Ezra Klein

Paul Waldman’s distillation of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ new report is a must for anyone wanting a reminder of the great good unions do their members (good to the tune of a 20-25% increase in salary). As for the canard that unions stifle innovation and choke economies, take a peek at the top 10 […]

Brad Plumer explains how a Democratic bill becomes a law.

Somewhere in Mother Jones’s impossible to navigate archives, Brad Plumer writes: it might not be the end of the world if democracy in the Middle East gave rise to Islamic governments, as many have feared. Eventually, these leaders have to keep the country running smoothly, and they need to answer to voters. An overly-zealous and […]

Tucker Foehl points out this interview with Naomi Klein. Her thoughts on the anti-war movement, the state of Iraq, the failure of the left, and basically everything else are worth reading in full, but this caught my eye: So what the Republican Party has done is that it has co-branded with other powerful brands — […]

• The world has an oil problem, but the best solution may be the doomsday scenario of a sharp and irrevocable rise in oil prices. At least, so long as it happens before India and China accelerate into huge dependency on cheap oil. • The president has a problem with his speeches, mainly, that they […]

In an otherwise impressive synthesis/review of the current glut of books promising a European Revolution, Tony Judt hobbles his piece with a near-fatal opening: Consider a mug of American coffee. It is found everywhere. It can be made by anyone. It is cheap—and refills are free. Being largely without flavor it can be diluted to […]

Bayh really nailed the framing on Social Security privatization on This Week (the Stephanopoulos show). [L]ook, the president is probably going to talk a lot about ownership and individual choice. I think those are great concepts, and I can support those — but in addition to the current Social Security system, not as a replacement […]

I had no idea that one man fixing his faucet could so perfectly parallel the evolution/creationism debate!

Congratulations to the LA Times’ on their new and ballsy op-ed feature, “Outside the Tent”, wherein an unaffilated writer trains his guns on the LA Times and blasts them for their deficiencies. While the feature sounds like the ombudsman/public editor dispatches that other papers carry, Kinsley’s page isn’t pretending at dissent by allowing a neutered […]

We’re not gonna get those goddamn polygamy queens off welfare until we get a good, God-fearin’ Christian heading the HHS. Too bad Bush’s nominee ain’t the guy.