Ezra Klein

Brad Plumer’s got a characteristically thoughtful post on why Americans want to be the dominant global power. I mean, really, what good does it do us? And, from a logical standpoint, he’s right. In fact, I’d much rather be a highly-developed country on the second-tier of world power (like Japan or France) than America. So […]

So back to the Democracy Corps poll (no Josh Marshall-esque, never-ending cliffhangers here!). Let me go through the relevant results and then get to thoughts. The Republican party rates about 4% higher than we do, while Bill Clinton rates a smidge higher than the Republican party and George W clocks in at .4% above him […]

God knows she deserves it. The NY Times editorial page puts it particularly well and, hopefully, dredges some meaning and beauty out of this whole sordid affair.

The new Democracy Corps memo just popped into my inbox and, despite the spin, it strikes me as bad news. It’s not that Republicans are doing well so much as Democrats are doing really, really badly. And that’s not individual Democrats — Hillary easily beats Jeb (and 11% of Republicans cross lines for her) and […]

Via Body and Soul, this 911 recording is hilarious. That’s right, it’s so funny that my recommendation wouldn’t carry enough weight unless I italicized it. And, apropos of my earlier comments that Orange Count is not a sandbox full of spoiled rich kids, this all occurs — sigh — in the OC. Alright then, off […]

Bill Bradley’s op-ed today is so spot-on it brought a tear to my eye. For awhile now, I’ve been incoherently expressing the difference between Republican and Democratic presidential candidates by saying that the former are defined by their party while the latter are forced to define their party. But Bradley hit the target much more […]

I think this might be my favorite blog ever.

Brad Plumer is so right on this it’s hard to believe he’s not been hired by the DCCC and given a corner office somewhere: Look, last year no one was offering Senate Democrats a chance to “wash their hands” of Tom Daschle. Quite the opposite—the phrase “Daschle Democrats” spread far and wide across the airwaves, […]

Duncan is right that Orange County isn’t the uber-wealthy playground that the eponymous TV show portrays it as. What most people think of when they picture the county is Newport Beach, an enormously affluent community by the beach. They might also imagine Laguna Beach, where Dncan lived, and Laguna Hills. What they’re not imagining is […]

Kristof’s got a great column on the foolishness of the Bush administration’s marriage-based AIDS prevention programs in Africa. Go read it.