YES, MORE HILLARY. Wrote a final piece about the “Middle Class Express,” just trying to give a sense of what the scenes were like. If I were not rushing under a deadline, I might have remembered to add how beautiful it was out there. Green and gold and perfect autumn sky, etc. But you’ll just [...]

I’ve been looking for some decent reporting about the situation in Basra, Iraq’s main port and the province that contains the large oil fields. It’s in the midst of a three-way gang war, among the Sadr and Hakim family militias, plus the Fadhila Party, which is Sadrist in orientation but doesn’t believe Muqtada is up [...]

As an obsessed Red Sox fan, I of course think Senator Chris Dodd’s attempt to pick up donors (and voters) by holding a raffle for a ticket to Game 6 of the ALCS at Fenway is borderline genius. But even discounting for bias, the scheme is very clever. After all, the Connecticut senator’s best (and [...]

Lots of commentary about the Congressional Democrats “folding” on important issues the past few days. For the record, I agree with those, like Dean Baker at Tapped, who think the Democrats should have tried to rectify a loophole that allows private equity fund managers to have their profits–in effect, their salaries–taxed as standard income (35%) [...]

Some thoughts: Fred Thompson was a piece of furniture. His answer about how to save social security was gobbledygook. He seemed to be saying that you save it by indexing it…but that doesn’t address how you find the money to pay for it. Certainly, as a Republican, you couldn’t ever, ever, like, raise t—-, to [...]

Blogs–and especially conservative ones–are abuzz this morning over Mitt Romney’s answer in yesterday’s debate on whether he would have to ask Congress before taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities: ROMNEY: You sit down with your attorneys and tell you what you have to do, but obviously the president of the United States has to do what’s [...]