Sam Rosenfeld

PRISON AS A PIECE OF THE INEQUALITY PUZZLE. American Dream author Jason DeParle has a very good piece in the latest New York Review of Books assessing myriad aspects and implications of America’s system of mass incarceration, including such issues as felon disenfranchisement and the appalling conditions of prisons themselves (made worse by laws like […]

DEBATES TO BE HAD. Lots and lotsa money raised by the presidential candidates this past quarter, of course, with Hillary Clinton leading the Democratic pack (and topping any of the Republicans’ totals as well). The New York Times ran a piece about Bill Clinton‘s energetic participation in his wife’s fundraising efforts, as he works to […]

I HEART HUCKABEE. I’m a little late to this, but Mike Huckabee‘s widely noted line referencing the checkered personal lives of some of his GOP rivals (�If Republicans in this election vote in such a way as to say a candidate�s personal life and personal conduct in office doesn�t matter, then a lot of Christian […]

BIGGEST. TAX INCREASE. EVER. As everybody’s pointing out, the Republicans’ characterization of letting some of the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010 as the Democrats enacting “the biggest tax increase in American history” is, of course, a lie, both on the semantic point of what constitutes a hike and on the more concrete point that […]

BAD FRAMING. Congressional GOP leaders met with some bloggers yesterday to lay out their planned strategy to fight the Democrats’ budget resolution this year. The plan, predictably, is to call the Dems’ proposal* to let most of the Bush tax cuts expire in 2011 “the biggest tax increase in American history.” Though this was obviously […]

THE POST-VETO FIGHT. I think it’s safe to say that Democrats exceeded the expectations of everyone — including themselves — in their ability to pass supplemental bills in both chambers calling for withdrawal from Iraq. The strategic and substantive debates now turn to responding to the president’s inevitable veto of a bill coming out of […]

PORK!! A page 1 story in The Washington Post today passes on the president’s harsh criticisms of Congress’s Iraq supplemental bills, devoting many paragraphs to Bush‘s indignant recitation of several porky domestic spending provisions in the packages. Could it have hurt the authors to at least briefly mention that every emergency Iraq supplemental devised and […]

SOMETHING I HAD FORGOTTEN. Joe Biden is still running for president. –Sam Rosenfeld

PEACE FOR PEANUTS. Last night, Jon Stewart (whether intentionally or not) very nicely made the case for congressional pork in a segment on the war appropriations fight. Dana and (in more expansive terms) Brad Plumer have already made this case recently but, with all due respect to both of them, they weren’t as funny. –Sam […]

WHO NEEDS WHO FOR WHAT? Ron Brownstein‘s column today is entitled “Bush and Democrats: Enemies who need each other.” I assumed he meant in part that Dems are relying on Bush’s utter intransigence on Iraq to keep their own caucus united — a point made yesterday by E.J. Dionne (to whom MoveOn’s Tom Matzzie remarked, […]