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THE NEXT 10 WORDS. Brendan Nyhan reports on John McCain‘s bold plan to end the violence in Iraq: “One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, ‘Stop the bullshit,’” said Mr. McCain, according to Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi, an invitee, and […]

INSERT SNOW PUN. Speaking of the unbearable lightness of John Snow‘s policy knowledge, check out gay liberal ninja Barney Frank disemboweling him during testimony last week. Snow’s embarrassment was so complete that even the Wall Street Journal, no friend of Frank’s, couldn’t resist highlighting it. Ah, schadenfreude. –Ezra Klein

IS IT JUST ME? Or does anyone else suspect that maybe half the reason Hastert et al. are so in heat over the Jefferson raid has nothing to do separation of powers and something to do with the fact that if they defend Jefferson and help him stay in the House, the corruption issue doesn�t […]

POLICING THE CAPITOL. I know this is an out of season remark and all good liberals should be both distancing themselves from corrupt Rep. William Jefferson and mocking the GOP leadership for suddenly taking issue with the problem of executive branch overreach under circumstances that appear designed to make it easier for congressmen to take […]

IGNORANCE IS BLISS. Robert Zoellick was pretty ineffective as US Trade Representative, so I’m not sure we should shed too many tears over him not getting the Treasury Secretary job. The explanation for why he’s not getting it, however, is moronic. The White House is looking for someone “who would command more respect on Wall […]

JUST WONDERING. Okay, I�m not stupid enough to think that I just won a seven-figure sum in the Australian lottery (for starters, I didn�t enter it). But reading through the email I just got made me wonder: How does this scam work? According to Valentino von Kahn (Mrs.), the �coordinator� of the Australian Lottery who […]

WALL: ACTUALLY BAD, ACTUALLY EXPENSIVE. Jonah Goldberg thinks the arguments against walling off the southern border are all bad. Except, of course, for the symbolism argument which he concedes is good. The other main argument is that it’s too expensive. He doesn’t actually think that’s a bad argument either, but he says of folks who […]

FREELANCERS AND TEAM PLAYERS. Matt has some useful thoughts on the difference between a freelance crook, like Bill Jefferson personally enriching himself through abuse of his office, and the kind of systemic, institutional corruption practiced by the Republican congressional majority and typified by the major corruption scandals on that side of the aisle. (Rahm Emanuel […]

WHO’S NEXT? Kevin Drum pointedly asks the right (and wry) question about The Times‘ data-driven reporting on power couples: “Who’s next?” I’d like to see some data on President and Laura Bush, for one, and how many weekends they spent together over the past year, despite living in the same house and same city. Maybe […]