Blog: TAPPED

THE (IN)CORRUPTIBILITY OF HARRY REID. On Harry Reid and the case of the comp boxing tickets, this is about as fully a non-story as you can imagine. The lay of the land went something like this: Reid was offering legislation to increase federal regulation of boxing. The Nevada Athletic Agency, concerned the new body would […]

REVOLT OF THE NEOCONS, CON’T. Danielle Pletka and Michael Rubin take Bush to task in the Los Angeles Times today for — fancy that! — not living up to his pro-democracy rhetoric: LAST WEEK, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced resumption of full U.S. diplomatic relations with Libya, citing Tripoli’s renunciation of terrorism and intelligence […]

COINCIDENCE? The gunfire-in-Congress story is obviously still developing but thankfully so far it appears possible that no one (including one aide who was seen being taken out of the Rayburn office building to the hospital) was injured. Subcription-only Roll Call cites a witness reporting that “Capitol Police were told over their radios to look for […]

NEEDED: MORE SPORTS UNION MILITANCY. If you just read Malcolm Gladwell‘s New Yorker review of the new book The Wages of Wins, about the economic analysis of sports, you’ll miss the important American Prospect-y angle. The book clearly indicates that professional sports unions ought to be more militant. It argues that, contrary to what team […]

UNITED NATIONS OFFICIALLY DECLARES IRAN DRESS CODES STORY UNTRUE. OK, you read it right here first: The U.N. has done an investigation and declared the bogus dress codes story to be false. Now can we finally throw the last shovel of dirt on top of this story? —Greg Sargent

WHAT LEAVING MIGHT LOOK LIKE. Lefty stalwart In These Times, which has become increasingly provocative and readable under its dynamic new leadership, is generating controversy in anti-war circles with Chris Toensing‘s new piece, “Why Leaving Iraq Won’t Be Easy.” It’s well worth reading, and the kind of clear-eyed assessment of the complex facts on the […]

CAN’T TAKE THE POLITICS OUT OF WAR. The New Republic is the kind of magazine that can run a series of ridiculous articles on Darfur and then publish this week’s brilliant and devastating critique of the very same articles by David Rieff. It’s a subscriber only piece, so I’m looking for a good excerpt and […]

DID YOU KNOW…? General Motors chairman Rick Wagoner has an op-ed in today’s Los Angeles Times making the case that GM matters, not just as a car company or employer, but as a protector of Americana and a canary in the globalizational coal mine. It’s a strange piece of work, most of all because it […]

STILL LOOKING. The embarrassing search for a new Treasury Secretary continues with today’s news being that Donald Evans is apparently under consideration for the job. Evans was Commerce Secretary in the first term, a job that traditionally goes to a Presidential crony unqualified for a real job. Obviously, they put lots of unqualified cronies in […]

HELP HER HELP YOU. I think Matt sort of misses the point there. Hillary Clinton, realizing that America’s youth are lazy, helped start this war in order to build character. After you’ve jogged around the sands of Mesopotamia with a rations pack on your belt and a rifle on your soldier, being a middle manager […]