Speaking of orthodoxy, heterodoxy, and their relative rewards: I’ve had occasion to recall something Yglesias wrote about a year back, responding to one of my own posts about the popular charge that insufficiently strident conservatives must just be venal climbers hoping to curry favor with liberals: I think this situation is rather more complicated than […]

[Read more →]

Sez they: The loss of two people, even high ranking ones, might not seem too brutal but for the website’s recent history: it lost a quarter of its staff last November, along with a closely-aligned development executive at parent company CondéNet; then in April it lost more staff, including managing editor Leander Kahney, two other […]

[Read more →]

Does Jeff Sessions phone up Kim Jong Il late at night to thank him for leaving some small sliver of doubt about who is the worst living human being on the planet?

[Read more →]

Given that my current idée fixe seems to be the depressing rarity with which people actually understand the views of people with different ideologies, I was pleased to see Tyler Cowen’s attempt at a sympathetic summary of what he sees as an intelligent progressive’s credo—one that at least some progressives apparently recognize as a fair […]

[Read more →]

My posting this cartoon should in no way be construed as an admission that I identify in any way with the character depicted. Because I am, in fact, a very serious grown-up writer person.  Who may possibly also dig Batman.

[Read more →]

I’ll have plenty to say soon enough, of course, but in the interim, The Washington Independent has lots of solid coverage.

[Read more →]

Earlier today, I was out poking around a DC vintage clothing shop, where I found a jacket I really liked—tuxedo style with satiny black lapels and covered in dark blue floral print.  I picked it up, and the shortly thereafter realized I was late to an event for which (having forgotten about it) I was […]

[Read more →]

Despite fairly serious reservations, I’m leaning Obamaward in the upcoming election. Still, I think it’s absolutely fair for Republicans to focus on his relative lack of experience in making their case against him. But it does seem that you can’t simultaneously do that, and then say things like this when the question turns to Sarah […]

[Read more →]

Thomas Frank unleashes a volley of overstuffed, Laphamesque prose to kvetch about the creation of a Milton Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago. Frank graciously allows that, since we’ve got K-Mart chairs of marketing, it might not be totally beyond the pale for a school to similarly honor a Nobel Prize–winning former professor. But […]

[Read more →]

The architects of the bogus FISA compromise have, for understandable reasons, scheduled a vote on the bill almost immediately after its unveiling, limiting the ability of the broad coalition opposed to the legislation to effectively mobilize or make use of the impressive amount of cash they’ve raised from online donations. Presumably Steny Hoyer has been […]

[Read more →]