Matthew Yglesias

ARE NEWSPAPER READERS LEARNING? This isn’t really my thing, but there’s something absurd about Carl Hulse�s writeup of yesterday’s Senate action on the estate tax cut and minimum wage bill for The New York Times. Hulse covers this kind of thing professionally and has been writing about this specific bill for a while and presumably […]

EVEN THE SEDATE DAVID BRODER. Has had just about enough: “Can we think about the costs of carrying on, without an end in sight, against Hezbollah and the insurgents in Iraq?” I’m not even sure “carrying on . . . against . . . the insurgents” describes what we’re doing in Iraq at this point. […]

ONLY BIRTH PANGS. The last time I pointed out that Iran’s evil dictators were offering sound criticism of U.S. foreign policy, The Weekly Standard took me to task, but still when you’re right, you’re right. Ali Khamenei says: “The U.S. is following a policy of creating insecurity, crisis, and war in the region. It must […]

PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. Noam Scheiber has some smart remarks on my generation gap post from yesterday. Ed Kilgore also offers the reasonable rejoinder that one major failing of the “new school” tendency in progressive politics is some mistaken notions about the past. I think, though, that the crucial sub rosa divide isn’t really about […]

THE NEED TO COPE. In this post, Martin Peretz notes that having Hezbollah de-militarize by being absorbed into the Lebanese Army would be unsatisfactory from an Israeli point of view. He also says that “it would even be terrible if the Lebanese army didn’t absorb but simply occupied the southern part of the country.” And […]

I NEVER WOULD HAVE GUESSED. EPA scientists say the agency is bowing to political pressure and preventing action against toxic chemicals that “pose serious risks for fetuses, pregnant women, young children and the elderly.” It’s hard to believe these allegations, though — the Bush administration would never do something like that. –Matthew Yglesias

THE NEW OLD REGIME. Ed Kilgore�s latest post on Joe Lieberman is really pretty fascinating. It highlights what I think basically amounts to a generation gap in views of politics. That’s not quite the correct term, though, because it’s not exactly a question of age. Rather, I’d say that there were a series of events […]

TALKING ABOUT THE WAR. Good for the Democrats. Yesterday’s congressional leadership letter on Iraq doesn’t really break any new ground, policy-wise. It does, however, break new ground in terms of the Democrats trying to instigate debate on the Iraq War rather than trying to avoid the issue until forced to respond to Republican attacks. This […]

AFTER FIDEL. With Fidel Castro temporarily ceding power to his brother Raul while he undergoes surgery, it’s worth asking what happens when Fidel eventually dies. There often seems to be a sense in the United States that the regime will simply die with its founder, but there’s no particular reason to believe that’s the case. […]