Ezra Klein

Over at The Washington Post, Dan Balz has a slightly alarmist article on the leftward drift that Dean’s chairmanship, and the party’s new reliance on grassroots donors, might provoke. Standard stuf, to be sure, but he makes an interesting strategic point midway through: As Dean takes the helm as party chairman, Democrats now face a […]

You owe it to yourself to read Riverbend’s wrenching post on what the constitutional codification of shari’a law means for Iraqi women: “And is Iran so bad?” He finally asked. Well no, Abu Ammar, I wanted to answer, it’s not bad for *you* – you’re a man… if anything your right to several temporary marriages, […]

Does anybody else think Ben Nelson sounds like he’s one close election away from switching parties? Would you ever consider becoming a Republican? Somebody said not long ago that people don’t always leave the party; the party leaves the people. So, recognizing that you never know what the future’s going to hold, what might happen, […]

Yes, that’s smart Republican strategy — enrage AARP: Taking its cues from the success of last year’s Swift boat veterans’ campaign in the presidential race, a conservative lobbying organization has hired some of the same consultants to orchestrate attacks on one of President Bush’s toughest opponents in the battle to overhaul Social Security. The lobbying […]

As Kevin noticed last week, there are two magazines packed into every issue of The Economist. There’s the smart, savvy magazine that doesn’t let its ideology get in the way of informing you, and then there’s the magazine that talks about George W. Bush. That magazine, in stark contrast to its world-weary housemate, views the […]

This is Ezra writing — thanks to Chris for doing such a wonderful job in my absence. He gets 50 blog points, redeemable for poorly constructed prizes at the counter. Well, it has been fun. I want to thank Ezra for the opportunity to make a fool of myself for fourty eight hours. And, like […]

Matt Yglesias and Julie Saltman are having words over whether or not George W. Bush is a real live homophobe or a closet, opportunistic, tolerant. I’m going to throw in with the latter view not only on instinct, but on evidence from Lanny Davis, former counsel to Bill Clinton and classmate to George W. Bush […]

I think the current debate concerning the mainstream media entirely misses the point. And yes, I’m about to channel Howard Beale. I’m going to break this in three sections. Some conservatives seem to think that the media fails society because it is too “liberal” and that the media promotes an agenda to discredit conservatives (anti-religious, […]

We face three current problems: 1) Television news outlets, in particular cable news outlets, try to receive higher ratings not by reporting the news, but by reporting news that they think the audience wants to hear. In order for a network news program to run in prime time, it invariably focuses on celebrities, diet tips, […]

What’s missing? We no longer have news coverage that actually informs our citizenry. The market seems to be promoting two things: unintelligent news coverage concerning events that has little or no effect on people’s lives but are titillating (high-profile trials, celebrity news, etc…) or news coverage that panders to their audience’s already existing political views. […]