Sam Rosenfeld

TAPPED OUT. You may have noticed — hopefully you noticed! — that neither Tapped nor Beat the Press nor The Horse’s Mouth had any new content on Thursday and Friday. Just to be clear, contributors didn’t all take off on a road trip together — we’ve been having some serious technical problems with Movable Type. […]

SPEAKING OF MCCAIN. Greg has a very, very good question for him. –Sam Rosenfeld

OVERBLOWN. David A. Bell wishes more people were discussing and debating John Mueller‘s new book Overblown, which makes the strong case against considering terrorism a genuinely dire, let alone existential, threat to the United States; I share Bell’s wish. Mueller’s argument is basically off-message for just about everybody, but has always stuck me as a […]

SPEAKER PELOSI. Now that Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer have gone into overdrive to patch things up and get the caucus unified after last week’s fight, we’ve been reminded that the key challenge of Pelosi’s leadership is likely going to be less intra-leadership squabbling with the majority leader than handling the disparate strategic and substantive […]

A NOTABLE ELECTION. Alec alerts us to this very interesting election trivia from subscription-only The Hotline. Some highlights include: This is presumably the first cycle since the modern party system began that no party (in this case the Dems) lost not a single House, SEN, or GOV seat. No House Democrat lost re-election for the […]

ROBERT ALTMAN, R.I.P. Truly a giant. –Sam Rosenfeld

JOE’S GAME. I had missed this yesterday, but Greg offers a really sharp take on Joe Lieberman‘s real prospects for switching parties (they’re dim), as compared with the leverage he gains by playing up the threat via a willing press. Check it out (and note the Tom Friedman-style “memo to x” framing for a little […]

MORE MORAN. Alec writes in to note some follow-up commentary from arch-Murtha booster Jim Moran, quoted in subscription-only Congress Daily: Murtha-backer Jim Moran (D-VA), on freshmen who voted for Hoyer: “It remains to be seen if their wished-for committee assignments are fulfilled.” The dude just doesn’t quit. –Sam Rosenfeld

HOYER WINS. 149-86. This was all in all a pretty bizarre screw-up on Pelosi‘s part, but the saving grace of this leadership fight is how quickly it all happened, without dragging on for too many more days or weeks. It’s still very early for the incoming majority. Time to kiss, make up, move on. Sidenote: […]

THE GAME’S STILL THE SAME … IT JUST GOT MO’ FIERCE. I received the same stunning Hill article in my inbox last night that Josh Marshall writes about here. Excerpt: House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will ensure that Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) wins his race for majority leader, a key Murtha ally said Monday night. […]