Sam Rosenfeld

EXPECTATIONS GAME. Some good times to be had reading through The Washington Post‘s write-up of the Bush administration’s bold plan for revival through GOP victory in November — with victory defined as “Nancy Pelosi not becoming Speaker of the House.” (From the article: “If Republicans retain Congress in November, Bush advisers note, he could assert […]

DON’T MERELY MOCK THE MUSTACHE. It’s lovely to see some bipartisan scorn heaped on Tom Friedman in the form of enthusiastic plugs for this hilarious round-up of “the next six months are key” pronouncements on Iraq made over the last 30 months. (As FAIR puts it in the subhead to the list, “Iraq’s ‘decisive’ six […]

DUBLIN DISPATCH. This is the way politics should be. On a visit to Dublin this week, I happened to be in Grogan’s public house at 11 a.m. The occasion — as though one needs an occasion to be in Grogan’s — was a press event to celebrate a month-long tribute by the city to At […]

LESSONS UNLEARNED. To slightly dissent from Ezra‘s take on John Conyers‘s column on impeachment, I don’t really think it’s evidence of significant preemptive punch-pulling on oversight by the Democrats. This proposal for a select bipartisan panel is indeed possibly dubious, but I don’t read it as being intended as the model for all committee investigations […]

NUCLEAR BLUFFING. Dahlia Lithwick‘s ruminations on a possible revival of the nuclear option fight and the dangers this particular method of base-pandering could pose for the GOP are worth reading. Lithwick argues that the Bush administration wouldn’t be able to appease its religious right base even if Senate Republicans pulled the nuclear trigger this fall, […]

HOW TO ARGUE LIKE A CONSERVATIVE. Just as they apparently think it’s out of the question to point out that something said by a foreign baddie is, in fact, correct, conservatives also seem to think that the ex-CEO of Qwest’s status as a corporate crook somehow deals a crippling blow to liberals’ appreciation for his […]

THE FILIBUSTER: GOOD FOR CONSERVATISM. The Hill has an article today about conservative trepidations over exercising the nuclear option and perhaps kickstarting the process of eliminating all filibusters outright. (‘Winger activist Jim Boulet, Jr. has been articulating this warning to fellow conservatives for a while now.) I have my doubts that the nuclear option will […]

THE BUMILLER TREATMENT. Greg makes plenty of good points about Elisabeth Bumiller‘s piece. Even leaving aside the fact that Bush is currently shifting from the rosy pro-immigration stance Bumiller wants to highlight here, I’d add that it’s also pretty remarkable — or, I should say, not remarkable at all — that she can write an […]

DAYS OF OLD. So of course everyone hates this Adam Nagourney Week in Review article quoting “leading Dems” who say the party would be better off not taking over either chamber of Congress in November. Actually, two arguments get made in the piece. The argument based on political gaming — that it’ll be better to […]

THE “IT’S CLASSIFIED!” SHUFFLE. I’m continually amazed by how bad — how unctuous, transparent, and phony — Bill Frist sounds in interviews. Appearing on CNN’s “Late Edition” yesterday, he parried a question from Wolf Blitzer about the NSA data mining operation by first going on at length with detailed positive commentary about the program and […]