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Mon, August 12 | Tues, August 13 | Wed, August 14 | Thurs, August 15 | Fri, August 16 | Sat, August 17 | Sun, August 18
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Friday, August 16 And now, Tapped's Middle East correspondent -- er, Tapped's person who reads the Israeli papers -- has an update. It seems that Israeli politicians are moving into campaign mode even though early elections have not been announced. Ariel Sharon has "threatened" that early elections will be held if the Knesset cannot pass his proposed budget, a move that most regard as a bullying tactic to push his legislation through.
But Israel's leading newspaper, the left-leaning Ha'aretz, says hold him to his word. Labor party challengers are already lining up. While the hawkish Labor party Defense Minister Benjamin (Fuad) Ben-Eliezer once seemed the obvious choice, Labor's top brass is now lining up behind Haifa mayor Amram Mitzna and his circle of economists, lawyers and business executives in the hope that he can hold the center. Polls show he would beat Ben-Eliezer as Labor's nominee, but Ha'aretz has also cautioned that Mitzna's "parachute drop" candidacy is really just a ploy to block Ben-Eliezer.
This contest has racial overtones as well; Ben-Eliezer is the first Mizrahi Jew (of Middle Eastern origin) to become a Defense Minister. No Mizrahi has ever become Prime Minister and the largely Ashkenazi (of European descent) Labor party has a long history of alienating Mizrahi voters. New immigrants, Mizrahis, Muslims, Druze and Christians apparently have expressed support for Ben-Eliezer. The final part of the equation is Labor party speaker of the Knesset Avraham Burg, the son of the founder of Israel's religious right. The religious right won't touch Burg because they adore his father, and as a result he may have the power to cut into the Likud vote more than anyone else.
Sharon's promise of early elections may prove his downfall, unless, says Ha'aretz, Bush saves him by invading Iraq. "The only ray of light in the gathering darkness is Saddam Hussein. U.S. President George Bush may throw Sharon a lifebelt in the form of an attack on Iraq. As everyone knows, elections aren't moved up in wartime, parties don't leave the government in wartime." [posted 3:30 pm]
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WE ARE THE WORLD COURT. A top official at Human Rights Watch, Tom Malinowski, has an excellent op-ed in today's Washington Post on the International Criminal Court. Here's the money bit:
In July the administration promised to shut down every United Nations peacekeeping mission in the world if the U.N. Security Council didn't grant American peacekeepers permanent immunity from the ICC. The total number of American military personnel serving today as U.N. peacekeepers is -- hold your breath -- one. (Several dozen Americans also serve the United Nations as military observers and several hundred as police monitors, but all are unarmed and therefore hardly likely to be accused of war crimes).
Malinkowski's general point -- that the Bush administration is willing to wreck the world peacekeeping system to head off a very unlikely event -- is spot on. As we've explained before, it is unlikely that American peacekeepers would ever find themselves arraigned before the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes. [posted 1:35 pm]
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A VICTORY FOR FREE SPEECH AT BERKELEY. If you've been following the efforts of an idiotic, politically-correct student-government official at UC Berkeley to evict the Daily Californian from its offices over articles the official found offensive, here's good news. He failed. The Californian gets to stay where it is. [posted 12:30 pm]
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MORE ON COULTER. Richard Cohen, one of Tapped's all time fav columnists, takes his shot at Ann Coulter's Slander. It's pretty good. Cohen notes, as we have on several occasions, Coulter's penchant for Lexis-Nexis and "footnotes." And like Cohen, it frightens us that there's a big enough market for her brand of rage to make it a bestseller. [posted 12:20 pm]
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QUOTE OF THE DAY. Here's Noy Thrupkaew on Anna Nicole Smith: "She's a roaring, turbo-engined, impossibly voluptuous vehicle for sex -- but she's so out of it, so incompetent, you almost wish someone would take her keys away." [posted 11:05 am]
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ON DRUGS. This article in the Christian Science Monitor reviews the state of play on state-imposed controls on prescription drug pricing. While there are significant hurdles to state-by-state approaches to this problem, Tapped finds the variety of possibilities encouraging:
Florida and Michigan -- home to Republican governors hardly known for taking on big business -- are pioneering a carrot-and-stick strategy. If drug companies want access to the states' big markets, they have to offer deep discounts on drugs. Many firms are balking -- and arguing the states are blocking citizens' access to the latest medicines.Vermont just passed a first-in-the-nation law that requires drug-company representatives to disclose gifts or junkets they give doctors in promoting drugs. According to one study, the industry spends $22,000 per doctor per year marketing drugs.
Massachusetts, in a move paralleled in other states, plans to employ comparison shopping to lower its Medicaid drug bill. The program will increasingly opt for low-cost medicines.
Clearly this trend has already helped boost some progressive candidates, like Chellie Pingree, in her race this fall against Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins. [posted 10:35 am]
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KRIST OFF, TAKE TWO. The New York Times columnist is damn angry at George W. Bush again, and if you read his column it's hard not to be angry too. Tapped would like to see this Kristoff item reproduced and dropped from an airplane every place Bush goes. [posted 10:30 am]
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PARTY ON. So Bush is hosting a barbecue bash for his best buddy fundraisers. Why didn't he just combine it with the Economic Forum in Waco? [posted 10:00 am]
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Thursday, August 15
Yesterday's 5:00 PM deadline for CEOs to
certify their companies' financial statements really bought some worms out. This Washington Times article lists a dozen or so companies that revealed "mistakes" in their accounting, including
AOL-Time-Warner, Conseco, Inc., Cendant Corp., and -- no surprise here -- a whole bunch of energy companies. No kidding. Also, it seems many of the
firms waited until just before the deadline to file so as not to reveal too much before the stock market closed for the day. [posted 1:35 pm]
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GOOD NEWS. The Bush administration has decided to intervene in the case of
Egyptian human rights campaigner Saad Eddin Ibrahim, imprisoned by the Egyptian government after a kangaroo court trial last July. According to this story, a request for additional aid will be denied to Egypt. This isn't a huge victory, as Egypt will still recieve its usual pot of cash, which comes to about $2 billion a year. But it's a start. [posted 1:30 pm]
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WHAT LIBERTARIANS? The blogosphere is said to be full of libertarians. Why, then, do they spend so much time moaning about Norman Mineta when John Ashcroft has revealed himself to be a far greater menace to liberty (not to mention open government, the quaint notion of checks and balances, and the prerogatives of Congress)? Here's the latest. You have to go down to the last third to get a sense of why what this article discusses is so unprecedented. [posted 1:25 pm]
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KLAYMAN AT IT AGAIN. Judicial Watch, that right-wing litigation machine, has filed a lawuit in federal court in San Francisco claiming that Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson was responsible for "misleading accounting practices and insider traiding" while on the board of Providian Financial Corp. Klayman says that Thompson sold stock worth $5 million before the company tanked. [posted 11:45 am]
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DEMOCRATS READ THIS COLUMN. Though Tapped doesn't particularly enjoy it when she tries to write in a folksy drawl, you can count on Molly Ivins to tell it like it is. And this column certainly delivers. Any takers to run on this platform? [posted 9:55 am]
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OUR LATEST ISSUE. As hawk-eyed TAP watchers may have already noted, the table of contents is now available, as are four articles. On the table of contents, you'll see that in the latest issue we have major articles by Paul Starr, John Judis and Ruy Teixeira, Michael Tomasky, and many others. As for what's already available: There's Robert Kuttner on U.S. Airways, Harold Meyerson on the Democrats and Iraq, Sasha Polakow-Suransky on the Interior Department's revolving-door industry pal J. Steven Griles, and Gina Neff on the hard lessons dot-commers are (finally) having to learn. We hope you enjoy it all. [posted 9:45 am]
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Wednesday, August 14
Yeah, President Bush laid down the gauntlet yesterday all right. Congress isn't going to be able spend that $5 billion that was tacked onto the supplemental appropriation bill for things like "storing the government's collections of bugs and worms." But it turns out there was some other stuff in that spending package that you might not have known about, including $400 million for election reform upgrades (including replacing punch-card voting machines) and $9.3 million to staff the Securities and Exchange Commission in its supposed pumped up mode. The Washington Times has the goods. [posted 4:45 pm]
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BAD NEWS IGNORED. There's going to be an Earth Summit this month in Johannesburg that the Bush administration is planning to ignore. In preparation for it, the United Nations issued a stunning report that (as paraphrased by the Associated Press) puts the problems this way:
Forests are being destroyed, drought is becoming more intense, sea levels are rising, agricultural production cannot keep up with the demand for food, many plant and animal species are at risk of extinction, and air and water pollution are killing millions of people.
Good to know our leaders are concerned. [posted 4:15 pm]
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YEP, IT REALLY IS THAT BAD. It's easy to wonder whether civil libertarians haven't overreacted to the Bush administration's policies during the war on terrorism. But then you start to read the details of what's actually happening. Jonathan Turley, an inveterate publicity hound, has a pretty good op-ed in today's Los Angeles Times on John Ashcroft's wish to have a wide authority to indefinitely imprison American citizens accused by the Pentagon of being illegal combatants. And this article in The Washington Post about the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi really brings home both how far-reaching the administration's effort is and how brazen they have been about it. It's worth reading all the way through to grasp what's at stake. Oh, and by the way, U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar is a hero:
In a typical exchange, Doumar asked, "Can the military do anything they want with him, without a tribunal?"[posted 3:05 pm]"The present detention is lawful," [Assistant Solicitor General Gregory] Garre said.
Doumar asked again, "What restraints are there?" Garre said Hamdi had asked to speak to diplomats from Saudi Arabia, where he was raised.
"Can I beg you to answer my question?" Doumar then said. "If the military sat him in boiling oil, would that be lawful?" Garre said he didn't think anyone had suggested that.
Doumar said it seemed too easy to call someone an unlawful combatant and use it to hold someone indefinitely: "If the man next door to you is an unlawful combatant, maybe Mr. [Michael] Mobbs [a "a special adviser in the Defense Department"] could say you're an enemy combatant."
Federal Public Defender Frank W. Dunham Jr. pointed out that Mobbs's declaration doesn't use the words "unlawful enemy combatant."
Garre said that Mobbs was merely providing the factual foundation and that the military had made the decision. "The reason why the courts have a limited role is, under our constitutional system, the executive [branch] is the branch which is in the best position to make the military determination," Garre said.
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GOOD NEWS ON GAY RIGHTS. As has been the case for some years now, corporations are way ahead of the government. Partly due to fear of boycotts, partly because gays are percieved as a lucrative market, and partly because of the labor pressure, corporations have increasingly been open to making workplaces hospitable for gays. Human Rights Campaign says things are getting better. [posted 1:20 pm]
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PORK FOR DEMS. Since we played up The New Republic's article about Bush steering federal money to Florida, we should point readers to this article in The Hill by the invaluable Alex Bolton. The story details how Senate Democrats have steered hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money to their eight most vulnerable colleagues, including Louisiana's Mary Landrieu and Minnesota's Paul Wellstone. It includes this priceless quote:
"Paul, let's talk pork," Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) said to Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) in a candid exchange on the Senate subway before the spring recess earlier this year. "We like you and we want you back."Mikulski then told Wellstone to get a better fix on projects that would resonate with his Minnesota constituents.
P.S. On the topic of Wellstone, check out this bizarre story on a group called Citizens Opposed to Racism And Discrimination (CORAD), which is running ads against Wellstone. [posted 1:10 pm]
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WOW. Is this kind of communication protected by the Attorney-Client Privilege? [posted 12:35 pm]
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ON THE ORIGINS OF FERC. Incidentally, you may have been wondering why we like to write about FERC so much. Well, there happens to be one very good reason for it -- and it's a story well worth telling. Get this:
It was late one night in 1978 or 1979, and one of us Tappers was a mere Hill staffer involved in finalizing the details on the piece of legislation that created a new energy regulatory agency. Negotiations between House and Senate staffs were nearly done when we suddenly realized that the new agency had no name. And so, the 4 of 5 of us present began tossing out names and playing with acronyms until we hit on FERC, to stand for Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
The possibilities for fun in that acronym were obvious -- and our Tapper just insisted. When those in the agency got wind of the game we'd played on them, they swore they'd always call it by its full name. But of course, they were totally FERC-ed. And that, children, is how the agency got its name. [posted 12:20 pm]
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MORE ON THE FRAUDLENT FORUM. Man, this thing is getting creamed. We already cited Will Saletan on why George Bush and Dick Cheney "are no longer afraid of terrorists. What they're afraid of is Americans." (Another great line: "Like plantation owners, the employers on hand spoke for their employees. 'They are so happy to have jobs,' one CEO told Bush.") And here's The Washington Post: "Viewers of the forum, which was broadcast on C-SPAN, would be forgiven if they came away convinced that the nation is united in its strenuous demands for government-backed terrorism insurance, domestic energy exploration and the abolition of the estate tax -- all issues high on the Bush administration's agenda." (For a newspaper article, that's a real zinger.) Finally, here's the L.A. Times on Bush's idiotic threat to veto $5 billion in spending from the budget -- spending on computers for the FBI, emergency equipment for local terrorism-response teams, health care for veterans, security for water supplies, and other things that, apparently, are unnecessary.
Whew. This one is a real disaster for the White House. [posted 12:15 pm]
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NOT FERC'IN AROUND. Contrary to our expectations, it looks like FERC (that's the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) is going to move forward with investigations into whether at least three companies (and some affiliates) have manipulated the pricing for electric and natural gas. Enron, Avista Corp., and El Paso Electric are in their sights. If suspicions are confirmed the companies could be required to make some substantial refunds to consumers and could have the licenses to trade suspended. Tapped wonders, other than for Enron, why were just these two companies singled out? [posted 11:45 am]
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SO THAT'S WHAT THEY WERE AFTER. The snooping by Princeton's admissions department into Yale's computers is starting to make sense. Here's how the Boston Globe reports a key detail of the story:
Seven of the eight files were checked only once or twice by Princeton officials, while the eighth file -- for Lauren Bush, of Houston, Texas -- was checked four times on April 3 and once more April 15.Bush is a niece of President Bush and a granddaughter of former president George H.W. Bush, both of whom attended Yale, as did several other Bush family members.
Okay, we all know a Bush is a Bush, every school wants one, yada yada yada. But is that the only reason Princeton admissions officials were interested in Lauren? Tapped thinks her prominent display on this site certainly suggests another possible reason.... [posted 11:35 am]
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COULDN'T HAVE SAID IT BETTER. For all those who commented on the President's Economic Forum yesterday, Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist at the National Center for Policy Analysis put it best: "The whole forum looks as if it was put together solely and exclusively by his political advisers." Also check out William Saletan's concise unpacking of the event and Maureen Dowd's sarcastic winner. [posted 9:50 am]
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A THOUGHT ON ANONYMOUS BLOGGERS. There's been a lot of debate on this point
recently. (See here, here, and here). One important point that hasn't been made is this: Most bloggers are moonlighters. That is, unlike Josh Marshall, who's a freelance journalist, or Tapped and The Corner, which are written by magazine staffers, or InstaPundit, who's a tenured law professor, a fair number of bloggers do their blogging from their day job. (Sometimes they blog about their day job.) In these
cases, we imagine that anonymity protects them from their boss -- either because the boss would disagree with the content, or because using company computers for personal use is against company rules, or because the employee is blogging on company time. So we think the forced arrayed against anonymous and pseudonymous blogging should lighten up. [posted 7:55 am]
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Tuesday, August 13
This report takes you to a place most Washington Post readers have probably never been before -- into the world of the African American farmer. It's an eye-opener: A story about historic and continuing discrimination, broken promises, sleazy lawyering, long-time civil rights activism, and an uncaring administration. And -- just to toot our own horns a bit -- it's also worth pointing out that the Prospect feature Networks had this story first. [posted 1:50 pm]
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JUSTICE LEAGUE. We have some thoughts on Jeffrey Rosen's interesting article in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine. In trying to explain the stalemate over judicial appointees, Rosen adopts a classic pox-on-both-your-houses stance: Each side has upped the ante of circuit court nominations, urging sympathetic senators to "treat each nominee to the federal appellate courts as a Supreme Court justice in minitature." But "by exagerating the stakes in the lower-court nomination battles, interest groups on both sides may be encouraging the appointment of judges who will fulfill their worst fears."
It's a compelling thesis. But Rosen ignores what Tapped feels are a few crucial items. The truth is that the two sides are not equal. Between 1976 and 2000, the GOP has had one two-term president, one one-term president, and a concerted plan to pack the courts with youngish, extremely conservative judges. Between 1976 and 2000, the Democrats had one one-term president, one two-term president, and no such plan. Among liberal court activists, Bill Clinton was infamous for refusing to devote political capital to appointing liberal judges. Whereas Ronald Reagan's administration embarked on a pre-planned court-packing scheme, Clinton for the most part sought consensus picks, especially after the Republicans took control of the Senate in 1995. (One study, by Robert Carp of the University of Houston, Ronald Stidham of Appalachian State University in North Carolina, and Donald Songer of the University of South Carolina, found that by 1996 Clinton's appointees were no more liberal than Richard Nixon's.) He even confirmed a number of conservatives as parts of various deals with Orrin Hatch.
The result? Seven out of 13 circuit courts in the land have a majority of Republican appointees. More importantly, thanks to GOP efforts to "hold" vacancies for Bush, if every individual nominated by the White House as of last spring were confirmed today, they'd have a majority on ten out of thirteen of the circuit courts. And by comparison to Clinton, very few of Bush's choices are consensus picks. They are mainly very conservative, anti-abortion or pro-states-rights judges -- Bush's payback to the religious right.
Our point? Thanks to the Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas episodes, the Democrats are thought to play better hardball. But it's just not true. Assuming a fairly even rate of vacancy over time, that means the Republicans have been playing this game longer and harder than the Democrats. It was only after a big push by People for the American Way, the Alliance for Justice, and other groups in 2001 that the Democrats in the Senate decided to start playing the Republican game. [posted 12:40 pm]
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IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS THAT COUNT. Tapped is feeling particularly cheerful and bubbly today. (Yes, we know what you're thinking: "Arrrghhhh!" Too bad.) How come we're so ebullient? Well, it goes something like this. This morning, we were sitting having coffee at the Starbucks outside the Marriott in Woodley Park. It seemed a typical morning: There were little chunks of ice in our caramel frappuccino, the table top wasn't particularly clean, and annoying little house sparrows were swirling all around us and gobbling up the crumbs of people's muffins.
And then everything changed. Suddenly, hopping around among the plants and flowers, we spotted a song sparrow.
What's so special about this? Well, Tapped has been living in Washington, D.C. for over a year now, and we see about a hundred house sparrows a day -- maybe more. Indeed, we once saw so many clustered in one place that a hawk swooped down trying to nail one of them. But until today, we'd never seen a song sparrow.
And it so happens that song sparrows are infinitely cooler than the quotidian sparrows -- not to mention more dignified. House sparrows are little more than mini-garbage processing machines, and they're not even native to our hemisphere. In a sense, they're a slightly more benign version of the snakehead. Song sparrows, on the other hand, are ... well, songbirds.
Let's take this a little farther. Tapped can't help but think that our spotting of the song sparrow is a metaphor for seeing a ray of light on the dingiest day (i.e., the day of Bush's Economic Forum). Perhaps it's a sign that the little things matter -- that angels, as well as devils, are in the details. (Take it away, M. Night Shyamalan!)
On the other hand, perhaps the only reason we noticed this tiny bird in the first place is that Congress is out of session -- and as a result, we have a little more time to sip our coffee in the morning. [posted 12:15 pm]
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FIRST THAT CHESS PLAYER, NOW RUSH LIMBAUGH. Noted constitutional theorist
Rush Limbaugh takes to The Wall Street Journal op-ed page to explain why George W. Bush need not obtain a congressional declaration of war in order to invade Iraq. We wish this was a joke, but it isn't. Basically, Rush says that there's plenty of evidence that Iraq was directly involved in September 11, which means that Iraq is covered under the original post-September 11 authorization of force. Of course, this is only true if you disregard the CIA, which according to The Washington Times' Bill Gertz doesn't believe there was a connection. [posted 11:50 am]
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"FAIR AND BALANCED." Roger Friedman, who's gone to great efforts to smear Tipper Gore over this Bruce Springsteen concert tickets brouhaha, really has some nerve (scroll down). Here's how it stands: Every source on the record -- the Gores, Springsteen's management -- says that, in fact, the Gores had simply bought tickets. One sleazy anonymous source insists they tried to scam free ones.
What baloney. [posted 11:40 am]
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A TAKE DOWN -- AND A SUCK UP. Paul Krugman gets the award today for the best take-down of the Economic Forum, and Elisabeth Bumiller (or perhaps her editor) gets the award for the worst suck up. Can you believe the Bumiller article's headline? "Bush's Forum on Economy: More Than the Usual Crowd." This is the usual crowd, and a few hand-picked Democrats won't change that.
Compare this to what Krugman does in his column. To explain what a phony PR stunt today's forum is, he zeros in one person who's to be showcased there: Cisco System chief John Chambers, who once earned $157 million in annual compensation thanks to creative accounting. "The company's specialty was using its own overvalued stock as currency -- paying its employees with stock options, acquiring other companies by issuing more stock. Thanks to loopholes in the accounting rules -- loopholes defended with intense lobbying -- these transactions allowed executives to progressively dilute the stake of their original shareholders, without ever declaring this dilution as a business cost."
That's the kind of news we can use. [posted 11:00 am]
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HURRY. TomPaine.com is offering readers a chance to write one of their op-ads that appears in The New York Times every Wednesday. They are soliciting 300 words essays on either of two themes -- "Agenda Interrupted" and "Toward A More Perfect Union." C'mon, we know all you Tapped readers are secret scribes, and have more than one idealistic pamphlet getting mouldy in your bottom drawer. Now's your chance to shout it from the rooftops. [posted 10:35 am]
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ONE NATION UNDER DOG? The Justice Department is petitioning the Ninth Circuit to rehear the infamous Pledge of Allegiance case. One to watch. [posted 10:05 am]
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ECONOMIC REALITIES. John Sweeney's op-ed today gives Tapped pretty much every fact we need to rebut the Texas cock and bull story the nation will hear today. The real story, if you'll indulge us in a longish quotation, is this:
Since the start of 2000, 2.7 million more workers are unemployed and millions more have been forced to accept part-time employment. When people lose their jobs, it takes longer to find new ones.There are 11.5 million children in poverty. Health care costs are soaring...Rents are rising faster than incomes, and more working families can't afford adequate housing.
Tuitions are going up faster than scholarships or grants. For millions of older workers, retirement now seems more a threat than a promise.
Children are going to more crowded classrooms; working parents can't find adequate day care.
The economy, we're told, is growing, but layoffs are spreading, and now states and cities are slashing payrolls to meet severe budget crises...
As the layoffs spread and the economy stalls, wages stagnate and companies cut back on health care. Wages won't keep up with prices. Around 40 million Americans have no health insurance, and now millions of working families will have to cut what coverage they have, unable to afford the costs that companies are passing on to them.
Don't expect to hear much of the above mentioned today at the Economic Forum in Texas. [posted 9:45 am]
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COULTER: BACK INTO THE FOLD? That's what this National Review Online article by Kathryn Jean Lopez seems to suggest. It's very friendly to Coulter's widely discredited new book, Slander, and even cites favorably some particularly preposterous sections, like the bit about liberals calling conservative women ugly. This despite the fact that Coulter once called National Review's Rich Lowry and gang "girly boys." Indeed, Lopez offers a decidedly mellow account of the dropping of Coulter's column from NRO last year, one that seems almost calculated to open the door for her should she wish to return. Or at least, that's what Tapped reads between the lines of passages like this: "The book reminds me why we picked her syndicated column up in the first place -- Coulter has a way with words." [posted 9:35 am]
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Monday, August 12
Like Tapped, Tom Tomorrow picked up the Times' Style section on Sunday to see a short bit about Ann Coulter, in which she rhapsodizes about Queens, baseball games, and American people -- while swigging chardonnay at a highfalutin cocktail party in Westchester country with assorted publishing bigwigs. Tomorrow points out that a) Coulter is from whitebread New Cannan, Connecticut, and b) Queens is the most diverse county in the U.S., according to Census figures. [posted 4:25 pm]
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BILL O'REILLY, WHINY BABY. The big man's network has sicced their lawyers on a charming little site known as www.oreilly-sucks.com. Here's a link to the site. Here's the lawyering letter from Fox News Corp.'s Dianne Brandi.
P.S. This site also led us to this compilation of letters between Kenneth Lay and George W. Bush -- some forty pages worth. Remember when Bush tried to pretend Lay was only a distant friend? [posted 2:50 pm]
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PRESCRIPTION DRUGS REDUX. After completely blowing their chance to make
drugs a winning issue for the fall elections, the Democrats may consider trying again in October. But they haven't learned. The idea is to ram through the Breaux-Kennedy-Miller bill when the Senate's special budget rules -- which require sixty votes to pass legislation -- lapse this fall. But the Breaux-Kennedy-Miller bill is still not very powerful. The House
Democrats' bill, on the other hand, could be a much more potent election tool. Read all about it here. [posted 12:45 pm]
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WHO IS A BLOG? Demosthenes has an excellent (but long) post on the difference between pseudonymity and anonymity as it relates to bloggers. But staring at Demosthenes' difficult-to-read white-letters-on-dark-background site for several minutes has almost blinded us. Be warned!
P.S. Demosthenes is a great site, and well worth it. [posted 12:30 pm]
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TIME TO THINK ABOUT ELECTIONS -- SO HERE'S ONE LAST DISTRACTION. One of the pros, Stuart Rothenberg, has a useful rundown today of of competitive House races. So you don't end up walkin' in the cold November rain....
And on a completely different note, Instapundit has the latest on impeach Norm Mineta bumper stickers. We don't support the impeachment of Mineta, but we do support Instapundit. [posted 12:25 pm]
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BIG MEDIA RIPPING OFF THE INDIES. Like a lot of people, Tapped read Lawrence Goodman's Salon piece last month about celebrities being paid to hawk prescription drugs. So
we were surprised to see The New York Times' Melody Petersen blatantly rip Salon off in this piece from the Sunday New York Times. We read the piece twice, carefully, looking for the single required ass-covering mention of Goodman's piece. No dice. What gives? (Don't think this is the first time the Times has ripped off Salon, either.) Meanwhile, over at The Washington
Post, Terry M. Neal, who bears the sadly nostalgic late-90s title of "Washingtonpost.com chief political correspondent," has been ripping of one of our
favorite blogs, Talking Points Memo. Neal has decided to start calling his online column "Talking Points." Don't think the author of TPM hasn't noticed. [posted 12:10 pm]
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BIG FERC'IN DEAL. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is due today to give an absent Congress a report on how widespread the fraudulent Enron electricity trading schemes are. The Enron schemes manipulated electricity pricing in California. Pardon our skepticism, but with the Ken Lay-backed FERC chairman Pat Wood signing off on the report, we don't know how believable it'll be. [posted 11:15 am]
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WHO IS STEVEN HATFILL? Now he's all over the news. But as our readers may recall, The American Prospect Online was perhaps the first outlet to profile Hatfill. To read Laura Rozen's piece, click here. [posted 9:25 am]
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TAPPED GOES POST-AL. Well, sort of. Frequent Tapped contributor Chris Mooney had an article in the Washington Post's Outlook section yesterday on the continuing scourge of junk science: From crop circles to the Discovery Channel Store. And, in continuation of our policy of self-promotion at all times and in all forms, we're linking and flogging it. Enjoy. [posted 7:25 am]
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WHILE YOU WERE VACATIONING. We certainly hope that those on vacation will appreciate Tapped's watchful eye for the rest of the month, because it sure looks like with most media and lawmakers out of town, the Bush administration is going to take advantage of the situation. So they announced a comprehensive
rollback on the protections for the privacy of medical records; advanced a narrow interpretation of a major environmental law; and made plans to move ahead with a slightly modifed TIPS program. Whew. We need another vacation already, but we dare not take it. [posted 7:15 am]
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