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Teatime: A Wave of Books Anatomizes the Tea Party Movement

The most memorable moment from the first major Tea Party rally in front of New York’s City Hall, in April 2009, wasn’t the woman chain-smoking cigarettes by a guard rail, there, she said, to defend “smoker’s rights.” Nor was it the machismo menace that hung in the air, or the “Don’t Tread on Me” signs held by untrod-upon-looking junior insurance executives in for the afternoon from Glen Cove. It wasn’t even the palpable anger at Mayor Bloomberg, who (presumably) sat in his office a few feet away and, his efforts toward gun control and bike paths notwithstanding, was the only chance Republicans had of holding onto City Hall that November.

No, the most memorable moment of that afternoon was the speaker who took to the microphone and urged everyone present to put down their tricorner hats and give a round of applause to the people who had made the rally happen: the New York City Parks Department, the sanitation workers, the police guarding the barricades.

These were “the working people,” the ones lionized by this movement for the screwing they had been taking from the Obama administration and assorted powers-that-be, but they were also government workers, their salaries and pensions paid for with hard-earned taxpayer dollars, their very existence dependent upon public largess.

In the two and a half years since that gathering, there have been hundreds like it across the country. In 2010, Tea Party protesters and their ilk not only took out the Democrats in Congress, but even managed to squelch the ambitions of a few Republicans who were deemed insufficiently conservative by the latest right-wing litmus test.

But by late 2011, Glenn Beck, once the Cassandra of this crowd, had been shuffled off the stage. The town hall meetings that first alerted the mainstream media to this new substrata of the body politic are now filled not with conservatives yelling at Democratic congressmen to keep their government hands off of Medicare but with liberals yelling at the Republican reps to let the Bush tax cuts expire. The debt ceiling has been raised, budgets have been passed. The likely Republican presidential nominee is as far removed from this tumult in the streets as the average CEO is from the jobs he outsourced.

Into this breach have slipped a couple of books that attempt to explain this new world we now find ourselves in. Read More

Stop SOPA and PIPA

There seems to be a growing consensus that the SOPA and PIPA may be DOA. That’s OK by us.

The recent Internet-led protest movement against the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act clearly has had a profound effect on support for these chilling pieces of legislation. What’s astonishing is that the protests appear to have caught Washington by surprise. According to a report in PC World, neither supporters nor opponents of the bills “anticipated the response by Internet users.” Likewise, the rallying effect of protests led by Wikipedia, Google and other companies stunned the nation’s lawmakers.

Sadly, it is clear that Washington remains firmly entrenched in the 20th century Read More

Gun Folly in D.C.

Republicans around the country, especially those in leadership positions in the House of Representatives, regularly deliver homilies about shrinking the federal government and giving more power back to individual states.

Those heartfelt positions, however, come with an asterisk. Republican leaders in the House may like the idea of state’s rights—but they’re not so keen about local control when states like New York decide that it’s a bad idea for people to carry concealed weapons, because, well, you just never know when a whack job might open fire on a crowded street. Read More

(e)merge Art Fair Strives to Stir D.C.’s Art Scene

"I've never done a hotel fair before," Petra Leene, the director of Amsterdam's Amstel Gallery told us, sitting on her bed in a room on the second floor of the Capitol Skyline Hotel, in Washington, D.C. "I thought the purpose of a hotel fair was that you slept in your room. I didn't know!" It Read More

Mr. Schneiderman and the Banks

The Obama administration wants to reach a broad settlement with some of the nation’s banks over some sketchy foreclosure practices they have allegedly engaged in during the past few years. But New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is resisting pressure from Washington to sign on to the proposed settlement. He and several colleagues argue that the settlement would make it more difficult for them to prosecute banks suspected of wrongdoing.

Mr. Schneiderman’s position is admirable. If he believes the settlement is not in the best interests of New York consumers, he should continue to resist. Read More

As the Debt Ceiling Rises, the Dow Drops

It would almost seem that the stars had finally aligned. After weeks of stalled talks and contentious meetings between House Republicans and Democrats that escalated into a public spat between Speaker John Boehner and President Obama, a bill finally made it through the House and into the Senate, where it was speedily approved Tuesday morning Read More

C’mon Washington, Let’s Get the Deal Done

President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner made their pitches to the American public on Monday night. Both men made valid points. Both men engaged in political posturing. It’s time for them to stop talking to us and to engage each other in the spirit of cooperation that the President cited in his presentation. Read More

Softball Report: Battle of the Superheroes

Spider-Senses were working overtime at the battle of comic publishing houses on the softball field as the Marvel Knights decimated DC Comic’s Bullets 19-4. Supermen and Wonder Women, DC was not.

Rahm Emanuel Wants to Save Chicago From Second Tier Status

On Sunday, former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel released the first commercial for his campaign to become Chicago's Mayor on Youtube.

Emanuel left his D.C. job in September. He officially announced his candidacy in the race for Chicago City Hall on Saturday.

The ad begins by emphasizing Emanuel's roots Windy City roots.

"Chicago is Read More

Politico Pats Itself on the Back With a Big, Fancy, Caviar-Stuffed Election Night Soirée

It being election night and all, Washington, D.C. witnessed its fair share of parties last night. Win or lose, there's going to be catered food around when the returns start coming in.

And Politico threw a big party, too! The Capitol Hill-centric paper — free when taken from D.C. street bins but a cool $2,000 Read More

Revamped National Journal Site to Launch Oct. 25 — Now With Less Paywall!

The National Journal's website, once read only by D.C. pols willing to pony up the steep subscription fee, now has a set date when it will ease its paywall and present content to a larger readership.

After a summer of big name hires and a reinvigorated newsroom, the politics publication — which operates under Read More

Bloomberg Attempting Coup of Washington’s Subscription-Based News Game

The thrust behind Bloomberg LP has always been the premium it puts on carting a wealth of indispensable services to its Wall Street subscribers. Now, the news service will be taking its New York-honed talents to The Hill with Bloomberg Government, The New York Times reports. It's an ambitious attempt to infiltrate the fee-based Read More

Sally Quinn’s Last Column Was ‘Like Lancing a Boil’

Sally Quinn penned her last column in print for The Washington Post, about dueling weddings in the family of her husband, Ben Bradlee. Marcus Brauchli, who now occupies Mr. Bradlee's old seat, has said that he would not have let the column go to print if he had seen it first.

Today Vanity Fair has released Read More

Carrión Out as White House Urban Czar, Moving to HUD

Former Bronx borough president Adolfo Carrión's tenure as President Obama's urban policy chief is over.

Late Monday afternoon, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a statement announcing that Mr. Carrión , who was the director of the newly created White House Office of Urban Affairs, will be moving to HUD as the regional director Read More

Washington Is the New London

New York's political leaders and private sector executives have fretted for years that the city might lose its reputation as the world's financial capital to London. Now, it looks like the city should've been worrying about Washington instead.

The Wall Street meltdown and its litany of fallen titans has shifted the nation's financial muscle Read More