Ezra Klein

By Jedmunds Jumping off of Neil’s post on parental consent laws below, which I think is essentially correct. Briefly, a child needs her parents’ permission to get a tattoo, because she doesn’t have a fundamental right to a tattoo. It’s a choice, if postponed, that isn’t going to irreparably damage the child. And before you […]

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math Contra Shakes, news that Senate Dems are picking themes for the 2006 election struck me as a good thing, and a sign that the quest to nationalize the elections is well underway. Shakes doesn’t like four of the five topics, including retirement security, because they’re Republican issues. Retirement […]

Shakes here… As the midterms draw ever nearer, Bush’s poll numbers are sinking like a snitch with cement blocked feet, providing the Dems with an opportunity to make some headway come election time. The electorate, however, still doesn’t seem entirely convinced that the Dems are the solution to their problems, and we routinely hear that […]

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math The New Republic has an absolutely riveting account [registration and/or subscription required?] of this year’s College Republican National Convention. For the first time in ages, there was a vigorous contest for the chairmanship, a 2-year, $75,000 a year salaried position (in contrast, the chair of the College Democrats […]

By Dr. Pepper of the Daily Pepper Back on August 2, I had a lot of fun comparing the fortunes of George Bush to those of his favorite baseball player: Rafael Palmeiro. Bush had won reelection (still hard to say those words) on an ad campaign that emphasized his physical fitness. Slate.com could even plausibly […]

By Ezra I love Eastern Standard Time. Love it. Back in the day*, I always forced myself to begin posting by 9am, now that same ethic lets me sleep till twelve. Back in the day, I had to get up fairly early on weekends to write, now, I can wait till the early afternoon and […]

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf Defenders of parental consent laws often compare abortion to tattooing, ear piercing, or any of the medical procedures for which many states require parental consent. They claim that if we require parental consent for a girl to get a tattoo, we should also require parental consent for an abortion. What […]

Eugene Robinson is trying too hard: Since the sky seems too angry to have a civil conversation, let’s seek answers in science and poetry. In two newly published studies, climatologists use graphs, formulas and carefully hedged sentences to explain how the interlocking phenomena that non-scientists call “global warming” may be turning little nuisance hurricanes into […]

This is fairly interesting. Via advertiser AltWeeklies, the Arkansas Times has an article on Mike Huckabee. It’s a dirty laundry piece, but some of it seems well able to stick, particularly the Dumond story, which strikes as Willie Horton but with an element of Clinton paranoia: Another issue sure to come up if Huckabee contends […]

David Ignatius has a totally bizarre op-ed today on why Americans have to stop desiring love from the rest of the planet because they just hate us no matter what we do — counterintuitive, no? Unfortunately, in order to get there, Ignatius had to pen the type of op-ed in which the world warps and […]