Blog: TAPPED

So far, the response to the debt-ceiling deal announced last night has been as asymmetrical as its contents; the right has been mum, with few Republicans coming out to condemn or praise the agreement. The left, on the other hand, is apoplectic. That’s because the deal – which slashes spending by $1 trillion over the […]

We’ll be talking more about the debt deal later, but something else in the meantime: Ezra Klein points out that a year and a half from now, there will be a looming deadline in which Democrats, if you can believe it, will actually hold the upper hand: But Democrats will have their turn. On Dec. […]

The Hill reports that Pell Grants have become a sticking point between the freshman GOP and John Boehner for the passage of his debt-ceiling compromise plan. Representative Denny Rehberg described the right’s grievances with the program on a talk show in April: “So you can go to college on Pell Grants — maybe I should […]

Throughout the debt-ceiling negotiations, funding for the Federal Pell Grant Program, which gives low-income students access to higher education through need-based grants that don’t have to be repaid, has been tossed around as a bargaining chip. Though the bulk of Pell spending is discretionary, the program has entitlement status in that each student eligible to […]

These new results from Gallup’s survey of presidential approval make me a lot less bullish about President Obama’s chances for re-election: Last week, I noted the extent to which the public still holds President Bush and the Republican Party responsible for the current state of the economy. According to the latest CNN/ORC poll, not only […]

Jamelle Bouie explains how even if Boehner gets the votes for his debt-ceiling plan, the fight won’t end. Jennifer Mascia laments that Amy Winehouse’s life (and death) romanticized mental illness. Gershom Gorenberg writes of Israelis protesting a dearth of affordable housing.

Educators and activists opposed to the high-stakes testing that has come to dominate education reform have reason to be concerned, but they may have picked a losing strategy to make their point. More than 450 teachers and activists are gathering in Washington for the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action, a four-day […]

Norman Ornstein makes a good observation: While the components of the Affordable Care Act were very popular, the act itself was not, and the opposite happened with the tax-cut deal President Obama struck with Republicans in December. The components (particularly extending tax cuts for the wealthy) were not popular, but the deal was. The reason, […]

This morning I was listening to NPR, as we liberal elitists are wont to do, and they brought on Senator Michael Bennett to talk about the debt ceiling. He and host Steve Inskeep were discussing how the competing bills would go back and forth between the two chambers, and Inskeep said (I’m paraphrasing here), “You […]

Think Progress tells us that Michele Bachmann doesn’t think people should ask her questions about whether her husband’s “Christian therapy” business performs “reparative therapy” to de-gay-ify its clients: The problem is that this business is something she herself touts as part of her qualifications for being president. She is constantly referring to herself as a […]