Blog: TAPPED

PARTY OF DEATH REVIEWS. About a week and a half ago, I noted conservative whining that liberals weren’t reviewing Ramesh Ponnuru‘s The Party of Death and promised that if the publisher or author of the book would take the simple challenge of sending me a review copy I’d gladly step up to the plate. So […]

EDGING TOWARD A POSITION. One of the most curious political strategies I’ve seen in some time has been Mark Warner‘s apparent belief that he can run for president without taking a position on the Iraq War. Today, though, he starts edging toward one: Mr. Warner spoke empathetically of his potential rivals who as senators voted […]

IT SHOULDN’T BE A CHOICE. Far be it for me to disagree with Enlightened Being and Creator of Fire Mike Tomasky, but his post on the Department of Homeland Security’s funding allocations seems a bit wrongheaded. His point is that the cuts in cash for New York and Washington may well make sense — who […]

WHERE THE RISK’S AT. The inimitable Dana Milbank throws up a terrific headline — “Flash: DHS Disputes Al-Qaeda’s 5-Star Rating of Two U.S. Cities” — on his way to discussing how much different cities are at risk of terrorist attack: The new DHS plan is advertised as a “risk-based” model, but it came up with […]

TERRORISTS: WHAT’S THE DEAL? I agree with Mike — if I were a terrorism consultant or what have you, I’d tell my loyal jihadis to forget all about New York. To forget about monuments, for that matter. Probably even to forget about bombs. I would just try and organize as many attacks as possible, no […]

WE USED TO BE FRIENDS. “They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion,” according to Iraq’s new Prime Minister, “This is completely unacceptable.” The crushing and killing just on suspicion are, he says, being done by the American military. And based on recent reports, there’s obviously some truth to this perspective. […]

IF I WERE A TERRORIST� I’m a former New Yorker (and one who watched the first tower collapse in person, not on TV) and a present Washingtonian. So I ought to be as lathered up as the next guy about this terror-funding thing. But what if DHS is…right? I have sometimes thought, �If I were […]

THE 71,000 SEPT. 11 SURVIVORS & THEIR STUDY. The same days as news hits that New York’s homeland security budget is being reduced by 40 percent, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene announces the next phase of their study of the long-term health of the more than 71,000 survivors of the […]

BUT HOW MANY TOILETS ARE THERE? New York City most certainly does contain monuments and icons — especially if, as I’m given to understand, Jacksonville’s Alltel Stadium counts as one — but it may suffer from a more serious threat: toilets. Your fact of the day, courtesy of John Mueller is this: “Outside of 2001, […]

TAXES ARE HARD. Some attention has already been paid to this hackish op-ed expounding on the conservative virtues of the Alternative Minimum Tax. It is, the author writes, the quickest way of taking the country to a flat tax, which should be the preferred conservative solution. How weird then that conservatives are all clamoring for […]