Ezra Klein

Shakespeare’s Sister is getting a bit tired of her comrades-in-pigment: If you want to know why I prefer to identify as Kinda Peachy, eschewing labels like white and straight and all that junk, it’s because even I’m starting to think of straight white folks as being completely and utterly fucking nuts. Yes, I know there […]

In the middle of a sobering, grim article on Iraq’s worsening prospects comes this bit of carefully placed, lovingly-crafted spin (italics mine): Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top American officer in the Middle East, said in a briefing in Washington that one problem was the disappointing progress in developing Iraqi police units cohesive enough to […]

Lorelai Kelly has an absurdly good post thinking through the implications of the call for 100,000 more troops that’s been echoing around. Do we need that many boots on the ground? Nut grafs: We need more than boots. In fact, over-reliance on boots may be a primary cause of our public relations problems with the […]

Via Democracy Arsenal comes this priceless quote from a military hearing: The Air Force believes “we must establish and maintain space superiority,” Gen. Lance Lord, who leads the Air Force Space Command, told Congress recently. “Simply put, it’s the American way of fighting.” Air Force doctrine defines space superiority as “freedom to attack as well […]

Writing in the LA Times, Michael Hitzlick makes a great point: when corporations are shedding their responsibilities, it’s the wrong time for the government to do so. When the president, who never seems to think about the difficulty most people face in holding on to what they do own, proposes to cut the Social Security […]

• Kevin Drum’s must-read piece defending the newspaper. One thing I think he ignores, however, is that the left and the right do indeed have a vision for the way reporting will be done in a post-newspaper era. Think blogs. Assuming the newspapers either did dry up or, worse yet, became partisan, Washington Times-like outlets, […]

Since James Joyner got me talking about the blogosphere’s last media scandal, I may as well say a few words on the current edition. To be honest, I’ve had a really hard time figuring out exactly what Newsweek did wrong. One of their stories was poorly sourced and they deserve a rap on the knuckles, […]

With CBS canceling the viewer-allergic Wednesday edition of 60 Minutes, James Joyner couldn’t resist a parting shot: Moonves’ claims that the scandal that brought down Dan Rather was “not even slightly” to blame for this is ludicrous. The show and its lead anchor were permanently associated with the forgery and for its embarrassing failure to […]

Health care consultant/blogger extraordinaire Matthew Holt is liveblogging the TEPR conference, a health professionals convention focusing on technology in health care. It’s interesting stuff, go have a look-see.

As expected, Villaraigosa trounced Hahn to become LA’s first Latino mayor since the city’s infancy. Much luck to him.