Ross Douthat has discovered Barack Obama’s evil genius: What Obama does have, though, is an atmosphere of crisis and a massively-unpopular opposition party, which grants him an unparalleled political opportunity to pass whatever spending the Democratic Party likes, and damn the short-term cost...

Meet the new boss — same as the old boss: In a closely watched case involving rendition and torture, a lawyer for the Obama administration seemed to surprise a panel of federal appeals judges on Monday by pressing ahead with an argument for preserving state secrets originally developed by the ...

Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats passed an $819 billion “stimulus” package without a single Republican vote. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer at a news conference on the economic stimulus package. (Ruth Fremson/The New York Times) All but 11 Democrats voted for th...

As everyone knows by now, Bill Kristol’s last NYT column appeared yesterday. Aside from the italicized footer “This is William Kristol’s last column,” it was unremarkable.  Which, most observers on the Left and Right seem to agree, was something it had in common with most of Kri...

I hate to pick on Kevin Drum twice in a row, but my God is this the worst economic prescription you have read of late: The only sustainable source of consistent growth is rising median wages. The rich just don’t spend enough all by themselves. The flip side of this, of course, is that rich peo...

What better way to inaugurate the new blog site than to rant about a Kevin Drum post?  Drum posts this chart today from the NY Times showing a drop-off in the effective total tax rate (income+social security+other stuff) at very high income levels. Well, no freaking duh.    I suspect that this h...

Richard Cohen and Ezra Klein are very disturbed by Attorney General-designate Eric Holder’s role in Bill Clinton’s 11th hour pardoning of Marc Rich.  Kevin Drum finds Holder’s role “disturbing” but not disqualifying and hopes he’s learned his lesson. I’m by...

Nate Silver uses a combination of regression analysis and wild ass guesses drawn from limited information on challenged ballots to project that Al Franken will come out ahead by a mere 27 votes.  Kevin Drum, for one, is convinced. While I’m less enthralled by Silver’s savant status than...

This is the kind of thing that has made me absolutely nuts this primary cycle. Kevin Drum: Obama has been consistently good on domestic issues, but he's also been thoroughly mainstream. There's never been anything boldly innovative or risky about his domestic proposals. But that's OK. It's not 1932 ...