Ezra Klein

I like science. I always liked studying science, for which I had a natural aptitude, and I like reading about it still. Any kind of science captures my interest—the natural sciences, the social sciences—in no small part because I feel it is an important endeavor to helping us make sense of the world around us, […]

One of the more interesting effects of Gannongate has been reading the various critiques on blogging from the mainstream media. The first round of commentary was predominantly vitriol designed to undermine the credibility of bloggers as a whole; had it been effective, had the attackers succeeded in their goal of debunking the story not by […]

During a recent meeting with a group of activists in San Francisco, new DNC Chair Howard Dean proved once again he is the right man for the job: Two months earlier, many of the same Democratic stalwarts had dinner with the outgoing DNC chair, Terry McAuliffe. Despite John Kerry’s loss in the presidential race, McAuliffe’s […]

Apropos of my earlier post regarding the necessity of being vigilant about encroachments on women’s rights, we get this story out of Kansas, where the Attorney General, Phill Kline, who happens to be head of the national Republican attorneys general association, is trying to obtain the medical records of women and girls who had late-term […]

Namely, the Social Security reform proposed by President Bush, who seems to be taking No Child Left Behind literally. The battle over Social Security has been joined by an unusual lobbyist, a 9-year-old from Texas who has agreed to travel supporting President Bush’s proposal. The boy, Noah McCullough, made a splash with his encyclopedic command […]

One of the most cunning accomplishments of the Bush administration has been undermining the notion that the GOP, that great bastion of male dominance, has put to bed the last remnants of sexism within its ranks. I dare you to call us sexists, its very appointment of a female Secretary of State seems to say. […]

Hello, Ezra Kleinians. In a spectacular bit of misjudgment, Ezra has decided to let one of the inmates run the asylum, as he earlier noted. And since all the boys are angling for their Estrogen-Friendly Boy Scout Badge this week, choosing me has put him well ahead of the competition. I kid, I kid. Tonight […]

I’m out for the weekend. Mother’s birthday, girlfriend’s in town, etc. Your hostess will be the excellent Shakespeare’s Sister, so you should be excited. She’ll make sure you don’t get bard. Ba-da-ching! Sorry. I’ll leave now.

In my second Newman link of the day, Nathan’s got an excellent case study of how union votes are won — by anti-labor corporations. Go. By the way, you’re probably going to see a lot more labor posts on this site. I recently read Thomas Geoghegan’s Which Side Are You On: Trying to be For […]

Matt’s efforts to reality-check the “Goldwater moment” are really worth reading and you should, uh, read them. But it’s worth noting that conservatives don’t really view Goldwater as this seminal, epochal moment, but rather as part of a larger history that encompasses Goldwater, Reagan, and Bush. This triumph of the true believers narrative, wherein conservatives […]