Ezra Klein

Zoe Vanderwolk has emerged out of retirement to defend Larry Summers. I’d do some quoting but her comments really deserve to be read in full, they’re the best I’ve seen on the issue in weeks. Worth noting is that Zoe is a female statistics major at Harvard, if she wasn’t around to weigh in on […]

Dean’s got it. That, at least, is how it looks, with the only potential obstacle being some bizarre Fowler-led revolution, which I’m just not seeing. Beyond the race and into the reactions, Pelosi and Reid would probably do well to refrain from kneecapping the party’s titular head just days before the votes come in. He’s […]

My inbox, on any given day, contains The Nation advisory, a dispatch from The Boston Review, and a host of link requests and post pointers. And I love and honor them all. But I’m surprised that my mailbox doesn’t contain the same. I know, for instance, that The Washington Monthly sends each issue to every […]

I’m rapidly losing patience with the “Dems need to stand for something” trope, the one usually offered by kindly conservatives in the context of well-meaning advice. This week, the guidance was proffered by QandO’s Dale Franks, and it’s springboard is a Christian Science Monitor editorial that worries itself sick over the Reid-led move towards opposition […]

• A tad aged, but Kung Fu Monkey misses Republicans. • Jeanne d’Arc preaches it. • Mark Schmitt comes out for Rosenberg, and makes the point that net-savvy isn’t the sole or even primary attribute needed. Is he sure? • Henry hooks Easterbrook’s Collapse review up to the Insight Machine and returns with this: It […]

Paul Waldman’s distillation of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ new report is a must for anyone wanting a reminder of the great good unions do their members (good to the tune of a 20-25% increase in salary). As for the canard that unions stifle innovation and choke economies, take a peek at the top 10 […]

Brad Plumer explains how a Democratic bill becomes a law.

Somewhere in Mother Jones’s impossible to navigate archives, Brad Plumer writes: it might not be the end of the world if democracy in the Middle East gave rise to Islamic governments, as many have feared. Eventually, these leaders have to keep the country running smoothly, and they need to answer to voters. An overly-zealous and […]

Tucker Foehl points out this interview with Naomi Klein. Her thoughts on the anti-war movement, the state of Iraq, the failure of the left, and basically everything else are worth reading in full, but this caught my eye: So what the Republican Party has done is that it has co-branded with other powerful brands — […]

• The world has an oil problem, but the best solution may be the doomsday scenario of a sharp and irrevocable rise in oil prices. At least, so long as it happens before India and China accelerate into huge dependency on cheap oil. • The president has a problem with his speeches, mainly, that they […]