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Same Song, New Tempo from Politico
November 19, 2013
A few months ago, Politico announced an aggressive move into “long-form journalism,” that great mystical chimera of the magazine editor’s imagination: an animal often hunted, but rarely sighted. For people familiar with the site’s editorial ...

Game Change 2016: Whichever Candidate Polls Best
November 18, 2013
May I just admit that I loved the new Mark Halperin and John Heilemann 2012 election gossip book? It’s embarrassing, I know! I made fun of the title, Double Down: Game Change 2012, as much as anyone when it was announced. And the title remains funny — as does each ...

Reporting from the Institute of Made Up Institutes
November 15, 2013
What might be the top buzzword inside the Beltway? There are so many candidates! “Spox.” “Double Down.” “Save the Middle Class.” “Money.” “War.” Ooh—what about “Strategic Communications” (a.k.a. unlicensed ...

Take Me Out to the Suburbs
November 13, 2013
The Atlanta Braves’ long nightmare is finally over. The baseball team has announced that it will move out of its downtown stadium, Turner Field, after a whopping . . . 16 years . . . and move to the greener pastures of suburban Cobb County. “That’s a shock,” ...

Big Brother Might Be Watching
November 12, 2013
New “Intellistreets” street lights being installed in Las Vegas will have video screens, because the one thing we definitely don’t have enough of in our day-to-day lives is video screens. But the streetlights won’t just talk. They’ll also have the ...

Would Our Nation’s Not Yet President Lie to You?
November 11, 2013
Chris Christie was just reelected governor of New Jersey, and now he’s out on tour! Of the terrible Sunday morning political talk shows, that is, where his intention is to brag about said reelection. And my goodness, what a suave fellow. He can make you believe anything. I ...

The Act
November 06, 2013
The boy grows up in Toledo in the fifties, where his father works at the tire plant and for the union as a shop steward. He does well in school, studies hard, and on the advice of a teacher applies to a bunch of small, East Coast schools. His father thinks he should go to Ohio ...

America Hearts Churchill’s Giant Bust
November 06, 2013
Like Elizabeth II, Winston Churchill seems to be a British personage Americans give more of a shit about than actual Britons do. Last week, in the capital—the United States capital, that is—American leaders gathered to fête the dead old Tory with the unveiling of a massive ...

Throwing the Constitution Out With the Bath Water
November 05, 2013
In an essay so deep and worthy that it just showed up up in two helplessly respectable places in the space of a few days, Alex Seitz-Wald sighs a world-weary sigh and tosses the United States Constitution overboard. “Our Constitution isn’t going to make it,” he ...