG THE NAZI ANALOGISTS. On National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg has been collecting examples of "the use and abuse of Nazi analogies," including some indefensible remarks by Jesse Jackson. Goldberg is right that Nazi comparisons are usually idiotic and appalling -- particularly ones that
