Blog: TAPPED

CLINTON VERSUS THE SLACKERS. Further efforts by New York’s junior senator to alienate me as she decides that young people these days are just all too lazy. “They don’t know what work is. They think work is a four-letter word.” Who, exactly, does she think is fighting her regret-free war? The legendarily hard-working, nose-to-the-grindstone baby […]

THE DAY AFTER. More interesting than the state of Hillary Clinton‘s marriage is the state of her foreign policy thinking: But on Tuesday, she was also forced to deal with Iraq when two women protesting the war interrupted her speech. The protesters, who yelled, “Stop the war,” were dragged from the room, leaving Clinton to […]

SO NOW IT’S SAFE. Within hours of Ken Lay‘s and Jeff Skilling‘s guilty verdicts coming down, the MSM had begun to form their inane analysis. No less a barometer of conventional wisdom than Newsweek‘s Howard Fineman wrote: If you want a date to mark the beginning of the end of the Bush Era in American […]

THE BENEFITS OF SOFTWARE PIRACY. Via the Technology Liberation Front, a study was released claiming that software piracy “resulted in a loss of $34 billion worldwide in 2005, a $1.6 billion increase over 2004, according to a study commissioned by the Business Software Alliance.” This is moronic. As is typically the case with these industry […]

WALKING IT BACK. I want to retract my instapunditry of Tuesday morning about the New York Times article on Hillary Clinton‘s marriage. I momentarily forgot to put on my political journalist hat and reacted to it as a woman. As a woman, I find it impressive and admirable that she’s been able to preserve her […]

THE ECONOMICS OF SELF-INTEREST. I tend to agree with the consensus in the economics profession in general, and with Alex Tabarrok in particular, in the current immigration debate. But this is a bridge too far for me: “Economists are probably also more open to immigration than the typical member of the public because of their […]

MORE ON PROTEST MUSIC. Fellow haters of Neil Young‘s thuddingly literal-minded and reductive new Bush-bashing album might appreciate this SNL sketch plugging Young’s follow-up record, I Do Not Agree With Many of This Administration’s Policies (Andy Samberg, as Conor Oberst, makes a guest appearance.) I should note that, contrary to the thrust of the spoof, […]

THOSE WHO IGNORE HISTORY ARE DOOMED TO NOT DISCREDIT IT. I’m going to go ahead and disagree with Matt‘s admonition to leave the last 30 years alone when arguing economics. I certainly agree that liberal policies shouldn’t be sold on a platform of “your life sucks,” but certain strains of recurrently ascendant conservative policy-making do […]

THE END OF LEGAL BRIBERY? I have to say, I’m a little concerned with this “end of legal bribery” business. The thing smart people say after some pol goes down in a corruption scandal is that the real scandal is what’s legal — the perfectly ordinary day-to-day business of favor granting, cash-for-access, blah, blah, blah. […]

THE GORE BACKLASH. Only a matter of time until it started in earnest, right? First up is Jonah Goldberg with an attempt to reactivate the Gore-as-exaggerator storyline. Turns out Arianna Huffington, swooning over her new crush at Cannes, reported Gore saying “‘This is my second visit to Cannes. The first was when I was fifteen […]