Matthew Yglesias

ADDICTED TO FAILURE. Bush says today’s plots serve as a “stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists.” If anything, it’s a stark reminder of the reverse. A stark reminder that this isn’t a “war” at all — you don’t foil a plot like this with armored personnel carriers and JDAMs. We’re […]

BRITISH AIRPLANE PLOT. Breaking news isn’t the political blogosphere’s strong suit, but suffice it to say we have noticed the plot to blow up airplanes that the British government says it foiled. I’m sure at some point more information will come out that I might have opinions on, but at the moment there’s not much […]

KEVIN’S LAW. Kevin Drum proposes a new principle of net-based discourse: “If you’re forced to rely on random blog commenters to make a point about the prevalence of some form or another of disagreeable behavior, you’ve pretty much made exactly the opposite point.” For illustration, see the peerless K-Lo digging random stuff up off Democratic […]

HAWK REVISIONISM. It’s pretty disappointing to see the genuinely estimable Thomas Edsall trying to cram the Connecticut primary into a very clich� tale about how Democrats lose elections because primary electorates are “dominated by an upscale, socially (and culturally) liberal elite.” For one thing, the image of Joe Lieberman as a scion of working class […]

CEDAR REVOLUTION DOWN THE DRAIN. Don’t miss Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora‘s Washington Post op-ed. Keep in mind that Israel’s initial objective here seems to have been to give the Lebanese government a swift kick in the ass in hopes of convincing them that letting Hezbollah run free in the south was a danger to […]

LAMONT-LIEBERMAN POSTGAME. The voting is done — let the post-game spin begin! Most outside-the-box spin here. Best postgame spin here. Now, of course, the world faces the question of whether Lieberman pursues and independent bid. Tragically, this seems caught up in the meta-analysis of the expectations factor. Relative to, say, six weeks ago, Lamont far […]

EQUIVALENCE AND PRAGMATICS. Noam Scheiber responds to my post on Israel’s attack on Lebanon as a preventive war, and offers up two observations that I think are red herrings. One is that — as I’ll happily agree — it made perfect sense for Israel to deploy some level of retaliatory force to try and discourage […]

THE NEW DIPLOMACY. There’s a kind of impenetrable air of absurdity wafting throughout this paper I found on the AEI website advocating the formation of a Washington-Jerusalem-Baku axis aimed at countering the rising Persian Menace. Nevertheless, this passage is an intriguing and refreshingly honest look at contemporary diplomacy: The United States. The U.S. government also […]

WHAT ABOUT YOUR GUY? There�s some very bad news for incumbents in today’s Washington Post poll. Not only are the public’s views of Congress typically dim, but people finally seem to be souring on their own members of Congress. Normally, everyone hates “Congress” but loves their representative, so nothing changes. Currently, though, “55 percent now […]

COHEN’S CLARITY. Richard Cohen has his good days and his bad ones, but bloggers tend to only quote him on the bad days. Today is a good one: I share the concern of what would happen to Iraq if the United States pulled out precipitously. I share the concern over what will happen if the […]