The Editors

Tim Fernholz recounts the history of the housing rescue plan: Behind the plan is an unlikely trio of officials. [Sheila] Bair, a Republican and former counsel to Bob Dole, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan all pitched in to craft a plan the administration hopes will shore up […]

Ezra Klein gets confirmation from multiple senior officials that the budget is expected to include provisions for universal health care. Read more at his blog. —The Editors

Tim Fernholz looks at five government offices that could stand to be changed: As Obama takes office, the heads of the biggest executive-branch departments have, understandably, received the bulk of the media coverage. But Cabinet secretaries cannot personally oversee their entire department and are often occupied with major agenda items. At lower rungs on the […]

Adam Serwer profiles NAACP president Ben Jealous and considers the contemporary relevance of the advocacy organization: The NAACP had only recently decided that Jealous was the man — er, person — who could hold it together. On the eve of its centennial year, the organization risks becoming a victim of its own success. The leader […]

The New Republic sings print media’s swan song. TAP‘s founding co-editor Paul Starr bids adieu to the age of the newspaper: Even before the recession hit, the newspaper industry was facing a mortal threat from the rise of the Internet, falling circulation and advertising revenue, and a long-term decline in readership, as the habit of […]

Alyssa Rosenberg reviews Fred Strebeigh’s new book on women’s legal history and is struck by the way it puts a certain landmark case in perspective: The need to prioritize among cases does achieve one important political goal: firmly restoring Roe v. Wade to its place as one case among many. It is somewhat jarring to […]

With such an interconnected world, Matthew Yglesias argues that global economic strategy is necessary: The world needs a coordinated response in which each country commits to undertake stimulus that’s appropriate to the size of its economy and to its position in the global balance of trade. Further, we need a serious international commitment toward rebalancing […]

Tim Fernholz reports on HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan’s plan to curb the foreclosure crisis and wonders if the appointment signals a change from housing failures past: [A]ll of those prescriptions revolve around the crisis part of the equation: What about the opportunity for a new agenda under a Democratic administration? Housing policy has been stagnant […]

Paul Waldman warns that centrists could be Obama’s most troubling political opponents: [T]he people we should really worry about are the “centrists,” that merry band of legislators who determined the fate of the legislation. It was the centrists — a group that may have held as many as a dozen senators but was most represented […]