Our long national nightmare has just begun. There is now little doubt that the next three years will bring one revelation after another about the magnitude of congressional corruption. Democrats will relish this prospect, and “reform” will be an inevitable theme of the next two election cycles. But some political scandals lead to change, while […]
Mark Schmitt
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DAVID BROOKS: THE VOICE OF YOUNG AMERICA.
DAVID BROOKS: THE VOICE OF YOUNG AMERICA. I like Ben Adler‘s headline, “David Brooks Does Andy Rooney…” It captures the most annoying undertone of Brooks’ column on “hipster parents” (which was not totally unfunny — let’s be honest, there are parents who go too far in trying to make their kids into replicas of their […]
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HEY JOE: DON’T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON THE WAY OUT.
HEY JOE: DON’T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON THE WAY OUT. Here is my plea to Senator Joe Lieberman, a politician I’ve admired since I was seven years old: Please switch parties. We’re tired of the game where you keep dancing ever close to the edge, hoping someone will pay attention to you. Just […]
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MIDDLE CLASS, OR SWING VOTERS?
MIDDLE CLASS, OR SWING VOTERS? To much fanfare, including a glowing column from David Brooks, the new report from the “strategy center for progressives” known as Third Way has arrived: The New Rules Economy: A Policy Framework for the 21st Century.” expands the argument that Third Way has made elsewhere, which is mostly that the […]
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Six and Two
When I was in college, during Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America,” I had a classmate who is the person I always think of when I try to imagine the young George W. Bush. (Although the comparison is terribly unfair to this person, since unlike Bush, he has considerable accomplishment to show for his first 45 […]
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GIULIANI — “MELLOWER THAN MCCAIN?”
GIULIANI — “MELLOWER THAN MCCAIN?” As a New Yorker for most of the Rudy Giuliani era, it’s hard for me to see him as anything other than a vain and dangerous authoritarian. This goes back to his years as a prosecutor, when he invented the “perp walk” by which he shamed the minor Wall Streeters […]
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STOP! NO MORE HEALTH CARE PLANS!
STOP! NO MORE HEALTH CARE PLANS! I have not yet read John Edwards‘s health care proposal. I’ll trust Ezra that I would basically like it. And I’m very happy that he was willing to talk about raising taxes. But let me go public with the one sure thing I learned from my own miserable six […]
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“WHAT MAKES OBAMA RUN?”
“WHAT MAKES OBAMA RUN?” That’s the title of an article I was e-mailed yesterday. But it didn’t refer to Obama’s presidential hopes. The dateline on the article was December 8, 1995. It appeared in the Chicago Reader. at the time Barack Obama was first running for state senate in Illinois. Obama, the article reminds us, […]
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THEY WORK HARD FOR THE MONEY, SO YOU BETTER TREAT ‘EM RIGHT.
THEY WORK HARD FOR THE MONEY, SO YOU BETTER TREAT ‘EM RIGHT. I didn’t have any luck getting anyone to join my last crusade, and I’ve given up on it myself, so here’s another, inspired by the Tyler Cowen Times op-ed on inequality that J. flagged this morning: I’m willing to accept a considerable level […]
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I AGREE WITH J.!
I AGREE WITH J.! I’d like to see liberal bloggers everywhere, whoever they support for the Democratic presidential nomination, take up one of my crusades, which J. Goodrich alluded to earlier: that the senator from New York who recently announced her presidential candidacy should always be referred to, without exception, as “Senator Clinton.” I’ve been […]
