Ezra Klein

Shakes here… When asked by George Stephanopoulos to respond to the assertion of administration critics “who say that the administration’s actions have unleashed, have helped unleash the very hostilities you hoped to contain,” what was Condi’s response? A. “This is an indeed an embarrassing but undeniable consequence of our foreign policy.” B. “Between you and […]

(Posted by John.) You all remember that, right? The foreign policy that said states who harbor terrorists are as bad as the terrorists themselves, and deserve nothing less than unilateral, pre-emptive war? Unsurprisingly, it turns out that this policy was a bad idea.

Ze’ev Schiff often reflects the military intelligence in Israel, so it’s worth taking his assessment of Iran’s role in the conflict seriously: Well-placed sources in Israel argue that Iran is behind the decision to attack Israel and that Tehran influenced the timing of the Hezbollah attack in which two soldiers were abducted last Wednesday. Iran […]

The other day, I argued that journamalism wasn’t hard. But it sure can be dishonest. Anne Kornblut should either be fired, or should have to write a public apology explaining how she misinterpreted Hillary Clinton’s statements and why no one checked her version against the transcript. Kornblut, remember, is a top writer for a top […]

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf In the course of pitching Edwards to a professor of mine who’s a conservation biologist, I happened upon this article: Edwards has supported drinking water protection, public landsprotection and opposes drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refugeas well as drilling on public lands, national monuments, and coastal areas. Drilling on […]

(Posted by John.) Dave Roberts has an excellent, excellent interview at Gristmill with Jeff Goodell that you should all read. (Full disclosure: I’m a sometimes contributor to Gristmill as well.) Goodell is the author of the book Big Coal, and the interview is extremely wide-ranging. Some excerpts below:

(Posted by John.) William Kristol apparently wants to be the alpha and omega of the Iraq war: He advocated the disastrous policies that got America to where it is today, and is now advocating a disastrous policy with Israel and Lebanon that would ensure the Iraqi misadventure ended as badly as possible. (Link via Glenn […]

The lines seem to fall in roughly the fashion you’d expect: Ministers at the meeting traded barbs over whether Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah bore any responsibility for the escalation in violence that followed its capture of two Israeli soldiers. The Saudi foreign minister appeared to be leading a camp of ministers criticizing the guerrilla group’s […]

(Posted by John.) via Atrios and a bunch of other people, you really do need to read this Harpers piece about the age-old Republican fetish for blaming the people who either won the war (in the case of WWII and Yalta) or who had no power over the end of it (Vietnam.) Some longish thoughts […]

I agree with literally everything Kevin says here, particularly #3.