Blog: TAPPED

WASHINGTON POST PUBLISHES AN OPINION PIECE BY AN OPERATIVE FOR RIGHT-WING HATE GROUPS. Did anyone else notice this? Over the weekend, Fred Hiatt and other Washington Post editors allowed their paper to be used as a platform for an “opinion” piece written by a GOP operative who gets paid to help right-wing hate groups spread […]

KEEP THE SUNLIGHT OUT. House Republicans’ latest bout of watering down the already-anemic lobbying ethics bill is genuinely funny. As subscription-only Roll Call reports, “Republican leaders have stripped out language forcing lobbyists to provide detailed disclosure of fundraising activities and contacts with lawmakers.” What’s funny here is that the standard, baseline position of all anti-reformers […]

JUST POSTED ON TAP: THE POLITICS OF DEFINITION, PART II. John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira discuss progressive weaknesses in the latest installment of our series on closing the �identity gap.� –The Editors

BUSH LIED, THOUSANDS DIED. It’s almost banal to keep harping on the lying point, but this 60 Minutes story about pre-war intelligence really deserves blockbuster status. Tyler Drumheller was the CIA’s top covert man in Europe. He turned Naji Sabri, Iraq’s Foreign Minister, and got him working as a CIA asset. Drumheller told George Tenet […]

MONEY, MEET MOUTH. It doesn’t involve invading anyone, or kicking any ass that’s evolved beyond the microbe stage, but if we could spur the pharmaceutical companies or the NIH to put a bit of money into the anti-HIV microbicides currently nearing breakthrough status, we’d save a lot of lives. As Kate Steadman points out, the […]

LISTEN TO ZBIG. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who people should have listened to before the Iraq War, had a great column on Iran in yesterday’s LA Times. Brzezinski was one of a relatively small minority of recognized Democratic Party foreign policy experts who opposed the Iraq War in a clear and forceful manner, and I can’t help […]

A DARFUR JIHAD? As a rule, when Osama bin Laden speaks, it is best that we listen. Back in October 2003, Bin laden called for attacks on specific European countries supplying troops for the American lead coalition in Iraq, including Great Britain, Italy, and Spain. Since then, radicals have attacked Italian barracks in Iraq, killing […]

WHAT GUARANTEE? Now this is weird. The Wall Street Journal published an editorial blasting Mitt Romney‘s health care plan for sidestepping the big problems, namely “Guaranteed Issue,” a Massachusetts law that forces insurers to offer coverage to everyone, even — get this! — the sick. The Journal rightly notes that this creates some strange incentives, […]

DEMOCRAT V. DEMOCRAT. Last week, I mused over the difference between the Democratic Party’s internal disagreements — which are broadcast at maximum volume, countless times — and the Republican Party’s internal rifts, which go basically ignored. That, I suggested, and not any substantive incoherence or lack of focus, explained why Americans think Democrats don’t stand […]

SECRETS AND LIES. Mark Kleiman has a great rundown of the hawkosphere’s lunacy on Mary McCarthy spilling the beans on the secret illegal torture prisons business. Less crazed figures on the right are mostly restricting themselves to throwing around hypocrisy charges. But, of course, if you think that leaking classified information in order to expose […]