Sam Rosenfeld

LIKE FRIST, ONLY COMPETENT. Another Sunday, another exceedingly unimpressive appearance by Bill Frist on a chat show. Meanwhile, Zachary Roth and Cliff Schecter have a good piece in The Washington Monthly about the man who will succeed Frist as Republican Senate leader (be it in the majority or the minority) when the latter retires this […]

GUEST POST: FASTEN THE ROPES. Senator McCain and his colleagues deserve some credit; they have, once again, pushed back on an administration that is congenitally allergic to the rule of law. When faced with the senators� insistence — along with the stern warnings of two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs and more than two […]

YOU LISTEN. This is just a heads up that Max Sawicky‘s always terrific MaxSpeak blog now looks to be even more interesting and frisky with the addition of decidedly non-EPIish center-left economist Jason Furman to the roster of contributors. Much mixing-it-up has already ensued. It will definitely be worth checking out. –Sam Rosenfeld

AMERICANS AND TORTURE. Shrill Charlie Pierce and the unshrill New York Times editorialists are correct — it was substantively a fool’s game and a disgrace for Democrats to consciously refuse to engage the torture debate, and, as The Times puts it, “it�s time for them to either try to fix this bill or delay it […]

NATIONAL I.D. To follow up on Ben‘s post, I see Kevin Drum makes a similar critique of the GOP legislation, but also comes out in favor of a universal I.D. given to everyone in the country. This is an idea that Boston bossman Bob Kuttner proposed in 2004. I remember finding his old column on […]

ALLEN AND HIS MOM. I believe the innocent possible explanation for this would be that Allen‘s mom thought he�d be mad because she had kept this a secret from him for so long, and he had been saying publicly what he thought was true — that she wasn�t Jewish. –Sam Rosenfeld

WHY WOULD A MAN STOP LOVING HIS MOTHER OVER SUCH A THING? George Allen‘s mother recalls the moment, last month, when she told her son that she was raised Jewish: “When I told Georgie, I said, ‘Now you don’t love me anymore.’” To his credit, Allen replied “Mom, I respect you more than ever.” But […]

“ARCANE.” Ritual disclaimer: Keith Olbermann is a friend of mine, has been for years, ever since we were baby reporters in Boston and all the way through my ill-fated attempt to be hepcat enough to get hired by the embryonic ESPN 2. Last night on his show, he hosted Dana Milbank of The Washington Post […]

FUNNY BUSINESS. Mark Schmitt‘s column in our September print issue is a rumination on businesses’ efforts at mass voter registration, and the challenge that presents to progressives. Mark mainly focuses on the manufacturing sector, which is sufficiently beleaguered for job loyalty to often trump class loyalty — as workers “see their economic interest as bound […]

BEYOND RECRIMINATIONS. Perhaps not surprisingly, I second what Matt said about Jon Chait‘s column on the incompetence dodge and don’t have an enormous amount to add. (I should at least say that I very much appreciate Chait establishing the grounds of the debate pretty accurately and arguing in good faith.) Noam Scheiber‘s intervention today does […]