Blog: TAPPED

K STREET GIVETH… Two amusing K Street-related notes regarding Tom DeLay‘s imminent retirement: First, see Jesse Lee for the latest on lobbyists getting a wee bit testy about DeLay converting the re-election campaign contributions they raised for him into funds for his legal expenses. �If I wanted to give to a legal fund, I would�ve […]

JUST POSTED ON TAP: A MASSACHUSETTS MIRACLE. Robert Kuttner explains how advocates of universal health care should respond to the new legislation out of Massachusetts. Now onto a different matter: Does anyone else miss those desperate pleas for more subscribers? I certainly do. –Alec Oveis

MEANWHILE IN CRAZY LAND. I have no idea what the provenance of the documents Bill Kristol is quoting here is exactly supposed to be, but they definitely don’t show what he seems to think they show. What’s going on here, plainly, is that Saddam Hussein was making plans for irregular warfare, possibly including terrorism, as […]

THE VIRTUES OF OBSTRUCTION. Over e-mail, Midterm Madness contributor Ben Adler has a smart response to my earlier post on Sebastian Mallaby: In addition to Ezra�s sharp fact-check on the A-Pox-on-Both-Their-Houses section of Sebastian Mallaby�s column, it�s worth noting the common, but silly, assumption underlying Mallaby�s analysis. He accuses the congressional Democratic leadership of �hav[ing] […]

SO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. There’s little more annoying in modern punditry than on-the-other-handism, that irksome little quirk that causes professional pundits to sully perfectly sound columns by ending their focused critiques with indiscriminate, incoherent sprays of blame. Today’s example? Sebastian Mallaby, who concisely dismantles the modern GOP’s contempt for governance and then, out of […]

SILVIO, HE GOTTA GO. If these exit polls prove correct, it looks like Romano Prodi�s center-left coalition has defeated Silvio Berlusconi in Italy�s general election. On the one hand, this election could be considered a setback for the xenophobic right to whom Berlusconi pandered in the campaign�s waning days. But as far as I can […]

LIFE DECLINES TO IMITATE ART. Reading the West Wing piece Mike linked to, I stumbled across this tidbit I’d not known: On that score, Mr. Sheen was offered an opportunity to see how his character’s appeal would play in a real-life campaign. Not long ago, he said, he was approached by Democratic Party representatives from […]

THE EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION RACKET. Direct compensation for top CEO’s went up by “only” 16 percent in 2005 after a more robust 41 percent in 2004. By comparison, median wages increased 3.2 percent in 2005 and somewhat less than that in 2004. Obviously, this is due to a dramatic acceleration in CEO productivity, catapulting the value […]

HALFWAY HOME. As I had predicted, Matt Santos won the presidency last night on The West Wing, eking out a surprise win in Nevada. Now the stage is set for the completion of my prediction, the more interesting second part: Santos, in the wake of Leo McGarry�s death, names Arnold Vinick as his national unity […]

TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES. We learn in today’s Washington Post that the military is running a covert propaganda campaign aimed at exaggerating the importance of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in particular and al Qaeda in general in Iraq. In theory this is supposed to be aimed at Iraqis (which is legal), but in practice it seems to […]