Blog: TAPPED

In what seemed to be a GOP-led rush to capitalize on the NPR-James O’Keefe fiasco, today the House voted to block federal funds from going to National Public Radio. Sponsored by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO), the measure passed the House in a 228-195 vote which fell fairly clearly in a partisan fashion — all Democrats […]

Kevin Drum responds to my assertion that “hating liberals was always important to conservatives, but of late, it has become the central organizing principle of American conservatism.”: I’ve never bought this. Conservatives have opposed public broadcasting pretty much forever, right? As for climate change denialism and opposition to net neutrality, they basically belong in the […]

To enter the debate between my colleagues Lindsay and Paul, I think it’s important to distinguish between the content of the program itself and certain characterizations of its objectives. I think that we all agree that increasing physical activity and healthy diets are good things, for people of all ages and body types. For this […]

The Drug Enforcement Agency seized Georgia’s sketchy stash of sodium thiopental, an essential ingredient in the state’s lethal injection cocktail. Thirty-five states use the drug for lethal injections. The feds suspect that the state was buying the fast-acting barbiturate illegally overseas. Records show that the Georgia Department of Corrections was buying from Dream Pharma, a […]

The New Republic has published an entertainingly savage review of the memoirs of Donald Rumsfeld, whom the reviewer calls “one of the two worst secretaries of defense ever”: The book is certainly revealing, but mainly in ways that are unintentional and unflattering. It does help to answer the riddle of how someone who seemed so […]

Paul Campos of Lawyers, Guns and Money argues that Michelle Obama’s initiative to prevent childhood obesity by encouraging all children to eat well and exercise is an exercise in fat-shaming and fat eliminationism. Campos claims that Obama’s Let’s Move! program is a form of anti-fat bigotry that is on par with those odious “ex-gay” programs […]

(Flickr/svacher) Remember when George W. Bush told us that hydrogen cars were coming? In his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush announced a major new initiative to research and develop the technology and bring us to our green automotive future. So what happened? Well, there were always problems, the biggest of which is probably […]

For the record, despite my ambivalence toward supermajority requirements for legislation, I have no problem with this liberal push to require a two-thirds majority for cuts to Social Security. Insofar that we have a long-term debt problem, Social Security has little to do with it, and proposed cuts have more to do with furthering the […]

Last November, Republicans gained control of the Minnesota Legislature for the first time in over 30 years. Thanks to the new majority, they are now considering no less than eight bills to restrict access to abortion. Yesterday, a house committee considered Bill 649 to ban abortion at 20 weeks due to a fetus’ unproven ability […]

It took the resignation of State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley on Sunday before mainstream media outlets began giving serious attention to the condition of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the 23-year-old who has been imprisoned for nearly a year on the suspicion of having passed classified information to WikiLeaks. Spencer Ackerman pointed out the total absurdity in […]