Ezra Klein

The rumors are true. I’ll be at the Campus Progress conference as a participant on the morning’s “Winning the War of Ideas” panel. With me will be Heather McGhee from Demos, Thomas Frank of What’s the Matter With Kansas fame, Paul Begala, Katrina vanden Huevel, and Dee Dee Myers. Should be fun. Not only that, […]

Crooks and Liars has a nice video of Biden threatening to filibuster Janice Rogers Brown were she nominated for the Supreme Court. He also, in the face of questioning by Orrin Hatch, pushes back with an excellent argument for why judges confirmed for the appellate courts can face renewed scrutiny, and even a filibuster, when […]

Not to insult my future place of employment’s cofounder or anything, but Robert Reich is counting his chickens a bit early here: “Just say no” has been a winning strategy for Democrats. Social Security privatization looks dead. Ditto with “progressive indexing” of Social Security benefits. CAFTA (the Central American Free Trade Agreement) is on its […]

Happy 4th, folks. You should all just pretend I’m up here saying witty and penetrating things about Bush because, in reality, I’ll actually be hanging out with my family, eating bagels and lox (yep — a very Jewish Fourth of July), and making stupid jokes. Speaking of stupid jokes, this line from Madagascar — which […]

Business Week has a fun article on corporate America’s triumphant co-option of hipster culture. A movement whose original uniform was peppered with “Corporate Rock Sucks” stickers now sends their bands on tours sponsored by malt liquor, grabs refreshments in tents sponsored by Levi, and has proved most successful at gathering a hard to reach demographic […]

Kate’s outrage over the Washington Post’s feminist assessment of O’Connor strikes me as well-placed. The article, which tries to illustrate the chilly relationship between the women’s movement and one of their most emancipated, ceiling-shattering members, starts by probing O’Connor’s reasons for retiring. Her husband is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. She’s leaving to […]

Wil Wilkinson has a fairly puzzling response to Jon Chait’s article on the bankruptcy of the liberals-lack-ideas claim. He writes: He’s right: if “ideas” mean novel projects for the technocracy, then liberals are chock ful of them. I think the real complaint here is that there is nothing to be found that is not a […]

In a piece full of very good parts, this has to be my favorite of Jon Chait’s many perfect paragraphs knifing the Democrats lack ideas meme: A related assumption is that new ideas are better than old ones. This meme has gained particular currency during the Social Security debate. For instance, conservative privatization advocate Peter […]

It may not be bigger news than O’Connor, but it’s certainly better: I revealed in yesterday’s taping of the McLaughlin Group that Time magazine’s emails will reveal that Karl Rove was Matt Cooper’s source. I have known this for months but didn’t want to say it at a time that would risk me getting dragged […]

It’s been a long day of perfunctory paeans to Sandra Day O’Connor’s many virtues. Some corners named her prudence and moderation, smarter corners lauded her “mainstream conservatism”, but few said much about her. So before we all move to the looming battle for her seat, it’s probably worth listening to It’s been a long day […]