Ezra Klein

The huge fuss the GOP is making over Terry Schiavo would be understandable, if not respectable, if they could marshal some poll numbers that showed, like on gay marriage, that the issue was a political winner for them. But it’s not. 65% of Americans think Schiavo’s husband should have the final say on her care, […]

If I were Joe Lieberman and highly-respected economist Paul Krugman was criticizing me on misrepresenting a fiscal matter, I think I’d assume his exhaustive understanding of the issue trumped my experience as AG of Connecticut and leave the matter there — who reads and remembers Paul Krugman anyway? But I am not Joe Lieberman and […]

Saw Gunner’s Palace last night. Like others already have, I recommend you check it out immediately. The film brilliantly succeeds in showing the routinization of life in a war zone, taking pains to neither demonize nor canonize the fresh-faced kids who serve as the stars. Unlike many documentaries, there is no plot, the editors have […]

Terry Schiavo, if I understand her condition, is an essentially brain dead woman who has languished in a coma for a decade, who shows little to no hope of ever rediscovering consciousness, and who, even if she did snap to attention, would be so desperately brain damaged that she could never function. Her cerebral cortex […]

Jesse Lee, writing at the Stakeholder, makes an important point: It’s hard to say how many headlines away that day is, but as we’ve said before, something has certainly shifted. The past week has seen literally a half dozen separate stories written on doubts within the GOP Conference about DeLay. That never happens. And DeLay’s […]

Over at The Corner, John J Miller asks: If somebody put a pistol to Schiavo’s head and pulled the trigger–you know, to give the “dying process” a little nudge–would the shooter be guilty of murder under Florida law? If a conservative pundit thought he was being clever but instead made an analogy so flawed that […]

Actually, it wasn’t last night. Last night was probably my fifth Spearhead show. But if you’ve not seen them live, you really, really, should. For reasons I don’t understand, blogospheric music recommendations are sole property of the Indy Music Alliance, and so all we’re ever told is “go see Arcade Fire” or “Death Cab for […]

Aren’t conservatives supposed to be for, you know, limited government and congressional restraint and states’ rights and stuff? Yeah? So tell me how they can possibly justify following up their subpoenas to Major League Baseball with yet more subpoenas stopping doctors from pulling Terry Schiavo’s feeding tube and forcing her and her husband to testify […]

Centenarian George F. Kennan has died. Historically astute readers will know his as the author of the “containment” doctrine, which essentially guided our foreign policy through the Cold War. What most won’t know, what I didn’t know, is that Kennan felt his strategy significantly overapplied. As he conceived of it, containment was meant to protect […]

The special exemptions and rules given to Wal-Mart should really be a national shame. That a case concerning illegal child labor has ended with the transgressor getting a 15-day advance warning before any future inspection of its stores and a 10-day abatement period to rectify any abuses found during the prescheduled inspections is just flabbergasting. […]