Sam Rosenfeld

“LOOMING INSOLVENCY.” Ben Bernanke urges Congress to skirt disaster by “revamping” entitlement programs, including Social Security. Dean brings the snark. –Sam Rosenfeld

THE IRAN QUESTION. It’s unclear if this will go anywhere, but it’s still worth noting: Ari Berman tells us about new legislation introduced today that would require President Bush to gain congressional approval for any military action against Iran. Good for Walter “Freedom Fries” Jones, who’s pushing the bill. –Sam Rosenfeld

CONTINUITY. I tend to disagree with Jason Zengerle about various things (today, he finds this John Kerry quote funny and pathetic, but it seems kinda sorta correct to me), but I think his new and fairly positive profile of John Edwards is a good piece, and worth a look. One gets the impression from Zengerle’s […]

OUR PRESIDENT. President Bush turned in an all-around awesome performance in his “60 Minutes” interview last night. It’s very much worth reading in full, but here’s one early highlight: PELLEY: Do you think you owe the Iraqi people an apology for not doing a better job? BUSH: That we didn’t do a better job or […]

NEW BLOG: FREEDOM’S POWER. Prospect co-founder and co-editor (not to mention Princeton sociologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author) Paul Starr has written a new book, to be published in March, called Freedom’s Power: The True Force of Liberalism, which concerns, in Paul’s words, “how a liberal society and liberal politics create power — how they generate […]

COUNTER SURGE. Here’s the short version of President Bush‘s speech: “Although the horses are out of the barn, I would like to shut the door as loudly and firmly as possible in the hopes that somehow the horses will end up back inside.” Many Democrats are critical of the speech, the policy behind it, and […]

MACHO DEMS. The estimable Ryan Lizza had a piece in yesterday’s New York Times Week in Review section about “the return of the Alpha Male Democrat” — the trend this past election cycle of Democratic candidates boasting “carefully crafted masculinity.” Back in June, Francis Wilkinson wrote a cover story for the print Prospect on the […]

JOE KLEIN, BLOGGER. Great stuff from Greg on Joe Klein‘s blogging debut. Apropos my post below, Greg reminds us of something he’s been hammering for a while: the Dem-GOP national security credibility deficit has shrunk to nothing in most recent polling. All the more reason for Democrats to talk about the war without wincing or […]

WAR AND POCKETBOOKS. We’re going to get tons — endless, relentless, cascading waves — of articles chronicling intra-Democratic micro-debates over day-to-day strategy for the duration of the 110th Congress, and I sort of feel hesitant to legitimate them all by jumping in on an early one. That said, here goes: The Washington Post reports today […]

DEMS AGAINST THE SURGE. Straightforward stuff from the Democratic leadership, preemptively saying “no” to Iraq surge plans from the president. This brought me back to the New York Times piece from yesterday hyping “division within the party” regarding a troops surge plan. The piece didn’t really have the goods: The one Democratic senator quoted saying […]