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Friday, June 7 Go to this page for the FIFA World Soccer Rankings. Scroll down to slots 197, 198, 199, and then 200. You'll notice that these lowly places are accorded to the teams fielded by Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa (none of whom qualified for the World Cup). What's odd about these team listings? Well, just the fact that the "countries" in question are all actually territorial possessions of the United States (# 13) -- which, unlike such well known teams as England, France, Argentina, and Brazil, do not enjoy political sovereignty. Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands and American Samoa are technically controlled by the U.S., and their inhabitants cannot vote in presidential elections. So how come they get soccer teams? What is FIFA up to? And the best question of all: If FIFA is so busy trying to subtly undercut U.S. colonialism, why not give Washington, D.C. a soccer team? [posted 3:40 pm]
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WE LIKE CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL SO MUCH...That we're distressed to see him make an ass of himself with this column on pop music. Now, one needn't necessarily know who R. Kelly is, or like his music. (Tapped, for one, is not a Kelly fan.) But you should know that you should know who R. Kelly is -- especially if you're preparing to reel off an entire Andy Rooney-ish column on the subject of R& B stars you've never heard of. Even the late Aaliyah is on his list. Sigh. Here's a hint: Sentences like "no one I knew had ever heard of her, either" almost always say more about you and your friends than the thing you and your friends have never heard of. P.S. Why do we think that Matt Labash probably knows who R. Kelly is? [posted 1:50 pm]
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MORE ON MWO. One thing we forgot to say about this: Salon deserves praise for running a piece critical of MWO, even if the article itself left something to be desired. Wingnuts: Remember this the next time you accuse Salon of being a Democratic mouthpiece. [posted 1:10 pm]
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ALTERMAN ON CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM. Yesterday Eric Alterman issued a challenge, asking someone to explain the politics of campaign finance reform. Tapped thinks we can rise to this. Just let us clear our throats....
First of all, it was not "obvious" that the recently passed reform bill was going to benefit Republicans more than Democrats, as Alterman suggests. Or rather, it was obvious but no one wanted to talk about it. Only TAP's campaign finance expert was saying such things publicly (and had been for years).
But no one else wanted to discuss the obvious political implications of the bill because that might have rocked the boat. The reform groups were so committed to achieving some kind of reform that they didn't want to do anything that might jeopardize its passage. In fact, Common Cause willingly accepted (some have gone as far to say they suggested) the compromise of raising the hard money limits in exchange for a partial ban on soft money. (The ban is "partial" because it only effects national parties -- state parties can continue to raise soft money, as can the myriad of other political committees that will be established just for that purpose.) Meanwhile, the Democrats in the House and Senate lulled themselves into thinking that they could keep pace with the Republicans in raising hard money (in spite evidence to the contrary). And the editorial boards of the Post and the Times stayed above the political fray. Finally, the Republicans in the Senate, House, and White House were hardly going to squeal.
That's an important part of the explanation of the politics behind this reform. But there's more: Congress and the White House, in the wake of Enron, felt something had to be done to free themselves from the taint of special interest money. It became a way to get out from under the political scandal. After all, both parties and both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue had been bought off by Enron and Andersen. They figured as long as they could get a bill that didn't disturb the status quo all that much, why not pass it to provide political cover?
There's also another political axis on this issue -- incumbents vs. challengers.
This new reform works well for all incumbents. After all, they are not running against each other, but against challengers who already operate at a disadvantage in the money game. There's no way challengers can keep up with incumbents in raising those $ 2,000 contributions. And the reform is perfect for President Bush (another soon-to-be incumbent lest we forget, and one who broke the bank the last time on money from wealthy individuals). It will make his job of running for president even easier the next time around. He'll once again call himself "a reformer" (stealing that mantle from John McCain). Moreover, Bush knew -- as did every Republican in Congress -- that overall the bill plays to the GOP's fundraising strengths.
Reformers should have been fighting -- and should continue their fight -- for reforms that strenthened democracy. Unfortunately, this new law won't improve the sorry state of the "American experiment," which is why Alterman is right: The strum und drang wasn't about principle, it was about posturing. One of the most interesting articles written near the end of the debate came from Fred Barnes in the Wall Street Journal (sorry, no link), a piece debunking Republican fears about the campaign finance bill. Its title? "Armageddon for the GOP? Hardly." [posted 12:55 pm]
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CHANGING THE SUBJECT. From the FBI to Homeland Defense. First off, one has to note that George Bush delivered his speech the same day as Colleen Rowley gave her explosive testimony to Congress, thus bigfooting the whistleblower. Bush's speech -- which, incidentally, makes no mention whatsoever of the FBI -- was not all that bad. But the performance of the night was clearly that of White House chief of staff Andrew Card, whose blustery, aggressive, and outrageous spin on CNN put Ari Fleischer to shame. Watch this exchange between Card and Paula Zahn:
ZAHN: So we're hearing a muted chorus of "It is about time." Can you explain to the American public tonight why the president resisted this for a while, and what led to his changing his mind?The nerve of this guy! "He didn't resist it." Way to ignore the question, Andy. Who cares when you appointed the toothless, useless Tom Ridge? The question is why you resisted creating an actual cabinet-level agency for so long. Democrat Joe Lieberman and Republican Arlen Specter introduced legislation to create such an agency on October 11th -- that was eight months ago. And then you have the gall to tell Congress that they're the ones who need to get a move on:CARD: Well, first of all, he didn't resist it. He appointed Tom Ridge as the national security -- the homeland security adviser on October -- on September 20, and he was sworn in on October 6, and showed up on work on October 8.
He was given a charge by the president, first to secure the homeland, and then to review all of the government to see what the government should do to reorganize to meet the threats of the 21st century.
He said that right from the start that he -- his mind was open, he was going to look at everything, including creating a department. And what he did not want to have happen is for Tom Ridge to be preoccupied by having to testify to Congress as an adviser to the president while he was trying to secure the homeland.
Tom Ridge has now made a recommendation to the president to create a department of homeland security -- very, very serious recommendation. We found a tremendous need to have a department that would have as its sole mission directing the security of the homeland.
They've got to step up and make the tough decisions that were made in the executive branch to consolidate some of the responsibilities in Congress and get a department in place that can help to secure the homeland, and we hope they'll do it quickly.This reminds Tapped, incidentally, of how the USA Patriot Act was shoved through Congress. Don't fall for it again, guys. The Bush Administration has waited this long. Take your time and do the thing right. [posted 12:10 pm]
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THE WAR PARTY? The Wall Street Journal's Rich Tofel has an op-ed that is right on the big picture and wrong on all the particulars. Tapped agrees that Democrats -- and especially liberal Democrats -- simply can't Talk War. For the most part, they aren't credible on military questions, either because they are actually anti-military or have no affirmative military policy. And this is only part of the broader problem, which is some liberals' remnant Sixties discomfort with an activist, interventionist foreign policy. If liberals want to be a majority in this country, they need to rediscover the foreign policy of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy.
But in Tofel's hands, Democratic credibility demands that the Democrats "outflank Mr. Bush on the right." Tofel, a conservative, thinks that the only way for Democrats to be credible on national defense is to be more right-wing than the Republicans. (And, conveniently, to "move beyond the political game-playing of investigations about pre-Sept. 11 warnings." What, Rich, you think this is a game? This is not a game. Wake up. But we digress.) But the highly underrated foreign policy that the Clinton Administration had constructed -- somewhat by accident -- by the end of Clinton's second term is the proper basis for a credible Democratic foreign policy: Unafraid to export democratic values; careful but not timid about the use of force abroad; sensible about military spending; pro-nation-building in the best post-WWII sense; and willing to work through international institutions where feasible. Such a policy is more than enough basis on which to challenge the GOP, which is mired in the politics of pork; stunted by its ideological hatred of international institutions; obsessed with Iraq; and isolationist and Helmsian at its worst. [posted 11:25 am]
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PRADOS ON HOMELAND SECURITY. We've just posted a commentary from John Prados of the National Security Archive on Bush's new Department of Homeland Security. Prados thinks it could actually make us less safe. To wit:
In his address creating this new agency, President Bush spoke of a reorganization of government greater than anything attempted since Harry Truman proposed what became the National Security Act of 1947. This is true in the sense that immense work will be necessary to bring together all the different animals in one stall. But it is not true in the sense that the revamped U.S. government will have equally increased its scope or capability. The United States enjoyed an exponential growth in capabilities with the establishment of a Pentagon, the codification of law for the Marine Corps, and the creation of an Air Force and Central Intelligence Agency. By comparison, the new Department of Homeland Security offers only improvement at the margin, attained with great difficulty, and crafted under emergency conditions. Dangers lie here that the authors of this proposal have hardly begun to think through.
The full article is here. [posted 9:40 am]
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NOT SO FAST. Tapped is not going to get diverted from the extraordinary substance of yesterday's hearings into the September 11th intelligence failures -- even though the president just created a new cabinet agency. (Everyone seems to agree that diverting our attention from the hearings is what drove the timing of his announcement.) The Times tells us that at the hearings, Coleen Rowley said "that the F.B.I.'s bureaucracy discouraged innovation, drowned investigators in paperwork and punished agents who sought to cut through the many layers of gatekeepers at the bureau's headquarters." FBI Director Robert Mueller seems to have faced some pretty tough questioning. We're hunting down a transcript of the entire hearing; we'll link if and when we find it. Within a few hours, we're also going to be posting a pair of article-length responses to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security from two intelligence and national security experts -- so stand by. [posted 7:25 am]
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Thursday, June 6 JANE MAYER ON DAVID BROCK. Probably the definitive review of Blinded by the Right -- unless one of the conservative mags wants to step up to the plate. Strangely, none have. Why? Mayer touches on this -- and echoes what Tapped has been saying all along -- towards the middle of her essay (Tapped-style boldface added for your convenience): A few of Brock's former comrades in arms, such as Judge Silberman's wife, Ricky, and [Mark] Paoletta, have denounced his credibility. Once a liar, always a liar, conservative critics have suggested, without following the logic backward into an examination of where that leaves his earlier work. More recently, there has also been a concerted effort by his former friends to question his sanity. Cyber-gossip Matt Drudge posted a story alleging that Brock was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown last summer, a story that Brock has affirmed and has declined to comment on, but that displays the venomous sentiment toward him among conservatives. Brock's description of his role as the student journalist at Berkeley has been contested by several colleagues. TV pundit Tucker Carlson has denied a quote that Brock attributes to him. Former left-wing-radical-turned-right- wing-radical David Horowitz has denied an anti-gay jibe ascribed to him (only to have Brock's account confirmed by Horowitz's interlocutor). Robert Bartley, the editor of The Wall Street Journal, whose editorial page published an excerpt from Brock's book on Anita Hill, has denounced Brock as "the John Walker Lindh of contemporary conservatism," but has cited no inaccuracy in the book. R. Emmett Tyrrell, Brock's former editor at the American Spectator, has tried to defend stories that Brock has now debunked. Theodore Olson has denied under oath knowing as much as Brock claims he did about secret payments from Scaife which financed the so-called "Arkansas Project" at the American Spectator, a $2.4 million special investigative operation devoted to attacking the Clintons. In view of the sensational allegations that Brock levels at many of the most prominent members of Washington's conservative elite from Justice Thomas on down, then, aside from Olson's denial, which Brock contests, their silenceon all but trivia seems revealing.In any event, the book has been available in easy reach of critics for several months, but other than small quibbles from mostly minor characters, there have been no serious blows to its credibility yet.
Damn straight, we say. This piece appears in the New York Review of Books instead of Mayer's home base, the New Yorker, presumably because the New Yorker's estimable Rick Hertzberg had decided to take a crack at it. Both reviews are excellent. But Mayer gives a lot of added value, since she mixed it up with Brock in the bad old days. Another must read. [posted 4:00 pm]
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MORE ON MWO. Atrios has posted a copy of Jennifer Liberto's mass email to MediaWhoresOnline contributors. The email does makes it sound like she's going to do a generally positive article about how MWO has "taken civicactivism to it's [sic] next step." Atrios thinks this is a little sleazy. Tapped is not so sure. The truth is, reporters often have to softball the angle of their story to get people to talk to them. And if you read her letter carefully, she doesn't make any promises she doesn't keep. In all fairness, Tapped would probably have sent out a similar letter if we were reporting on MWO. [posted 4:00 pm]
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TEACHING OLD DRUGS NEW TRICKS. This one's a must read. Slate's Emily Yoffe has an excellent piece on prescription drugs -- more specifically, on the case for the federal government funding research on new uses for old drugs. It's sensible and convincing. Check it out. [posted 4:00 pm]
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HEADS OF ESTATES. The Federal Page of The Washington Post today (sorry, no link available) reports that Rep. Henry Waxman's (D-CA) staff crunched the numbers on just how much top administration officials and some corporate executives would save if the repeal of the estate tax is made permanent -- a position they are rabidly promoting. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's heirs could gain as much as $120 million from the repeal; heirs of Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill as much as $51 million; of Veep Cheney, as much as $40 million. President Bush, a relative pauper in the administration -- he's worth somewhere between $11 and $21 million -- could leave his heirs something like $10 million. Folks like Gary Winnick of Global Crossing could save $366 million; Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco International some $149 million, and Ken Lay of Enron some $59 million. Too bad the Waxman crew didn't crunch the numbers for the senators and House members who are behind this proposal. Perhaps someone will. [posted 2:20 pm]
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MORE CONFIRMATION ON SILBERMAN. Tapped just heard from another expert on judicial ethics, Barbara Reed, the Counsel and Policy Director of the Constitution Project. Reed more or less confirmed what we reported earlier this week about Judge Laurence Silberman's likely violations of the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges by involving himself in the Clinton witch hunt. If Silberman's conduct was indeed as reported by David Brock, she said, it "appears to me to transgress the Code." [posted 2:15 pm]
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STRONG STUFF. We frequently learn something when we read the environmental writer Bill McKibben. This time, he's unpacked the real outrage concerning the climate change report the Bush administration sent to the United Nation earlier this week, and then later more or less disavowed:
Now, instead of pretending that climate change is an insignificant and unproved irritant, the administration insists that it is so enormous that very little can be done about it, except build seawalls....In fact, the most startling figure in the report has nothing to do with snowfall or sea level. Instead, it's the official government prediction that U.S. production of greenhouse gases will rise 43 percent by 2020. We'll pour half again as much carbon dioxide into the planet's atmosphere 18 years from now -- that's our promise.
It's as if a drunk had finally hit bottom, announced to friends and family that he accepted the fact that he was an alcoholic and that it was destroying his life -- and then said that his plan was to drink three bottles a night from now on instead of two, and see if maybe he could find an artificial kidney.
What more can we say? [posted 1:50 pm]
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WE CAN RELATE. What is it with Tapped and conservatives today? Whatever's going on, we sure could relate to William Safire's column this morning. For years, we too have driven up Massachusetts Avenue and seen that same protester claiming sexual abuse by a priest. After the Catholic Church scandal broke, one Tapper's adolescent daughter exclaimed that "the nut case" was right after all. While we don't want to go where Safire goes on Iraq, he's right more generally about putting "retrospectacles" on when it comes to looking at the world. [posted 1:20 pm]
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THE LATEST. If you haven't seen them yet, we've posted new articles from Robert Kuttner (on the Democratic Leadership Council) and Harold Meyerson (on the ruthless Green Party) from the latest print issue of our magazine; we've also posted a web-only item by Jeremy Lott on how the pedophile-priest scandal could change the nature of church-state relations for the Catholic Church. Tapped hopes you'll read all of these pieces, but we'll leave you with a teaser quote from Meyerson:
The race against Wellstone, in fact, is not an exception to Green strategy, but its quintessence. Already the Greens have tipped congressional races to the Republicans in Michigan and New Mexico, and there was that unfortunate outcome of the presidential race about 18 months ago...When asked at the June 2000 Green National Convention to name three things he liked about America, for instance, Nader listed Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman of California as thing number two. But when David Moberg of In These Times interviewed Nader that October, the candidate said that come 2002, he'd unhesitatingly back a Green against Waxman. Nader added, however, that the Greens would focus chiefly on the close races. Where the Democrats "are winning 51 [percent]-to-49 percent," he said, "we're going to go in and beat them with Green votes. They've got to lose people, whether they're good or bad."
Again, Meyerson's article is here. [posted 12:55 pm]
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CALLING DEMOCRATS TO ACCOUNT. Alex Bolton of The Hill has a good story explaining how it's some Senate Democrats -- namely Evan Bayh (D-IN) and the irrepressible Zell Miller (D-GA) -- who are putting the kibosh on the aggressive and more consumer-friendly accounting reform bill advanced by Paul Sarbanes (D-MD). What gives with these guys? The House version of accounting reform has been called "The Ken Lay Protection Act" by activists, and Sarbanes had been hoping to get a stronger bill out of the Senate. We'd expect Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) to work overtime to kill this legislation, and indeed he has been. But Bayh and Miller? It makes no sense. [posted 9:40 am]
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CHENEY/HALLIBURTON REPRISE. Stalwart Madison-style progressive columnist Dave Zweiful has a very useful retelling of the connections between Dick Cheney's old company and that "evil one" -- Iraq. Zwieful cites The Financial Times of London, which reported that between September of 1998 and the winter of 2000, Cheney oversaw $23.8 million of business contracts for the sale of oil industry equipment and services to Iraq. Hmmm. That's not so very long ago. Perhaps Iraq became evil only recently? [posted 9:35 am]
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THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME. Two recent money and politics reports illustrate this adage (which also happens to be a lyric from the 1980s glam rock band Cinderella, and therefore a distant memory now from Tapped's wayward youth). This story tells us that money was a key determining factor in who won the primaries held throughout the country this week, and this one explains all the loopholes in the new campaign finance law that the political parties (and their lawyers) and candidates want to create. Isn't there any good news on the money and politics front? [posted 9:25 am]
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OH MY GOD, WE AGREE! First, Jonah Goldberg does a good column on introduced species. And now, there's something in the pages of the anti-therapeutic cloning Weekly Standard that that we agree with as well -- in this case, a Matt Labash article on the joys of making (and drinking) bourbon. But the Kentucky bourbon junket Labash joined missed out on our personal favorite distillery: "the Best of the Great Kentucky Bourbons." (Disclaimer: This Tapper grew up in the shadows of this distillery.) [posted 9:10 am]
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JEDI SEX, PART II. Well, leave it up to Star Wars to break our bad case of blogger's block from yesterday. We just had to comment on Chris Suellentrop's recent piece on celibacy, superherohood, and the failings of the Catholic Church in Slate. While otherwise fascinating, the piece gets one thing very wrong: Jedis can have sex! George Lucas himself has said so. If Suellentrop had read Tapped, he would know. For shame! [posted 7:20 am]
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Wednesday, June 5 Sure, it sounds like an oxymoron. Nevertheless, it's happening. Tapped is experiencing a strange phenomenon: blogger's block. It's like writer's block, except worse, because bloggers are supposed to let their words flow out onto the Internet with at least as much spontaneity as any Virginia Woolf-type stream-of-consciousness scribbler. So what's wrong with us? Is this a Wednesday thing? Too many morning meetings? Too much dreamy musing about how the U.S., having beaten Portugal, will now sweep the World Cup? In any case, we decided to put up this post with the express intent of introducing the term "blogger's block" into the lingo -- and to try to break our block. Is it working? [posted 4:05 pm]
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NEWS FLASH. Tapped just got a press release from the Cato Institute announcing, "The Export-Import Bank is Unnecessary, Cato study concludes." (The study in question is here.) The trouble is, it's not exactly news that Cato, whose watchword is "limited government," thinks something is unnecessary. Packaging, guys! Can't you make government-shrinking, free market libertarianism more sexy? Tapped came up with our own version of the Cato release: "Liberalism is good, American Prospect office poll concludes...." [posted 1:00 pm]
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AND WHILE WE'RE AT IT. The American Prospect Online just posted our content for today. Well, technically we did it three hours ago, but we thought you'd still be interested if you haven't seen these articles already. First, there's a lyrical piece by Richard Just about the bizarre decision by Suffolk, Virginia's black mayor to honor last April as Confederate History and Heritage Month. An excerpt:
As a youngster, [T.C. Williams] played on the lots his father had purchased, kicking around the scores of metallic gray balls he found in a ditch on the property. It was only in the early 1980s that Williams -- who had been snatched from Suffolk by the draft, worked in New York City for the U.S. Postal Service, and then returned to his hometown for good in 1977 -- found himself in a Richmond museum, about an hour northwest of Suffolk, staring at a collection of gray Civil War bullets that looked awfully familiar. "Had I not seen those pieces in this museum, the thought would never have occurred to me," he says. Williams had spent part of his childhood unwittingly at play in a ditch full of bullets once used by soldiers.
Again, Just's full article is here. Meanwhile, we've also got an article by Iain Murray on the new push to establish the so-called intelligent design theory as an alternative to evolution, and a sneak preview article from our next issue by Laura Rozen on whether real CIA and FBI reform can happen. Enjoy! [posted 12:45 pm]
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THE DAVID BROCK OF LAD MAGS. Alert reader T.H. sent Tapped this article by Dave Itzkoff, a repentant former editor at Maxim, well known for its soft-focus shots of starlets and scintillating prose essays on sex techniques. His public self-flagellation makes a good meditation on the toll of trashy publishing -- both on the journalists producing it and on the reading public. [posted 12:25 pm]
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F.B.I.P.R. TomPaine.com gets it right in today's op ad: "Mueller wants the case closed before it's opened." If we don't know what went wrong with the FBI, how can we know whether or when it's fixed? Indeed, we urged our readers to look at Daniel Franklin's take on this for TAP Online:
The problem at the FBI isn't that there aren't enough intelligence analysts. The problem is that there aren't enough non-analysts, from the director's office on down, who understand intelligence and how it must be used.
Tapped has some experience with the FBI ourselves, having served as a sleuth investigating its COINTELPRO activities. (Anyone out there remember how the FBI targeted civil rights activists and others for intensive scrutiny? Or that many of the laws now abrogated by John Ashcroft & Co were originally enacted to protect us against such activity in the future?)
The public needs to know what went wrong with the FBI from bottom (the field) to top (headquarters). Bush is full of baloney when he says that he's worried that the Congressional investigations will divert the energy of those who should be focusing on the fight against terrorists. He's just worried that the truth might come out. [posted 9:20 am]
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BUSH TO EARTH: "JUST KIDDING." Everyone's reporting today (see here and here) that President Bush is backing away from what appeared to be a stunning reversal of his stance on global warming. This was the best headline: "W Disses Christie on Global Warming." The only thing that surprises Tapped is that it took 48 hours for Bush's re-reversal to happen. [posted 9:10 am]
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BAD NEWS BEAR. If you want a quick lesson in the world's most outrageous despots, study the case of President Charles Taylor of Liberia. And can you imagine this? Liberia actually uses a lobbying firm here in Washington. Look for more about this in the next issue of the Prospect. [posted 9:00 am]
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SO SUE HIM. Meanwhile, we're back on the case of U.S. Court of Appeals judge Laurence Silberman. Of course, it's one man's word against another -- but we haven't heard anyone suggest that David Brock's charges against him are untrue. Again, these were Brock's charges, as recounted in Blinded by the Right:
A consummate Washington insider for more than two decades, Larry would often preface his advice to me with the wry demurrer that judges shouldn't get involved in politics -- "That would be improper," he'd say -- and then forge ahead anyway. He was a behind-the-scenes advisor to the conservative editors of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and he delighted his conservative audiences with his acid critiques of the liberal press ... Larry told me the [same] malevolent media forces were at work in the smearing of [Clarence] Thomas......it had been none other than Judge Silberman who gave me the false information on his colleague Pat Wald, whom he hated with a passion ... Shortly after I dropped off the chapter called "Trial by Leak" ... my telephone rang in Woodley Park. Ricky and Larry were literally squealing with joy about the case I had constructed implicating [Senator Paul] Simon, a vocal critic of Silberman's during the judge's own confirmation hearing. They were passing the phone to each other, marveling at my "genius" at the top of their lungs. "You've got him. You nailed him. You fucked him. You killed him," they sang.
...Though he was a sitting federal judge who would rule on matters to which the Clinton administration was a party, Larry strongly urged me to go forward. By now, after his almost daily dealings with me as I wrote The Real Anita Hill, Larry must have known I always deferred to his judgment. He also had keen psychological insight ... Sitting in his favorite tan leather club chair, Scotch in hand, the judge told me he felt sure that if the same story had been written about Ronald Reagan, it would have toppled him from office. Clinton, he surmised, might be toppled as well.
...I was supporting the button one warm spring night at the Silbermans'; as we met for one of our frequent dinnertime brainstorming sessions. With its possibility of tying Clinton in legal knots, the Jones case had electrified Ricky and Larry, as it had much of conservative Washington...
The right-wing machine was gearing up, right there in the Silbermans' kitchen....
If any of this is untrue, Silberman sure hasn't challenged it. And now we learn that such activity is a real no-no. Tapped spoke with Cynthia Gray, director of the Center for Judicial Ethics (a national clearinghouse for information about judicial ethics and discipline) of the American Judicature Society (AJS). After sending us a copy of the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges -- the official word of the Administration Office of the U.S. Courts -- she told us that "federal judges must be above partisan politics. They are not supposed to be involved in any political activity as a way of confirming their independence, integrity and impartiality. The only exception is on efforts to improve the law, the legal system and the administration of justice, and of course, voting." Well, well, well.The process for filing a complaint can be found on AJS's website. Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch, over to you. [posted 8:30 am]
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UNBELIEVABLE. For those of you who weren't awake, the U.S. soccer team just beat Portugal, 3-2.Tapped is as high as the sky right now. [posted 7:45 am]
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Tuesday, June 4 TRIPLE-X INSTAPUNDIT. First InstaPundit did teen sex. Now he's doing senior sex. Hey, they weren't kidding when they said there was only one way to make money on the Internet. [posted 5:55 pm] TAKE IT TO THE MILBANK. The Washington Post's estimable Dana Milbank had a good story today on George Bush's close relationship with the "American people." Good because Milbank is good, and good because he mentions a short piece in the new issue of The Prospect. Check it out. [posted 5:10 pm]
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How do you comply with a subpoena without complying with a subpoena? It's a metaphysical conundrum, but the White House managed it. In response to Sen. Joe Lieberman's two subpoenas for administration Enron-related documents, the White House collected them and moved them to a secure office in the Old Executive Office Bldg. Then they told Lieberman that he and his staff could drop by and take a gander at them -- but that they could not make copies or actually have them. Is that compliance or contempt?
Good question. [posted 2:50 pm]
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OUR LOFTY IDEALS. "Wall Street will shape what Main Street sees, hears and reads so long as publicly traded media corporations have got to return fat margins to profit-hungry investors," attendees of the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) conference in San Francisco were told recently. The statement made Tapped feel like issuing some of our own deep generalizations about the media and society. We believe, like Fairiness & Accurary in Reporting (FAIR), that a critical media are essential to a working democracy. But we are veering dangerously off track when the mainstream media are increasingly driven by economic considerations. FAIR says that "mergers in the news industry have accelerated, further limiting the spectrum of viewpoints that have access to mass media. With U.S. media outlets overwhelmingly owned by for-profit conglomerates and supported by corporate advertisers, independent journalism is compromised." Tapped agrees. [posted 2:35 pm]
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WINNING THE SENIOR VOTE. Election 2002 snapshot: Social Security and other retirement security issues like pension reform are shaping up to be the big electoral issue in November -- just as Nick Confessore argues in the latest issue of The Prospect. Even now, groups are beginning to line up to oppose the so-called pension "reform" legislation that is pending in the Senate. The bill that passed the House would do more for those Enron executives who cleaned up than for the workers who got cleaned out. For more information, Tapped recommends this Economic Policy Institute briefing, and EPI head Jeff Faux's take in the current edition of the Prospect. (Incidentally, the table of contents and a lead article from our next issue will post online tomorrow. Yes, only one more day.) Finally, for more on the Social Security debate check this out. [posted 2:20 pm]
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SALARY-MAN. C-Log's Jonathan Garthwaite is picking on American Federation of Teachers president Sandra Feldman because she earns a salary of $523,000 a year. "Imagine that, the folks they represent are fighting for health benefits and decent pay," he writes, "while they live well on bloated salaries." Why is it, we wonder, that a liberal making a good living -- earning it, in Feldman's case; have you seen a voucher bill pass Congress lately? -- is somehow a traitor to the cause? And if half a million is a "bloated salary," who else in Washington is overpaid?
Garthwaite's boss, for one! We checked out the tax filings for the Heritage Foundation, which runs Townhall.com and the C-Log. In 2000 (the latest year available online), Heritage head honcho Ed Feulner pulled down a cool $527,723 in salary and bonuses plus $116,382 in "employee benefits and deferred compensation." (That's some dental plan!) Feulner's total compensation came to a whopping $644,105.
But wait, there's more! The five highest-paid people at Heritage in 2000 (excluding "Officers, Directors, and Trustees") were current Labor Secretary Elaine Chao ($209,958 in salary), current ubiquitous blowhard Bill Bennett ($126,383), welfare reform expert Kay James ($170,468), trade wonk Gerald Odriscoll ($137,402), and Policy Review editor Tod Lindberg ($125,765 -- and we thought our editor was overpaid!)
Analysis: Sheesh, Bennett made half as much as Chao. Did she write a bestselling tract on virtue? We don't think so! But more interesting are the numbers Heritage lists for the "average hours per week devoted to position" by each person -- i.e., how many hours they work. Bennett and Chao are both listed at "40 hours." Given what we know about these "fellowships" -- actually cushy sinecures handed out to the ideologically reliable, sort of like tenure for right-wing thinkers -- does anybody seriously believe that Bennett and Chao put in 40 hours at Heritage? Heck, Bennett probably logs half of that on TV in a given week! [posted 1:45 pm]
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AND WE'RE LIVE. With two more articles from the print version of The American Prospect. If you haven't seen them yet, Joshua Green reports on the fate of Enron's board of directors, and Sarah Williams Goldhagen assesses Rem Koolhaas, a great architect but (in her view) a seriously bad city planner. Here's one teaser from the Green piece:
Enron's board of directors long ago secured its place in the annals of poor business judgment. But [Frank] Savage deserves special recognition: As a board member of both companies, he wasn't just asleep at one switch -- he was asleep at two.
Click here for the full article. [posted 1:20 pm]
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MORE GREEN IDIOCY. Courtesy of reader G.C. This time it's from -- no surprises here -- Alexander Cockburn and his CounterPunch partner, Jeffrey St. Clair, two men so bitter and estranged from even the margins of left-liberal politics that reading their piece is like entering an alternate universe. (One in which Paul Wellstone is a "compliant insider.") [posted 12:15 pm]
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THE GREAT WASHINGTON GUESSING-GAME? We've just finished reading Jennifer Liberto's MediaWhoresOnline article in Salon yesterday. It's not a bad introduction to MWO, but it does have a slightly censorious tone -- strange, since the worst that can be said about MWO is that they have very bad manners. No one, including Liberto, seems to have poked factual holes in anything MWO has posted. We agree with comments posted by Eric Alterman (here) and Atrios (here) that, even by the politeness standard, MWO measures well against FreeRepublic.com, which regularly peddles outlandish and even offensive conspiracy theories about Democrats and liberals. (In fairness, Salon has covered FreeRepublic.com extensively.) Heck, MWO barely achieves David Horowitz levels of sweaty punditry.
But when you get beyond the often hysterical language, we find MWO's keeping tabs on the media useful indeed. It is, in fact, this particular skill -- and how closely MWO's interests seem to track those of a certain well-known Democratic partisan -- that gives us a good guess as to who's really behind MWO. (Hint: It ain't Joe Conason or Gene Lyons, although both are good guesses.) We're not the only ones thinking of this particular person. But the name doesn't appear in Liberto's piece. Interesting. [posted 12:15 pm]
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TRY AGAIN, DICK. According to the Associated Press, Dick Gephardt now supports invading Iraq, saying he "share[s] the president's resolve to confront this menace head-on."
Let's back up a bit. One of the more interesting elements of the 2004 runup is watching each candidate try to position themselves in a specific niche, some with more success than others. John Edwards, for instance, made a name for himself on judicial nominations, sure to endear him to those Democratic interest groups most concerned with the courts. John Kerry and Joe Lieberman have been duking it out to be Mr. Environment, with Kerry usually beating the overly-cautious Lieberman to the punch. Joe Biden is trying to be the Foreign Policy Democrat in a world where foreign policy matters once again. Howard Dean is making his play on health care. And so forth. (With the exception of Al Gore, who doesn't need to position himself because he's the 800-pound gorilla.)
What about Gephardt? Who knows! The guy can't make up his mind. First, he gets up to join the Republicans in giving Bush's tax cut a standing ovation at the State of the Union -- the only Democrat to do so. Then he goes overboard on the 9/11 cover-up, using the loaded phrase "What did the president know and when did he know it?" Now he wants to invade Iraq. We can't tell if he's trying to run right or run left, re-re-invent himself as a DLC moderate or re-re-invent himself as a labor liberal. Give us a sign! [posted 10:55 am]
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WE SPOKE TOO SOON. When we suggested (below) that blaming the Church committee investigation for crippling the U.S. intelligence services was out of style, that is. We hadn't read the Wall Street Journal editorial page yet. Or this enthused post by Jonah Goldberg. Blaming the Church Committee for washing out the intelligence community's Augean Stables in 1975 is a total cop out. Again, read this article by Chris Mooney to learn why. [posted 10:55 am]
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SUPER BAD IDEA. Tapped may be mistaken here, but The Boston Globe appears to be among the first newspapers to focus on the "superwaiver" scheme that's currently being advanced in the context of welfare reauthorization. This proposal, which passed the House and is still part of the legislation now pending in the Senate, would allow a state to apply to federal agencies -- each with jurisdiction over a huge raft of programs, including most job-training programs, adult education and family literacy programs, social services block grants, food stamp and some housing programs -- for an unlimited number of waivers to "integrate" two or more of them. In the process, states would be able to waive many of the statutory and regulatory requirements attached to the individual programs. OMB Watch has all the details. [posted 9:35 am]
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SHOW US THE MONEY. While Tapped agrees with the substance of the Times editorial on accounting reform this morning, we think the paper should pump up the volume. After all, the accounting industry has more or less bought Washington protection by being one of the biggest contributors to political campaigns. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Arthur Andersen was an even bigger supporter of Bush's campaign than Enron. D. Stephen Goddard, relieved of his managerial duties in Andersen's Houston office last January, also was one of Bush's biggest individual donors during the election. All told, Andersen has contributed more than $5.2 million in soft money, PAC and individual contributions to federal parties and candidates, more than half to Republicans.
Money also factored into the so-called accounting reforms that passed the House a couple of weeks ago, which the Times calls "weak." (That's their more cautious word; we'd call them an outrage.) Groups like U.S. Public Interest Research Group argued that the bill, which passed 334-90, was little more than a "Ken Lay Protection Act." Sponsored by Rep. Michael Oxley (R-OH), the legislation failed to prohibit accounting firms from making millions from selling consulting services to the same companies they audit, and did nothing to close the revolving door between accountants and their clients -- problems that were at the core of the Enron-Arthur Andersen scam. The Oxley bill also failed to create a new regulatory board that could oversee audit firms, instead leaving that to the Securities and Exchange Commission (where two of the three current commissioners, including the chair, come straight from the Big Five accounting firms). The lawmakers who favored this sham reform got, on average, $33,000 from Big Five firms (from 1989-2001) while members who voted against it received just half that amount. [posted 9:25 am]
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FREEH RIDE? Speaking of the FBI and Daniel Franklin, Salon's Eric Boehlert has an important article (Salon Premium subscription required) today about whether former FBI Director Louis Freeh will take any heat for the bureau's intelligence failures. After all, the current FBI Director, Robert Mueller, came on the job just a week before 9/11; he can hardly be held responsible for failings that occurred before his tenure. Boehlert quotes at length from a previous Daniel Franklin article in The American Prospect to show how Freeh has previously insulated himself from criticism by making allegiances with Clinton-bashing Republicans. That story is here. For some reason Salon didn't link to it -- what's up with that, guys? [posted 8:55 am]
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BACK TO CHURCH. Today Congress's joint intelligence inquiry begins, and the Post's article on the hearings is rife with historical parallels -- particularly to the unprecedented 1975 intelligence investigations conducted by Senator Frank Church. Let us not forget, however, that just after 9/11 we were also hearing a lot about Church. Then, however, the chatter was coming from the right, and was a hawkish attempt to smear the Idaho senator's groundbreaking investigation (which revealed CIA assassination plots and FBI spying on Martin Luther King, Jr., among other things). As TAP's Chris Mooney wrote last November:
The Wall Street Journal editorial page called the opening of Church's public hearings "the moment that our nation moved from an intelligence to anti-intelligence footing." And the spy-mongering novelist Tom Clancy attacked Church on Fox New
