llacy

SAFETY FIRST. I was poking through some old crimes statistics last night in search of some half-remembered fact and noticed that the violent crime rate for women in 2005 was half of what it was in 1973, which is as far back as the U.S. Dept. Justice statistic go, and less than half of what […]

READING THE TEA LEAVES ON IRAN. Via Joe Klein, Azar Nafisi (whom I had the pleasure of finally meeting last week after Danny Postel‘s reading from his new book, Reading _Legitimation Crisis_ in Tehran) also makes the case that a military strike on Iran would be a disaster for Iranian dissenters. From her piece yesterday […]

MORE MITT. Mitt Romney did not excerpt this part of his Herzliya speech on his website, but a group called Control Congress transcribed it from a video excerpt provided by Romney’s campaign. Romney also said: In the current conflict, there�s only one way to lose, and that is if we as a civilization decide not […]

GIULIANI THE CONSERVATIVE. Over at The New Republic‘s under-read Open University blog, historian David Greenberg raises a red-flag about calling Rudolph Giuliani a moderate Republican: [In New York] His record could hardly have been more conservative. The action that perhaps best captured his deepest, most sincerely held beliefs was his attempt to close an art […]

SILENCE=BETRAYAL? But I was surrounded in Washington by confident, successful young men who argued for military intervention in Iraq, while most of those who opposed it were of the older generation, or culturally so far to the left of me that I was uncertain whether their politics were somthing I should take seriously. If you […]

HRC Beinart sites comes in the next paragraph where he observes that “Research shows that female candidates–especially Democratic ones–are perceived as more liberal than they really are.” This quickly gets turned around into a clever pro-HRC point (“She may find it easier to run as an antiwar candidate because that is how people are predisposed […]

ATM POLITICS. I’ve refrained from commenting on the Yglesias-Clark-Goldberg fracas, because I generally believe that people have a right to be offended by awkward, historically resonant phrases if they want to be (see: Biden, Joe and “clean”); that people like to make a very big deal out of candidate gaffes (see: Allen, George and “macaca”) […]

HAGEL-BLOOMBERG ’08? A source in a position to know tells me that Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska) is set to meet this week with representatives from Unity ’08, the center-right third party group that’s been linked to a possible presidential bid by liberal Republican New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and which is seeking to build […]

One potential contender, Michael Bloomberg, stood out for his long record of donations to his potential ’08 competitors of both parties. In 1995, Bloomberg donated $1,000 to Mitt Romney‘s senate campaign — and another $1,000 to now declared Democratic presidential contender Chris Dodd. Between 1998 and 2003, Bloomberg donated $7,000 to potential Republican rival John […]

FINGER IN THE WIND. John Kerry may or may not be gearing up for a second presidential bid, but one group of Massachusetts locals is betting against his staying power. Venerable Cambridge burger joint Mr. Bartley’s Burger Coottage — which has featured an overwhelming array of burgers named after a changing cast of local and […]