Paul Waldman

“The unexamined life,” Socrates said, “is not worth living.” Pretty much what you’d expect from a philosopher with the luxury of lying about in a toga contemplating the procession of his days. Nevertheless, today the march of technology allows us to examine our lives in ways we didn’t before — and, of course, convey the […]

The news of the day is that Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, who makes up for his principle-free ideology with a complete lack of charisma, has decided not to run for re-election. The best immediate reaction came from our friend Ezra, who said that Bayh “wants to spend more time scolding his family for moving […]

Leading up to the White House health-care “summit” on Feb. 25, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat — trying hard to seem like a reasonable conservative — offers a blueprint for bipartisanship: The right seeks a functioning marketplace in health care, subsidized but not micromanaged by the government. However many small steps the Democratic legislation […]

The latest New York Times/CBS News poll has some predictably bad news for Obama — falling approval ratings, particularly on the economy — and some remarkably good news. For instance, when they asked respondents who is more responsible for the budget deficit — which has become the rallying cry of the GOP, not to mention […]

On Wednesday, Google announced that it would be experimenting with building an ultra-high-speed broadband network — delivering up to 1 gigabyte of data per second, which is about 20 times as fast as what most broadband subscribers get today — serving somewhere between 50,000 and 500,000 lucky consumers in a small number of communities to […]

Flickr/woodleywonderworks The Washington Post recently reported that Washingtonians aren’t quite sure what how to handle the thorny question of whether, once you’ve dug out a parking spot, it remains yours. Jonathan Chait gives us the philosophical implications (short version: he’s with Locke) today. I lived for almost a decade in Philadelphia, where the rule is […]

Yesterday, the Food and Drug Administration announced a new initiative to increase the safety of imaging devices that use radiation, like CT scans. This came about because of a New York Times investigation detailing horrifying cases of patients being given overdoses of radiation when going in for routine scans. Hospitals are employing incredibly powerful equipment […]

If you want to understand the depths of Republican intransigence on health-care reform, I’d encourage you to read Ezra Klein‘s interview with Sen. Lamar Alexander. Alexander is not the most conservative senator, or the one most prone to the kind of bomb-throwing and mendacity that characterizes some of his colleagues. Which is why it’s so […]

Wondering just how human society might collapse into chaos and cannibalism this year? Want to know what the chances are of, say, a cyclone, and how it might relate to an asset price collapse and food price volatility? The World Economic Forum, the masters of the universe who put together those glamorous conferences in Davos, […]