Sam Rosenfeld

THEOCRACY HYPE. Scott, I agree with you that Amy Sullivan‘s prescriptive arguments about Democratic outreach to evangelicals are thin. (And for a small-but-perfect illustration of the limited efficacy of even the rather ostentatious rhetorical gambits that Hillary Clinton has attempted in an effort to reach religious voters, see here.) But I do feel compelled to […]

GRAND OLD PORNO. There are better reasons to vote the Republicans out of office, but it’s certainly delicious to see that the GOP has taken money from pornographers, including one who reportedly has expressed a desire to do the Bush twins. Josh Marshall reported this weekend that even as the Republican National Committee tars, in […]

A BRIEF LOOK BACK. I’ll be writing about this at greater length in a piece for New York Times Select coming out tomorrow, but with Election 2006 just a week away and the narratives already emerging about its significance, I though we ought to pause to first clarify what happened two years ago, in 2004. […]

HERE WE GO AGAIN. Well, this was a nice little present a week out from the election, wasn’t it? Raise your hand if you’ve heard Ellen Tauscher‘s name any time in the past six years. I thought as much. Why doesn’t The New York Times just dig up Carl Albert and ask him what he […]

NM-1: DOWN TO THE WIRE. Democratic Attorney General Patricia Madrid is going into the last full week before elections in New Mexico’s first district with a razor-thin lead over incumbent Republican Heather Wilson. Of course, the poll was run before the televised debate last week. Who won the debate largely depends on who you ask, […]

BAD OMEN. There’s a great moment near the beginning of the movie Tootsie, in which Dustin Hoffman and his agent are arguing about a play that Hoffman’s roommate has written for him. In the play, Hoffman is to play a man who moves back into the toxin-poisoned neighborhood of Love Canal. The agent (played by […]

OUTTA DA MARRIAGE BIZ. As a queer native of the Garden State, I applaud the state Supreme Court decision that orders the legislature of my native land to do the right thing and give us our rights. Like Scott, I’m down with the decision of the best damn state supreme court in the land, but […]

PETER BOYER. Over at Open University, David Greenberg has a good post criticizing Peter Boyer‘s latest New Yorker piece, which in typical fashion combines plenty of good writing and colorful material with an unseemly internalization of right-wing talking points and caricatures of liberals. This reminds me to plug one of Matt‘s first web pieces as […]

CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION. Here’s Rep. Jean Schmidt, being stupid on the subject of a videotape on which she was, earlier, really stupid. It is devoutly to be hoped that, if it does nothing else, a Democratic sweep in the upcoming elections might disenthrall the Republicans from the notion that they can collect anyone off […]

WINGER WEEK. Following up Pierce — the president and vice president have said all sorts of great stuff to conservative journalists and commentators this week. –Sam Rosenfeld