Ezra Klein

California’s politics are so screamingly dysfunctional that I long ago gave up any hope that they could be reformed. But a new proposition proposes to dynamite the system, and it looks to me as if it just might work. The only question: Can a ballot initiative to kill the special interests survive the campaign the […]

In continuing with health wonkery day, let’s turn to the judiciary’s rejection of Maryland’s fair share law. This is going to be a hard one, but liberals should probably celebrate today’s ruling that the Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) supersedes the Maryland law forcing Wal-Mart to pay into a health fund. ERISA allows for […]

So when does Israel stop? The International Committee of the Red Cross and other international aid agencies cited growing concern over the number of Lebanese civilians being displaced by the Israeli air campaign, particularly in the hard-hit villages and towns of southern Lebanon. The number forced to leave their homes by Wednesday was estimated at […]

Been awhile since we engaged in much top-grade health wonkery here, so today I’ll go over the recent haps. Consider it health wonkery day. First up is San Francisco, where the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a plan that would make SF the first city in the nation to offer comprehensive, universal care to everyone, […]

In what sort of moral philosophy does conducting research on unfeeling blastocysts slated for destruction rank as ethically off-limits while conducting research on feeling, sentient, higher-order animals is totally fine? I recognize that some folks see the very potentiality for humanhood as a categorical difference from man to animal, but really, thinking about it, would […]

Just how well could a Rove trick work if a Rove trick could work well? My guess is we’ll find out later today, when Bush uses his single veto to condemn stem cell research to at least a couple more years of stagnation. The conventional political analysis here is that this is unpopular, that even […]

This is interesting. How Adams Morgan got its name: The neighborhood was given its name during D.C.’s school desegregation in the 1950s, when the all-white John Quincy Adams School and the all-black Thomas P. Morgan School were both integrated. Adams School still exists on 19th Street just north of the Washington Hilton, but Morgan School, […]

Echidne’s right, that would be a great movie. Couldn’t you see Owen Wilson just killing the role?

Julian Sanchez adds one more data point to the array of instances where the political opinions of book-promoting linguists should be viewed skeptically. It’s testament to the narrowness of Numberg’s analysis that he searched not for common liberal attacks on conservatives, but for the precise inverses of conservative attacks on liberals. That, of course, isn’t […]

I’ve long responded to the constant article positing a Dean/Emanuel split with the hope that someone would take a breath from chronicling Emanuel’s desire for more money and actually evaluate Dean’s 5–state strategy. Happily, US News’ Dan Gilgoff did exactly that. “Here’s what the front line of Howard Dean’s revolution looks like.” he writes, “two […]