Blog: TAPPED

INTRIGUING NEWS If you have any interest in the Scooter Libby trial, or in the past and future of the Vice President, you’ll want to check out this piece from Murray Waas, who has consistently done the best reporting on the CIA leak case. –Jeff Lomonaco

UNIONBUSTING IN OP-ED FORM. Kevin already did important yeoman’s work pointing out some of the simple factual inaccuracies riddling Russell Roberts‘ anti-union screed, but it’s worth noting what a conceptual mess the article is. Roberts writes, “When more than 90% of the private-sector labor force isn’t unionized, why do 97% of us earn above the […]

JUST POSTED ON TAP ONLINE: THE TRADE QUAGMIRE. Robert Kuttner tells us about the coming four-way collision over trade policy. –The Editors

FORWARD-LOOKING INSURERS? Tyler Cowen‘s argument against Medicare-For-All is really quite strange. He writes that “Private insurance has been covering prescription drugs for — what — about twenty-five years?…So when it comes to the one thing that really works, government insurance was twenty or more years behind private insurance.” Let’s argue this in a numbered, Cowen-esque […]

JOHN MCCAIN’S CONSISTENT OPPOSITION TO REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM. Given the news that John McCain has forcefully denounced Roe v. Wade, the understandable liberal reaction is to point out the inconsistency of this legendary Straight Talker (TM). And I agree, in general, that the media myths about McCain’s increasingly risible claims to independence need debunking. Given the […]

WE ARE THE DEADLY WARRIORS. David Brooks’s recent column (behind a firewall but I summarize it here sufficiently, I hope) on how the conservatives are correct about human nature is hilarious. In short, he argues that we humans (though I think he really means male humans) are malevolent brutes, intent on status competition and clubbing […]

AN UNREASONABLE ARGUMENT: So I saw “An Unreasonable Man,” the documentary on Ralph Nader that is coming out this week. From the previews I was expecting a sharply produced even-handed examination of Nader and his legacy. What I got instead was a kitschy piece of propaganda. The film, which was filled with unintentionally comical images […]

Clinton and Executive Power — Enough, Already! The Times’ man on the Clinton beat, Patrick Healy, has an interesting story this morning on Senator Clinton’s new approach to the question of whether she should apologize for her 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq War, and the fight within Hillaryland on the subject. Apparently the winning […]

WHITE HISTORY MONTH?: I think Gary Younge is really onto something in his column in this week’s Nation. Writing about how February is Black History Month, he arges that there is a crucial component missing: examination of who the pepetrators of racism themselves have been. For instance, there is much discussion of Rosa Parks and […]

A BLAST FROM THE PAST. One of the many list-servs I’m on is the Women, Action, & the Media list run by The Center for New Words in Boston. In the context of a broader discussion about women’s worries about being seen as too pushy, I remarked that virtually every powerful woman in Washington about […]