Sometimes an illustrious talking head is able to break through the noise with either a Big Idea or a Big Takedown or a Big Something or Other to distinguish him- or herself from all the rest. Sometimes it’s because what you wrote riled the other side; sometimes it riles your...

President Obama surprised few when he nominated his Solicitor General, Elena Kagan, for the Supreme Court on Monday.

The debates orbiting around her are notable not for knee-jerk Republican obstinacy—as with the absurd charges that Sonia Sotomayor wasn’t qualified for the Bench—but for the serious clanging of camponili from the...

After a year focused on health care, procedure and polling, the House’s passage of HR 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, late Sunday night clearly alleviated a great amount of strain from Democratic leaders and the wider media. Both President Obama and the Democratic leadership in the House...

The election of Republican Scott Brown in the Massachusetts special election last week has caused no shortage of hand wringing, crystal ball smashing, and umbrage from Democrats. Republicans are jubilant; with forty-one cloture-killing votes, they can more effectively not govern this country, stalling for time and seats while the country...

Sarah Palin recently nabbed the spotlight in another news cycle regarding her upcoming speech at the National Tea Party Convention. Politico reported that the ex-Governor rakes in “$100,000 for each speech she delivers, though she gives a $75,000 discount for West Coast appearances,” and has “reportedly waived her...

Some of my friends have expressed an odd sense of mourning as 2009 winds down the 00s, and frankly I hadn’t even thought of it as the end of a decade—just another year.

The past 10 years carried me from 15 to 25, and so for better and for worse...

John M. Barry’s exhaustively researched The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History is full of the sort of statistics that, when read on the page, scarcely seem able to convey the atmosphere of death and desperation of that time period. The H1N1 flu...

The push toward health care reform entered into a new phase this week. Senate Democrats struck an as-yet undefined deal on the public option, essentially dissolving it with mandated non-profit insurance options and the lowering of the age for Medicare eligibility from 65 to 55. Though the Congressional Budget Office...

The recent back and forth, they-said-we-said between the CIA and Congress over unknown classified intelligence programs is another example of a Congress that simply flounders from one issue to the next. Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic gamely summarized the situation (emphasis mine):

"Because the executive branch retains a stranglehold...

Leave it crusty media guru Nicholas Carr to dig up obscure quotes related to writing and journalism. Via Carr's Rough Type, a doozy from French poet and bureaucrat Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine who, in an 1831 letter, had this to say:

Before this century shall run...

The Democratic Party, best known for its self-destruction and infighting, has found itself at the end run of across-the-board electoral victories in 2006 and 2008 and opposite a marginalized opposition party in a lather of directionless ire. The political environment is less like the era of LBJ and more that...

Public opinion polling is a maddening fact of life for anyone who follows politics. Polls come with cross tabs, tracking numbers and margins of error. It is also a reality that pundits can find, regardless of their views, poll numbers reflecting their particular argument. While some polling groups are more...

Perhaps the best chance for a real third party in American politics lies in a hypothetical union between Blue Dog Democrats and Centrist Republicans -- they certainly share almost the same amount of scrutiny and criticism from either side of the aisle, and sometimes the bullied rally together to defeat...

I could go for a steak. Or eggs. Or steak and eggs and bacon and mashed potatoes and mac and cheese. On a bun. Anything from this blog, really.

Errol Morris’ spots for Miller High Life are to blame, really. You can (as I did) watch all 80...

In a recent piece in The Daily Beast, Michael Lind offers a solid blueprint for a liberal nightmare: Rising populist sentiment in the working class base of the Democratic Party could very well cost the Left both its agenda and even a second term for President Obama. A...

A week or so ago I wrote a blog post summing up the arguments surrounding the possible creation of an arts czar/culture minister. I came out in favor of senior staff-level liaison for the various arts, humanities and culture entities in and around the government. The arts and...

For this to-the-hilt liberal, “Libertarianism in the Age of Obama” seemed like a shady name for the talk Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, the top brass over at Reason Magazine, were slated to give via The Modernist Society (think hipsters, alcohol and more hipsters). But as a now...

I can safely say the breadth of the 2008 election, more than anything else during my 24-year span on this earth, brought me into a political consciousness. And while I am now an Obama supporter, I found myself keying into America’s political debate well before I was fully aware of...

The US Congress has once again delayed issuing a bailout of America’s auto industry to the tune of $14 billion. Regardless of where you stand with Detroit, what makes this situation disheartening is the fact that it’s simply one piece in the growing knot of economic, domestic and foreign policies...

Let's calm down.

Perhaps the best indication of Obama's promising transition is the fact that ideolgoues on the left and right are tired of being short changed. While keeping major progressive reforms such as health care, the economy and Iraq in his sites, the President-elect's choices for his administration have...