Sam Rosenfeld

STILL DOING NOTHIN’. Faux lobbying reform bogs down in the House. The total collapse of the Republicans’ legislative capacity is quite remarkable. John Boehner really needs to trot out some of those awesome Famous People quotes he included in his goofball “For a Majority that Matters” manifesto and get his caucus in line. Perhaps Walt […]

THE DEATH OF MULTICULTURALISM. Ensconced in TimesSelect’s fortress, David Brooks weighs in today on Mike‘s essay. Brooks sees Tomasky’s call for supplanting rights-based liberalism with a new(-old) common good liberalism as reflective of a sea change among Democrats and activists — “over the past few years,” he writes, “multiculturalism has faded away” as a pillar […]

THE SUNLIGHT FOUNDATION AND CONGRESSPEDIA. Today Jeff Birnbaum reports on the activities of the interesting new Sunlight Foundation, financed by securities bigwig Michael Klein and headed up by goo-goo veteran Ellen Miller. I was briefed on some of Sunlight’s activities a few weeks ago; certainly one of their most compelling visions, looking forward, would be […]

DO-NOTHIN’. The collapse of the Republicans’ once-formidable legislative machine in Congress is fairly bracing to behold. While immigration reform remains bogged down, intra-GOP squabbling over earmarking and appropriations are hampering the prospects for passing a budget resolution, an emergency supplemental bill, and lobbying reform. The fight over the emergency Iraq supplemental is amusing: the President’s […]

THE TROUBLE WITH JAY. Regarding Greg‘s apt calling-out of Jay Rockefeller for once again indulging Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts‘ partisan shell games, it’s worth revisiting Laura Rozen‘s reported piece on the Rockefeller-Roberts dynamic from our November issue. Rozen paints a complicated picture of both the real constraints Rockefeller faces and the ways in which […]

WHO TO BELIEVE? I read with interest today’s Washington Post report on the growing (if still limited) presence of Shiite militias — Moqtada al-Sadr‘s Mahdi Army, SCIRI’s Badr Brigade — in the oil-rich northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. With Kurdish forces digging in and insisting on solidifying Kurdish control of the city, the potential for […]

KEEP THE SUNLIGHT OUT. House Republicans’ latest bout of watering down the already-anemic lobbying ethics bill is genuinely funny. As subscription-only Roll Call reports, “Republican leaders have stripped out language forcing lobbyists to provide detailed disclosure of fundraising activities and contacts with lawmakers.” What’s funny here is that the standard, baseline position of all anti-reformers […]

HOLY IMPATIENCE. Yesterday, we buried Reverend William Sloane Coffin, Jr. One year ago, I read his biography, Holy Impatience, and it gave me what I haven�t gotten from the left in my lifetime — in the words of Johnny Cash, �gravel in your gut and spit in your eye.� Rev. Coffin challenged those who misused […]

WHEN LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANTS GO BAD. Representative Jo Ann Emerson experiments with a bolder, “straight-talk” approach to constituent correspondence. (Thanks to reader S.M..) –Sam Rosenfeld

THE POLARIZATION PROBLEM. Washington Post reporter Juliet Eilperin‘s new book Fight Club Politics: How Partisanship is Poisoning the House of Representatives is the subject of TPMCafe’s book club this week. The thesis is pretty much there in the title. Looking at the book itself and the first round of comments yesterday, from Mark Schmitt and […]