Sam Boyd

Courtney Martin‘s web piece on today’s generation of young liberals is one of the most honest and clear things I’ve read in a long time. Some paragraphs crystallize so clearly things I’ve thought a thousand times (the bit about the emptiness of modern protest in particular). I just wanted to add a few thoughts as […]

You hear about various candidates “moving” to Iowa but Chris Dodd has taken that one step further by literally moving his family to the state. His daughter is enrolled in Kindergarten in Des Moines, and he and his wife have rented a house for the next few months. This raises a few questions: Is this […]

At the end of an otherwise compelling analysis of last night’s Republican presidential debate on TNR‘s new campaign blog, Noam Scheiber has this to say about Mitt Romney: There are obvious tactical reasons for Romney to run as a conservative. But sometimes you can’t help wishing he’d run more authentically — as the moderate technocrat […]

This interesting New York Times piece drawing parallels between current Democratic debates on economic policy and similar ones in 1993 is worth a read and it got me thinking about deficits and social policy. The general consensus about the deficit on TAPPED and other liberal blogs is that the next Democratic president should first try […]

I’ve been off TAPPED for a while so i figured I’d start off my first post back by making a prediction I’m pretty confident is true — Massachusetts will not vote for a Republican in 2008. Crazy, I know. Strangely, this puts me at odds with TNR‘s Jamie Kirchick who wrote yesterday that “Massachusetts might […]

PRESIDENT SCARY MCGROUCHYPANTS. Matt Bai has a great look at Rudy Giuliani‘s appeal in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine. Like most good articles, it’s hard to blog about, but what stood out for me was Bai’s clear understanding of the fact that Giuliani is taking his “I’m the SOB you need” message to the […]

WHAT IF THEY HAD A PARTY AND NOBODY CAME? An article in the LA Times yesterday chronicles the pathetic state of the California Republican Party. But wait, you say, isn’t a Republican you know, governor? Not really. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the governor, and he is a Republican, but he’s about as close as you get […]

IP FREE. The theory behind intellectual property law is fairly simple. Some things require investment to create but can be copied easily (books, music etc). In order to create incentives for them to be created, we give people copyrights so that they can get paid for their creations. Problem is, there are quite a few […]

I BRUSH MY ENORMOUS TEETH. People occasionally accuse The American Prospect of being a touch dull and overly wonky, but apparently we have nothing on the Economist which recently published an hour by hour blog diary by Finnish European Parliament member Alex Stubb. It makes for surprisinglybizarre reading: 6:45 “I decide to open my vocal […]

THINK OF THE CHILDREN, GIVE THEM BOOZE! It’s always nice when things you believe are backed up by actual evidence, so I was particularly happy to read this morning that there is considerable reason to believe that children who drink with their parents are much less likely to drink irresponsibly (these quotes are from the […]