Ezra Klein

By Ezra You know, maybe we could just ship the whole family over there to pad out the surge. They, after all, seem not only sanguine, but genuinely eager, to aid in the war effort. Particularly as a new GAO report (pdf) reveals that the Department of Defense is opposing the VA’s outreach to physically […]

(Posted by John.) Stuart Staniford has followed up last week’s announcement that Saudi oil production has peaked with another post, this one aggressively defending the hypothesis that the decline in production is involuntary. That is, the Saudis have not cut production deliberately, we’re seeing their production hit the limits of geology, technology, and time.

by Stephen of the Thinkery St. Pete has broken my heart. I was just barely 6 months old when Domenici took office. There’s some family friends, good partisan Democrats, who have worked for Domenici. When I took a trip to DC as a teenager and visited Domenici, my parents were as excited about that as […]

I mainly agree with Matt’s interpretation of the movie, which is actually much more interesting for its homoeroticism than for any political content. If my choices for interpretive box were “gay snuff porn” and “complex political allegory,” I’d definitely choose the former. Indeed, i think it’s fairly interesting that the producers and studio were comfortable […]

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf In 2004, New York Times writer Alessandra Stanley described Fox as “the conservative cable network”, and Fox immediately called for a retraction. If you want the money, power, and influence that comes from being a network with a broad audience, you can’t let yourself be regarded as the provider of […]

Some great paragraphs from Chait: ‘This is not Luke Skywalker here,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), discussing his friend and Senate colleague John McCain’s second run for the presidency. “This is a totally different campaign.” Graham was looking for a way to reassure his fellow conservatives that they no longer had anything to fear from […]

by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math Most of the action on the U.S. Attorney firings has centered around Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM), but in addition, the office of Rep. Richard Hastings (R-WA) has landed in the mix. Hastings Chief of Staff, Ed Cassidy, called Washington State USA John McKay to […]

This is the clearest distillation of the union ethos I’ve ever seen:

From McSweeney’s: After explaining my plan to my seatmates, I caught the attention of the bowler. I gave the signal, and the man at the head of our bench leapt into the air and crouched down again, followed by the second and third and so on. When we had finished, we started over. The bowler […]

Tony Karon wonders if we’re going to go to war with Iran. Increasingly, I think not, if only because the administration doesn’t have near the political capital to support such a venture. When Iraq was being debate, the fault line where support turned to opposition came part way through the Democratic coalition, the Republicans were […]