Sam Rosenfeld

SPEAKER PELOSI. The New York Times assesses Nancy Pelosi today. Much ink (including a direct quote from Barney Frank) is devoted to how bad she is on television. This is true; she’s bad on television. It’s her deficiency as a “spokesperson for the party” that seems partly to explain the rather odd pincer dynamic that’s […]

COINCIDENCE? The gunfire-in-Congress story is obviously still developing but thankfully so far it appears possible that no one (including one aide who was seen being taken out of the Rayburn office building to the hospital) was injured. Subcription-only Roll Call cites a witness reporting that “Capitol Police were told over their radios to look for […]

MORE ON PROTEST MUSIC. Fellow haters of Neil Young‘s thuddingly literal-minded and reductive new Bush-bashing album might appreciate this SNL sketch plugging Young’s follow-up record, I Do Not Agree With Many of This Administration’s Policies (Andy Samberg, as Conor Oberst, makes a guest appearance.) I should note that, contrary to the thrust of the spoof, […]

TWO QUICK SCANDAL FOLLOW-UPS. Regarding Mike‘s take on Charlie Rangel, Nancy Pelosi, and Bill Jefferson, tensions between Pelosi and the Congressional Black Caucus (including Rangel) have indeed exploded since her move yesterday to have Jefferson step down from his Ways and Means Committee post. As for ABC News’s afternoon report about Dennis Hastert being targeted […]

EUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM. Scott McLemee has written a terrific, thoughtful critique of the deeply annoying Euston Manifesto; it’s well worth a read. Todd Gitlin‘s quoted comments in the piece strike me as particularly apt and refreshing. No one has really managed to top this short-and-sweet riff from Daniel Davies, however. UPDATE: This came […]

NOT CROSSING THE AISLE. Ed Kilgore and Matt game out some of the politics of immigration legislation, with Matt taking a slightly more hardline don’t-pass-anything position. Kilgore, however, fully acknowledges that a bill coming out of a House-Senate conference would be substantively worse than no bill at all if it leans in the House’s draconian […]

UP IS DOWN, REDUX. People have been rightly concerned for a while now about seeing, in the current domestic discussion of Iran, a twilight-zone repetition of the dynamics of the prewar Iraq debate. Greg, looking at today’s Washington Post piece confirming Iran’s desire for direct talks with the United States and delineating a policy divide […]

FREELANCERS AND TEAM PLAYERS. Matt has some useful thoughts on the difference between a freelance crook, like Bill Jefferson personally enriching himself through abuse of his office, and the kind of systemic, institutional corruption practiced by the Republican congressional majority and typified by the major corruption scandals on that side of the aisle. (Rahm Emanuel […]

THE HORSE’S MOUTH. Fans of Greg Sargent‘s contributions to Tapped, take note: As part of the Prospect‘s ever-expanding blog empire, we’re now hosting Greg’s own blog on media and politics, The Horse’s Mouth. You’ll want to make it a regular part of your daily TAP online intake. (Greg won’t be a stranger to Tapped, however […]

ISRAEL LOBBIES. Subscription-only CQ reports on the looming showdown between the House and the Bush administration over a draconian bill imposing across-the-board sanctions against the Palestinian Authority and limiting the president’s waiver authority (which normally gives him some flexibility to override the directives). The administration has made clear that it opposes punitive sanctions of this […]