Ezra Klein

Let me just applaud the airline companies’ for the noble lie that cellular phones will crash planes. A world in which every passenger on my six-hour, cross-country flight decides they’re bored and this would be an excellent time to catch up with their awesome college roommate Dookie who’s doing SO WELL and it’s unbelievable that […]

I’m comforted by the polling Matt brings up showing Americans overwhelmingly prefer a diplomatic approach to Iran, but I’m not sure the numbers prove that the type of diplomatic rhetoric they’ll end up voting for doesn’t contain a bit of wild-eyed aggression. A “one best way” poll, after all, is fairly unresponsive to the campaign […]

by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math Here’s another graph of blog coverage, this one charting McCain/Giuliani/Romney’s appearances in blog postings. Two things are immediately obvious: Republican Presidential candidates generate 20-50% less coverage than Democratic candidates. Bad news for John McCain (but not Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney) generates more coverage than anything else. As for […]

by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math In previous installments, I’ve been critical of the blogosphere’s tendencies to allow the whims that dominate the cable news cycle to infect blog coverage, since the spats and gossip that hits the television often has close to zero news value. Ditto for fundraising, though at least the fundraising numbers […]

Just opened the small refund from my DC taxes. It’s smartly packaged. I had to fold four or five tabs, tear of four separate pieces of paper, and finally unfold the papers, find the check, fold it back, and tear it out, too. My guess is a good 15% of recipients accidentally tear the refund […]

Sure, The Sopranos was pretty good, but the important premier of the night was Entourage, and that was…underwhelming. I realize they need an episode or two till they fully reintegrate Ari into the lineup, but that’s just the problem. Season 2 had all sorts of plot, which fouls up the formula sustaining Entourage‘s dreamy fantasy […]

[litbrit considers the possibilities] I’d been sorting through e-mails that had piled up since Good Friday and browsing a few newspapers and blogs when I stumbled onto news of an intriguing new concept in ___-pedias. It’s actually a whistleblowerpedia, and the founders are calling it Wikileaks. Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass […]

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf After fundraising week, it’s interesting to see whom the Hotline picks as the leader of the race for the GOP nomination. If you’re trying to come up with a top-tier candidate whom the base trusts, well… that’s who you’re looking at. (He’s also likely to beat Edwards in the general […]

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf Twice in the last week, when people were hoping Barack Obama would stake out an aggressive position on important issues, he insteadgave a third-person analysis of the situation that didn’t seem to acknowledge hisrole as a potential agent of change. First, there was the Iraq War supplemental, on which Obama […]

I decided to mark Good Sunday with an LA Times op-ed on the legacy of ClintonCare. It’s a bit of a big topic for the allotted 1,000 words, so there’s much I wasn’t able to include, but hopefully it makes some progress drilling in the idea that 1994’s failure was specific to 1994 rather than […]