Blog: TAPPED

LIVE FROM THE DNC…. I’m at the DNC Winter Meeting today, sitting in an underlit conference room with spotty internet, flickering jumbotrons, hundreds of DNC delegates, and every presidential candidate who could squeeze onto the schedule. Here, on the first day, Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Dodd, Clark, and Kucinich will speak, though not necessarily in that […]

ANTI-WAR, OR ANTI-THIS-WAR? From Time’s interview with the HRC (yeah you know me!): TIME: But there does seem to be a strain of Democrats who just want you to say the three words: I was wrong. CLINTON: Well, I’ve said over and over again, knowing what I know now, I would never have voted for […]

GETTING HOT IN HERE. Don�t tell James Inhofe, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just issued its much-anticipated report on global warming. The 20 pages of policy recommendations contained therein are sure to be ignored by the flat-earth devotee, who earlier this week pre-emptively criticized the report’s underlying science in an interview with CNN’s […]

�COOK�ING THE BOOKS. I have gobs of respect for Charlie Cook, one of this nation�s best electoral analysts and an incorruptibly decent, always-accessible person. So it almost pains me to disagree with his recent column for the National Journal, in which he sees the electoral map loosening up in 2012 2008 [sorry for the error]. […]

MANNING — IT FIGURES. I knew I wasn�t crazy about Peyton Manning. To me, he�s a great 1980s quarterback — a classic pocket passer with zero mobility who, if he has to run, looks like he�s carrying a beach chair on his back. He�s been very lucky to have a great offensive line that minimizes […]

GREAT PIECE ALERT. Check out this terrific Guardian scoop on AEI offering scientists $10,000 to produce studies refuting the UN global warming report. AEI has received, the article also notes (while not specifying a time period), $1.6 million from Exxon-Mobil. This, on the same day the Times reports that Exxon reported record profits again — […]

AMONG THE GODDESSES. I appeared on bloggingheads.tv Tuesday with Ann Althouse, and while we had a lot to disagree about, we were mostly in accord in our criticism of TAP contributor Linda Hirshman‘s op-ed in the Sunday Washington Post on women, voting and Senator Clinton. Hirshman responded on her blog, accusing both us of reading […]

HIT ME WITH YOUR BEST SHOT. What great timing! The same day my column calling for universal HPV vaccination is published, World Net Daily brings the crazy with this column from Jill Stanek (of “abortion providers eat fetuses!” fame). She writes, There is only one good reason a virtuous young woman should consider getting the […]

ATM POLITICS. I’ve refrained from commenting on the Yglesias-Clark-Goldberg fracas, because I generally believe that people have a right to be offended by awkward, historically resonant phrases if they want to be (see: Biden, Joe and “clean”); that people like to make a very big deal out of candidate gaffes (see: Allen, George and “macaca”) […]

LIBBY’S STORY. Things may be heating up a bit in the Libby trial. The prosecution is moving from testimony of witnesses who spoke with Scooter Libby about Valerie Plame in the weeks and days leading up to Libby’s conversation on July 10, 2003, with Tim Russert (which Libby claimed under oath was his source of […]