Blog: TAPPED

OH DEAR. Via FishbowlDC comes this extremely disturbing news that patterns of calls from and to reporters have received special attention. Reprinted (almost) in full: A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources. “It’s time for you […]

THE POLITICAL IMPORTANCE OF PLACING THE NSA SCANDAL IN A WIDER CONTEXT. We need to look at the latest NSA scandal not in isolation, but as part of a much larger pattern of presidential lawlessness — a view Matt has rightly insisted upon — and now we have some proof that this way of seeing […]

NEGROPONTE LIED, PEOPLE SPIED. Dan Eggen at The Washington Post notes that as recently as a year ago Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte was assuring people that the NSA was “absolutely not” monitoring domestic calls which, of course, it was. What’s more, he actually said this in congressional testimony which used to be considered […]

THE DEMAGOGUE SHUFFLE. Bush‘s new plan to deploy the National Guard to the border is a bit pathetic. Here’s a guy who has never showed an ounce of interest in border enforcement, who’s been laudably pro-immigrant throughout his administration, and who loves to declare that he doesn’t follow the polls. So, now that his numbers […]

THE “IT’S CLASSIFIED!” SHUFFLE. I’m continually amazed by how bad — how unctuous, transparent, and phony — Bill Frist sounds in interviews. Appearing on CNN’s “Late Edition” yesterday, he parried a question from Wolf Blitzer about the NSA data mining operation by first going on at length with detailed positive commentary about the program and […]

WHEN IN DOUBT, LIE. In Laura Bush�s interview yesterday with Fox News, in which she blamed the media for her husband’s abysmal poll numbers, the first lady said this: And I think right now what we’re seeing with these poll numbers is a lot of fun in the press with taking a poll every other […]

WITH GREAT HUBRIS COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY. Cliff May makes a common conservative joke about the Bush administration getting blamed for problems that have no apparent connection to anything it’s done, in this particular instance riots in Sao Paulo. The thing of it is that this mindset — holding the United States partly responsible for everything […]

THE UNCONCERNED AMERICAN. Most Supreme and Enlightened Overlord Mike wonders if the NSA program’s weirdly high poll numbers point to a populace “still very, very scared of another terrorist attack,” and willing to do, or sacrifice, just about anything to stop it. I’d go in the opposite direction: This seems to me a populace not […]

PUNCH HARDER, DON’T RUN. Obviously, the public’s initial response to the latest from the NSA hasn’t been the outrage I would have hoped for, but nonetheless I think Democrats desperately need to ignore this implicit advice from Mark Blumenthal: MP makes no predictions, but Bush can only stand to gain if the public’s attention shifts […]

THE WASHINGTON POST‘S POLL IS FLAWED. Let me get the fun part out of the way first. Here’s an answer to Matt‘s question about the identity of Specialist (whose criticism, which has on occasion targeted yours truly, is indeed valuable and well-argued sometimes). “Specialist” is the code name for a secret team of a dozen […]