Blog: TAPPED

THE PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW! Why hasn’t a correction been added to this column, as Jonah Goldberg promised? UPDATE: And here it is. –Sam Rosenfeld

EVEN LIEBERMAN WAS HINKY ON HENKE. Here’s Tracy Henke‘s official bio, with a picture that should live in infamy. Her recess appointment to DHS was controversial and opposed by Joe Lieberman, who sits on the Senate’s Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee and issued this statement on January 5, 2006: I am deeply disturbed by […]

HENKE DHS CONTROVERSY NOT A FIRST. Tracy Henke‘s tenure at DHS has been rocky from the start. According to a Maryland paper: Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley Friday criticized Department of Homeland Security officials for inefficiently allocating grant money and failing to establish tangible priorities. O’Malley was presiding over a homeland security task force meeting of […]

BUSH APPOINTEE LOCATED. Well, that was easy. Who was the idiot who had to sign off on the “traitorous” decision to defund anti-terrorism efforts in New York and Washington? Says The Washington Post: Tracy A. Henke, assistant secretary for grants and training, told reporters that the new funding distribution was the result of a better […]

OUR TWILIGHT ZONE GOVERNMENT. Via Atrios, I see that ABC News is reporting that the Department of Homeland Security’s explanation for cutting anti-terrorism funds to New York is that “New York has no national monuments or icons.” Really? You can see the DHS form that asserts this here (PDF). Says ABC: That was a key […]

YOU’LL NEVER TAKE OMAHA! Being a D.C. resident, this isn’t the best news I’ve heard all day. As Garance and Ben have noted, the Department of Homeland Security has apparently decided that D.C. and New York are plenty safe — and has chopped their grants by 40 percent. Meanwhile, terrorist targets such as Charlotte, North […]

FOREIGN AID AND JIHAD. I really, really think we ought to boost foreign aid, but I’m uncomfortable with this sort of analogy: Truman also believed that spreading democracy required combating economic despair. He allocated between 2.5 and 5 percent of U.S. national income over four years to the Marshall Plan, in the belief that unless […]

LOSING THE NEW YORK POST. I didn’t pay much attention to electoral politics or polls way back in 1991-92, but the day The New York Post ran the headline “10 Million Americans Out of Work/George May Be Next,” (as I recall — I’ve got the original somewhere in New York) I knew that George H.W. […]

WEISBERG’S FAULTY LOGIC. Jacob Weisberg‘s new piece on Al Gore in Slate is simultaneously terrific and infuriating. On the one hand, he makes some of the same criticisms I made about the movie (its irritating excessive focus on Gore’s personal journey and its refusal to discuss how and why the Clinton administration didn’t do more […]

JUNE 6TH. Popular discussions of the midterm elections this year have until now tended to be fairly broad-brush and generalized, but in fact some key dates where actual specific and consequential decisions will be made are coming right up. June 6th is going to be a big day for crucial primaries and special elections in […]