Blog: TAPPED

PLANNING AHEAD. It occurs to me that the Bush administration had better get some decent recovery and reconstruction plans into place for San Francisco’s long-awaited massive earthquake. That’s almost 800,000 solid liberals in them there parts, more than enough to vastly accelerate the blueing of the interior west if they’re forced into exodus by a […]

THE WISDOM OF INSECURITY. Now, now, Other Klein, just because you’re already a bundle of authorial anxieties doesn’t obviate my point. Two years ago, you were a columnist at (I think) the highest-circulation newsweekly. Whether each column deadline manifested as an icy ball of terror in the pit of your stomach, the authority and preeminence […]

POSTED ON TAP ONLINE: GRADE INFLATION. Ann explains what’s wrong with the rankings honoring “family-friendly employers” published by the likes of Working Mother magazine. –The Editors

CAN THE AFL-CIO COUNT VOTES, OR WHAT? Speaking to the AFL-CIO’s longtime communications honcho Denise Mitchell on Tuesday, I asked her how many votes she thought the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which was coming up for a vote in the House two days hence, would get. “I dunno,” she said. “How about 241?” This […]

TROUBLESHOOTING. Julie Amero, a teacher at a school in Norwich, Connecticut faces up to 40 years in prison for exposing her students to some pop-up porn. The conventional wisdom about the case is that the exposure was accidental, but parents are quickly looking for someone to blame. In this culture of “protect the children,” parents […]

THE MSB. Justin Fox, ruminating on a blogging panel he recently attended, writes: When it comes to blogging, we magazine people feel like poor little upstart outsiders. Heather asked why no magazine blogs had cracked the Technorati Top 100 of the most linked-to blogs (actually, National Review Online’s The Corner is No. 65, and I’d […]

THE ENEMY WITHIN. For George WIll it includes labor unions. His recent column is an elegant plea on behalf of corporations and against the proposed Employee Free Choice Act which would allow unionization of a firm without the secret ballots currently required. Will believes that unions are pure evil, and by pretending that I knew […]

THE POLITICAL AND THE CULTURAL. To get off the precise subject of whether David Brooks column X is a joke (and I’m not exactly sure what that means, in any case), I’m surprised to see Ross Douthat drawing such a stark distinction between cultural commentary and political writing. So in the example here, Douthat criticizes […]

HOW TO CREATE PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS. Ezra‘s wondering where the next generation of Arthur Schlesingers will come from. Look no further than this paragraph from the Times’ obituary: Mr. Schlesinger spent a year at Peterhouse College of Cambridge University on a fellowship and returned to Harvard, where he had been selected to be one of the […]

GOREWATCH SEES NOTHING. I’ll back Garance on this. I wrote a Gore profile a few months back and have been watching his moves and listening to his circle pretty attentively ever since, and I’d bet against a run too. Some folks are keeping the door ajar and the hope alive — see Brazile, Donna — […]