Blog: TAPPED

WHEN LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANTS GO BAD. Representative Jo Ann Emerson experiments with a bolder, “straight-talk” approach to constituent correspondence. (Thanks to reader S.M..) –Sam Rosenfeld

MAYBE WE NEED A DRAFT. Props to TNR‘s editors for calling bullshit on “The Mommy Wars.” Whatever pitched warfare is raging between mothers who choose to stay home and raise their children and those who decide to work is a minor skirmish, important only because it distracts attention from the real fight — the one […]

ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE ON MCCAIN. Daniel McKivergan offers his view on the John McCain issue: Since Jonathan Chait and others have turned their focus to Sen. McCain the last few days I’d like to add one point — for now at least — going back to 2001. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I was his […]

TENN DOESN’T CARE. It can rarely be said enough, but Tennessee governor and occasional media darling Phil Bredesen is a pretty loathsome sort of Democrat. Having dismantled and tossed 225,000 people off of TennCare — which provided serious health insurance for the poor, sick, and young — he’s replacing the laudable progam with a cheap […]

THE GLOBALIZATION OF ICK. After my own mind was blown by this “reproductive tourism” business, I got down to some serious thinking. The main engine of globalization is exploiting gaps between average productivity in a given nation (which drives its wage rates) and industry-specific productivity, which drives the potential for employer profits. Countries like India […]

THE PROBLEM WITH HILLARY. She has done precious little to convince me that Timothy Garton Ash�s nightmare vision isn’t, in fact, rather plausible. —Mark Leon Goldberg

THE SHIFTING BUSH C.W. Peggy Noonan has a very interesting column up on The Wall Street Journal website offering her take on George W. Bush‘s approach to the presidency. It’s interesting, primarily, because it’s exactly the sort of thing you heard all the time from liberals about two or three years ago — Bush doesn’t […]

GLOBALIZING THE WOMB. Thanks to an eye-opening Los Angeles Times article yesterday, you can add “reproductive tourism” to the list of words you never thought you’d hear yoked together. It’s not just call centers going to India — now American couples are apparently turning to Indian women to act as surrogate mothers, and at a […]

JUST POSTED ON TAP: DON�T DO IT. Matt makes the case against war with Iran. –The Editors

THE POLARIZATION PROBLEM. Washington Post reporter Juliet Eilperin‘s new book Fight Club Politics: How Partisanship is Poisoning the House of Representatives is the subject of TPMCafe’s book club this week. The thesis is pretty much there in the title. Looking at the book itself and the first round of comments yesterday, from Mark Schmitt and […]