Ezra Klein

Over at MoJo, they’re finding that the revealed thrust of Bush’s Social Security plan isn’t matching the pre-SOTU leaks on what it’ll be. Full of good intentions, they try and reconcile the two and have some trouble, but I fear it might be simpler than that. Sinclair simple. You remember them, of course. After getting […]

Blah blah blah Orwell blah blah blah: Outgoing Attorney General John D. Ashcroft forcefully defended some of his most controversial policies and statements yesterday, arguing that aggressive law enforcement and intelligence gathering were “expansions of freedom” that helped prevent terrorist attacks on the United States.

Andy Sullivan is sorta-kinda-maybe leaving the blogosphere, at least for awhile. I don’t generally agree with the guy (particularly when he called me part of some imaginary liberal fifth column), but he’s one hell of a writer and I’ve always liked his blog. Plus, when he agreed with you, you could just quote him and […]

Matt’s got a post full of true bigthink on the multipolarity (present and future) of the word, and our position vis-a-vis the emerging powers of China and India. Read it in full. I, on the other hand, am going to zoom in a bit: In military terms, I think there’s also less here than meets […]

Do we really need a Senate majority Leader saying things like this? “I can play hardball as well as anybody,” he said, unprompted, at the end of a recent interview. “That’s what I did, cut people’s hearts out. On the other hand, I do it to cure them, to heal them, to make them better.” […]

Zoe Vanderwolk has emerged out of retirement to defend Larry Summers. I’d do some quoting but her comments really deserve to be read in full, they’re the best I’ve seen on the issue in weeks. Worth noting is that Zoe is a female statistics major at Harvard, if she wasn’t around to weigh in on […]

Dean’s got it. That, at least, is how it looks, with the only potential obstacle being some bizarre Fowler-led revolution, which I’m just not seeing. Beyond the race and into the reactions, Pelosi and Reid would probably do well to refrain from kneecapping the party’s titular head just days before the votes come in. He’s […]

My inbox, on any given day, contains The Nation advisory, a dispatch from The Boston Review, and a host of link requests and post pointers. And I love and honor them all. But I’m surprised that my mailbox doesn’t contain the same. I know, for instance, that The Washington Monthly sends each issue to every […]

I’m rapidly losing patience with the “Dems need to stand for something” trope, the one usually offered by kindly conservatives in the context of well-meaning advice. This week, the guidance was proffered by QandO’s Dale Franks, and it’s springboard is a Christian Science Monitor editorial that worries itself sick over the Reid-led move towards opposition […]

• A tad aged, but Kung Fu Monkey misses Republicans. • Jeanne d’Arc preaches it. • Mark Schmitt comes out for Rosenberg, and makes the point that net-savvy isn’t the sole or even primary attribute needed. Is he sure? • Henry hooks Easterbrook’s Collapse review up to the Insight Machine and returns with this: It […]