If Caroline Kennedy isn’t appointed to New York’s open U.S. Senate seat, will she run in 2010? Which is to say, does she want to be a Senator because she feels passionately that she is the best person to represent New Yorkers, or because it seems like it will be really easy for her to […]
Tim Fernholz
Tim Fernholz is a former staff writer for the Prospect. His work has been published by Newsweek, The New Republic, The Nation, The Guardian, and The Daily Beast. He is also a Research Fellow at the New America Foundation.
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YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG, LINKER.
Writer Damon Linker has a new a blog, and just in time to weigh in on this whole Rick Warren situation. His first argument doesn’t surprise — Warren is outreach to evangelicals, the price you pay for politics, etc. But his second comment on the subject just misses the point. Archly, Linker tell us that […]
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The Great Persuader
Obama’s recently announced HUD secretary, Shaun Donovan, has an impressive record of bringing stakeholders together to create affordable housing, but can he reform HUD’s moribund bureaucracy?
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BLAIR’S INDONESIAN ADVENTURES.
Speculation has died down a bit, but it appears that Admiral Dennis C. Blair is still under consideration for a high-level intelligence post in the Obama administration, likely director of national intelligence. He’s an interesting character who is considered smart about the possibility of engagement, not conflict, with countries like China, and he has made […]
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THE BIG, SCARY UAW.
Our own Harold Meyerson has a particularly insightful column in the Post today about the United Autoworkers. There’s a lot of good history there, but the contemporary relevance comes from these notes about bailout objectors who go after the union for “killing” the deal: Over the past several weeks, it has become clear that the […]
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FIGHTING FORECLOSURE.
In a rare case of everyone being right, today current HUD Secretary (since June) Steve Preston said Congress wrote inflexible rules for helping refinance unworkable mortgages, and Barney Frank blamed the Bush administration for forcing Congress to write unworkable rules. As one person in The Washington Post story notes, this is because the middle ground […]
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THINK TANK ROUND-UP: TRAIN FACT HARD-LINER EDITION
This week, it’s Islamist politics, immigrant labor dynamics, anti-terror strategy and straight facts about trains. It’s also time to say thanks and goodbye to the loyal interns who have worked on TTR all fall — Zeesham Aleem, Stuart Whatley, David Heller, and Carrie Petri. Also a special cameo by former TAP intern Daniel Strauss, who’s […]
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IT’S LIKE A TRIP BACK IN TIME.
Regarding Politico’s Lincoln obsession and its chief enabler, Sean Wilentz, a correspondent sends this quote, found in newspaper coverage of the 1860 primary… “Americans will never elect a one-term congressman from Illinois who was in bed with the railroad companies and ran down his country during its war to spread the blessings of democracy in […]
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THE IMPORTANCE OF SYMBOLISM.
Every night, reporters go to bed with “guidance” from the Obama-Biden team ringing in their inboxes. On today’s sched: [T]he President-elect will hold a meeting with key members of his economic team. Attendees will include: Vice President-elect Biden, Secretary of Treasury designee Timothy Geithner, National Economic Council Director designee Lawrence Summers, Office of Management and […]
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INTERESTING READING.
The Senate Judiciary committee has posted Eric Holder‘s nomination questionnaire on their website. A quick perusal reveals little in the way of detail but rather a broad survey of Holder’s legal career, from his prosecution of a corrupt cop who sold confiscated drugs to drug dealers to his corporate work at Covington and Burling. One […]
