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 […]
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THE CHICANO DIFFERENCE?…
THE CHICANO DIFFERENCE? David Frum tags me with glossing over some wage data in regard to the assimilation debate. He doesn’t challenge the point about language use, so I’ll take it that he’s conceding this point to me. Frum observes that intergenerational Latino-Anglo wage convergence has slowed markedly since 1980 or so, which seems to […]
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Great Moments in Cross-Examination
Via Steve Benen, Barney Frank’s interrogation of John Snow was a work of art. Remember here that Snow is nothing less than the administration’s Treasury Secretary, and he was at a prescheduled Hill briefing meant to tout the administration’s 12 best economic months yet: “Mr. Secretary,” Frank said, “I agree with much of your statement, […]
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Depopulate New Orleans!
I just don’t understand these sorts of laments. Here’s Art Levine, weeping copiously over the changing face of New Orleans: Following last Tuesday night’s contentious debate between incumbent Mayor Ray Nagin and white challenger Mitch Landrieu, today’s yesterday’s Washington Post has had a disturbing story about the changing face of New Orleans: whiter, richer and […]
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THE CONYERS PLAN….
THE CONYERS PLAN. Obviously stung by Republican accusations that he’s just achin’ to impeach, Rep. John Conyers, potential chair of the Judiciary Committee in a Democratic House, wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post laying out the Conyers Plan for his committee. Impeachment, at least in the short-term, isn’t on the agenda. Nor are partisan […]
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GORE WATCH. …
GORE WATCH. Looks like Al‘s well on his way to netting the all-important Arianna endorsement. She checked out his new film and left the theater rather impressed. “Whether Al Gore ends up running in 2008 or not,” she writes, “he is modeling the way our public figures, and especially our would-be presidents, should be operating […]
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THE RACE CARD….
THE RACE CARD. It’s worth linking to some recent Media Matters items on Bill O’Reilly and John Gibson who, rather than adopting the Robert Samuelson bad statistics approach to immigration restrictionism, have left the racism pretty close to the surface of their thinking about the issue. And, one has to concede that O�Reilly and Gibson […]
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NUCLEAR BLUFFING. Dahlia…
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, […]
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Suddenly, Mr. Centrist
George W. Bush took to the airwaves Monday night to occupy terrain he had previously shunned: the center. The President claimed what he termed “a rational middle ground” between two supercharged social movements, between the nativist and business wings of his own party, between House Republicans from safe right-wing districts and Senate Republicans understandably nervous […]
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A MODEST PROPOSAL….
A MODEST PROPOSAL. The new issue of Blueprint, the bimonthly journal of the Democratic Leadership Council, which went up online today, features an article by Tony Blair entitled �Fighting for Values,� which is part of the magazine�s cover package on �Defeating Jihadism.� The piece is a resounding defense of civilization and globalization, a scathing attack […]