Phoebe Connelly

There’s an interesting article in Sunday’s Times about attempts by Countrywide borrowers to keep their houses. Countywide has “a 2,700-member unit, called the HOPE Team, that it says helps borrowers modify their loans and hold onto their homes.” But Mark Seifert, executive director of Empowering and Strengthening Ohio’s People, a consumer advocacy group in Cleveland, […]

I went to the American Constitution Society’s Supreme Court Term Preview today. Lots of interesting stuff, (I’ll be writing a run down of the fall docket for TAP Online early next week) but I thought the most interesting comment came from Virginia Seitz of Sidley Austin who discussed the civil rights, or as she put […]

CRAIG’S PISSED. I assume my fellow Gadflyer Paul had to file his column, as I did, before we learned that Larry Craig is fired up about being entrapped, and is now re-thinking his resignation announcement. Whatever the case, Paul’s piece today for the TAP Online is more thoughtful than my weekly effort for the Baltimore […]

HILLARY HOME RUN. It’s a convenient knock against Hillary Clinton that she’s cold or impersonal, the classic calculating woman. The favorite dig of Rush Limbaugh and other nags like him is that Hillary reminds men of “their first wife.” (I wonder whom Limbaugh uses as a referent point for the rest of the platoon of […]

EATING (AND GROWING) LOCAL. I’ve got a piece up today over at In These Times on the rise of community urban agriculture programs. Agriculture and community gardens have a long history in urban areas, but a new generation of urban agriculture programs is focused on using agriculture to address food access and urban blight, and […]

DNC DOLLAR DROUGHT. As I wrote recently for Salon, Hillary Clinton is building a campaign organization so large and complete that, if she’’s the nominee, she could tell Howard Dean and the DNC to go screw themselves. She won’’t need a name, a list, a dollar, or a volunteer hour from them. After the Denver […]

MICHAEL MOORE: NOW APPEARING IN A LEDE NEAR YOU. Forget the box office, Michael Moore and Sicko have unquestionably conquered one battle — becoming shorthand for “American health care crisis” for news writers everywhere. Take a look around: in the Kansas City Star, columnist Rhonda Chriss Lokeman cites Moore’s film to tell the story of […]