Blog: TAPPED

Richard Florida has a post in The Atlantic that sees the number of people who self-identify as conservative state by state as evidence that “America is an increasingly conservative nation, by ideology and by political affiliation.” Let’s leave aside the obvious point that Americans telling us they are “conservative” is essentially meaningless in terms of […]

As data from the census rolls out, fantastic visualizations are popping up all over. But all that eye candy is necessarily missing a layer of detail: Even though this year census officials tried harder than ever to reach hard-to-count immigrant and students communities, many of those people still aren’t accounted for in the official statistics. […]

Matt Yglesias thinks that the right’s ridiculous rhetoric on Obama will have a real effect on policy. Jamelle Bouie writes that while some workplaces are far more racially diverse than they were decades ago, striking disparities still exist.

As reports come in that CIA operatives are aiding Libyan rebels and Western leaders are considering arming them, the question of who Libya’s revolutionary force actually is — is worth answering. Juan Cole at Informed Comment makes the argument that the fears that the Libyan rebels are either al-Qaeda members, Hezbollah members, or other revolutionary […]

When I first joined NBC in 2005, I had a dream of going to Iraq and becoming a rising star. It was a formula that had made many other journalists before me leading commentators on world events including Richard Engel and Lara Logan. At that time, young journalists had flocked to the country and were […]

Late last night, long after normal business hours, the New Hampshire House became the latest state government to pass legislation balancing the budget on the backs of the poor and vulnerable. The most contentious part of the legislation gets rid of negotiation rights for the state’s 70,000 public employees if their contracts expire before a […]

Rebecca Solnit writes at Yes! Magazine about how racial stereotypes affect perceptions about people’s behavior in the wake of a disaster: After both Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the word “looting” was used to justify shooting people down in the streets—the death penalty, that is, without benefit of […]

(Flickr/FotoosVanRobin). This, apparently, is not an April Fools Joke, because the letter below was written on March 29, and we’re talking about People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a group with noble goals but not much in the way of a sense of humor. The Tenderloin district of downtown San Francisco is notorious for […]

(Flickr/katerkate) Yesterday, Politico had a story whose headline read, “Tea Party Finds Success Blocking Reform.” The story told about how in many states with Republican governors and legislators, conservatives are undermining the Affordable Care Act, “blocking the law’s implementation” by refusing to get started establishing the exchanges through which people without employer health insurance will […]

New York magazine’s Daily Intel blog has a snarky response to The New York Times story on how Democrats in Arizona are waiting to see whether Rep. Gabrielle Giffords — you know, the congresswoman who’s still recovering from being shot in the head — will run for Senate. This, according to the Times, has put […]