Blog: TAPPED

LIBERTARIANS AND DEMS. I rarely disagree with Ezra, but he�s just plain wrong about the libertarians and their significance to a potential future Democratic majority. I talk about their potential in my book, and would also recommend libertarian Ryan Sager�s Elephant in the Room, in which he drills down further on the problem Republicans are […]

“FEMINISTS” AGAINST WOMEN. Admittedly, when it comes to illogic on the part of supporters of criminalized abortion, the rape and incest exemptions are relatively small potatoes. What really gives away the show is their unwillingness to apply criminal sanctions against women who are allegedly committing something akin to murder. Hack politicians, of course, respond to […]

LIBERTARIAN SWINGERS. Via Andrew Sullivan comes this bit from Cato’s new report on the next big swing group: “Libertarians preferred George W. Bush over Al Gore by 72 percent to 20 percent, but Bush�s margin dropped in 2004 to 59-38 over John Kerry…The political party that comes to terms with than can win the next […]

“I’M WITH FUZZY.” Great things are happening in my onetime adopted home state of Wisconsin. First of all, there was Russ Feingold with the new Air America Morning Zoo crew this morning, talking about how the Democratic senatorial caucus talks big in public, and then folds in private, usually on the advice of consultants “with […]

JUST POSTED ON TAP ONLINE: CENTER-LEFT FOREIGN POLICY RUMBLE. In the October print issue of the Prospect, James Lindsay reviewed two new books purporting to offer alternative foreign policy visions to both neoconservatism and “liberal hawk” interventionism — Michael Lind‘s The American Way of Strategy and Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman‘s Ethical Realism. Today, the […]

HUH. Word on the street is that Mark Warner will make a surprise announcement at 11am ruling out a presidential run. Stay tuned… — Ezra Klein

EXPORTING AMERICAN VALUES. Today in Baghdad, according to the Associated Press, gunmen stormed a Sunni television station and killed 11 people. “It was the second attack on a television station in the capital in as many weeks,” reports AP writer David Rising. No need here for some sardonic, smart-ass comment about the success of Iraq’s […]

YOUTUBE THROUGH THE AGES. There’s an interesting piece by Sam Howe Verhovek in today’s L.A. Times about trackers, those (typically young) campaign staffers tasked with carrying audio or audio-visual equipment to their opponents’ public events and taping their every utterance. Their goal is simple: Trail after opponents in hopes of catching them saying something contradictory, […]

AMERICAN POWER. Responding to a relatively unobjectionable Tom Friedman column calling for “Russia and China [to] get over their ambivalence about U.S. power”, Matt notes that “ambivalence about U.S. power is a natural thing for Russia and China to feel.” More than that, particularly for China, concern over US power is a natural way to […]

LIBERTY SUNDAY. The crazy train is coming to town! I’d like to thank Governor Willard-Mitt Romney (R-Chameleon) for inviting these fine folks to gather right in the heart of that part of town where secular American democracy was birthed, especially now that his national party is attempting to put out a sexual bonfire at least […]