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Robert Gates, the CliffsNotes version
January 14, 2014
This week, former secretary of defense Robert Gates released a long and weirdly candid book on his years in that unpleasant job. His narrative is, how does one put this gently, uneven: long stretches of incisive analysis mixed evenly with tantrums about his enemies, who were all ...

Time to Play Deflection Bingo with Christie Defenders
January 13, 2014
So the governor of New Jersey constantly screams at people and employs staffers and cronies across the state who create multiday traffic jams for the pure bloodsport of vaguely defined revenge. So what? ask his (admittedly few) defenders in the wake of the limply titled ...

Someone Please Find Some New Politicians for Virginia
January 10, 2014
Virginia is a big booming state where everyone has lots of money, except for the people who don’t. Most of that money is concentrated in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, where the federal contracting and lobbying boom has rained gold. It’s good to be rich, right, ...

A Minor Speed Bump on the Road to a Christie Presidency
January 09, 2014
So this story about Chris Christie and the George Washington Bridge is pretty funny, hmm? Oh, it’s delicious. But what does it mean? Everyone wants to know! To recap: In early September, the New Jersey side of the Port Authority shut down a few lanes of the George ...

When in “Doubt”, “Strategize”
January 09, 2014
There’s just one small thing missing from the news stories that have come pouring out about the soon-to-be-published book by former defense secretary Robert Gates. But to find the omission, start with the thing all of the stories do have: the revelation that President ...

A Mid-Term Election Will Chase Those Doldrums Away
January 08, 2014
Frank Luntz is depressed. The infamous GOP “word guru” is fed up with life. What’s wrong with America’s beloved focus group maven? Luntz is typically described as a “wordsmith,” as his most well-known function involves giving Republicans the ...

New Data Proves ACA Made of Candy!
January 07, 2014
You’re sitting in an airplane, and you suddenly hear the pilot’s amplified and disembodied voice. Look, he says, we don’t have a cockpit in this thing, with all those dials and knobs and whatchamawhosit, and there’s no place for me to look out a window ...

A Place to Say “I Don’t”
January 06, 2014
So . . . plantation weddings are a thing now. Or rather, they have been a thing for years, but they’re back in the news after a wildly shortsighted attempt by folk singer Ani DiFranco to host some kind of inspirational songwriting workshop at a plantation. Perhaps you remember ...

Fun and Games Ahead in 2014
January 02, 2014
If you thought 2013 was unpleasant, remember this one thing: at least it didn’t drop a mid-term election on us. This year’s big political event can’t be stopped, and will begin to take up twenty-three hours a day on the cable news channels no later than ...

The Year in Political Idiocy
December 30, 2013
On September 16th, hours after a man had killed a dozen or more people a couple of miles away at the Washington Navy Yard, a middle-aged fellow in shorts and a t-shirt lit a couple of firecrackers and threw them over the White House fence. An eyewitness likened his action, and ...

Pot, Meet Kettle
December 27, 2013
Self-awareness: it helps. Sort-of-recently discussing the contemporary political scene with Politico’s Glenn Thrush, Obama administration macher John Podesta was sufficiently obtuse to warn that his boss faced “a cult worthy of Jonestown in charge of one of the houses of ...