Zachary Roth

THE “-ING” THING…I wonder if Geoffrey Nunberg has ever spoken to a black person. Or at least watched the part of “Do the Right Thing,” (script here) where the characters each in sequence recite a string of racial insults, using exactly the “-ing” construction Nunberg is talking about. That movie came out in 1989. The […]

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT…For those of you with any interest in the greatest sporting ever created, check out Goalpost, The New Republic‘s World Cup blog. In terms of flair and creativity, they’ve assembled the soccer-writing equivalent of the famed Brazil 1970 team, and even non-soccer fans will enjoy the dubious socio-political-athletic theorizing and […]

After Abramoff…If you liked Jeffrey Birnbaum’s cover story in the most recent issue of The Washington Monthly on how the Abramoff case could revolutionize the campaign finance system — or if you didn’t read it yet, or even if, hard to imagine, you read it and didn’t like it — you’ll want to catch Birnbaum […]

Drum 1 Norquist 0…Kevin is likely going to be too modest to post this, so I will. Looks like David Broder was flipping thru his old Washington Monthly collection, and came across our September 2004 issue, in which we asked a group of 16 smart political observers, Democratic and Republican, to predict what would happen […]

GETTING OVERSIGHT RIGHT…It’s probably smart for John Conyers to be trying to put to rest Republican claims that a Democratic House would impeach Bush (although you can still imagine a GOP attack ad that uses a few well-placed ellipses to make hay out of the phrase: “At the end of the process, if — and […]

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS…Something else from the New Republic: Jason Zengerle, in noting that Rupert Murdoch is hosting a fundraiser for Hillary, speculates that the ongoing Murdoch-Hillary rapprochement may indicate that she ultimately hopes to “somehow co-opt Fox News.” This isn’t as crazy as it might sound. Throughout the 80’s and early 90’s, Murdoch’s British tabloid The […]

INVESTI-GATE…Over at the New Republic blog, Michael Crowley notes that the latest Republican fundraising email, like earlier versions, hypes the threat that a Democratic Congress would conduct politically-motivated investigations, including trying to impeach the president. Crowley comments: “It’s pretty clear what Republicans…want this election to be about.” The obvious implication here seems to be a […]

FOR ALL THREE OF YOU WHO CARE: I like a good bit of Bush-bashing as much as the next liberal journalist, but I think Matt Yglesias is clearly being unfair to the president on this one. Concerning the US soccer team’s chances at this summer’s World Cup, Bush told a German journalist: “Whether it’s good […]

Once a Hack….The news that CIA director Porter Goss has resigned after less than 20 months on the job ? announced by the White House at prime news-burying time, Friday afternoon ? may or may not be an indication that Goss will soon be enmeshed in the cigars-and-hookers scandal now swirling about Dusty Foggo, Goss’s […]