President Obama’s high-speed rail program has taken a lot of abuse because it isn’t just funding true high-speed rail; it’s also accelerating and improving service on moderate-speed trains. OK, guilty as charged. The program’s actual name is “High-Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail.” And now that Obama has redistributed the …
Viewpoint
There Shouldn’t Be an Expensive Home Entitlement
David Streitfeld of The New York Times is a terrific reporter (just ask Joe Klein). For several years now, he has done terrific work on the slow and painful collapse of the housing bubble. This piece, which leads the Times today, strikes me as good news—even though it is going to cause some heartache for folks trying to buy and sell in …
Leaving Afghanistan
I agree with Les Gelb’s assessment that we can be out of most combat operations in Afghanistan by the beginning of 2013. (In fact, I made a similar proposal last January.) Here’s how it would work:
Florida Loses Its Mind. Again.
If you think that Snooki has relationship problems because of overly strict drinking laws, or that the Bernie Madoff story is a cautionary tale about overly intrusive financial regulation, you’re probably a Florida politician. Because the geniuses who run the state have decided that its economic distress is the result of overly strict …
After Birds Point: The Army Corps’ Missouri Floodway Boondoggle
On Monday, I temporarily suspended my longstanding jihad against the Army Corps of Engineers to defend the agency’s controversial decision to blow up a Mississippi River levee and flood 130,000 acres of Missouri farmland. The …
About the Photos
I’m torn between basic human curiosity, journalistic voyeurism…and my better angels, which tell me that any death photos of Osama bin Laden will make life more dangerous for the thousands of American soldiers and diplomats, as well as untold numbers of private citizens, both businesspeople and tourists, who spend time in iffy places overseas.
Dept. of Stretched Analogies: Supermarkets Aren’t Schools
I imagine most writers have made the mistake of falling in love with an analogy and stretching it way past the breaking point. A sportswriter I knew long ago went on for several paragraphs comparing a man’s face to the map of Florida. I know I’ve committed this felony plenty of times. In fact, Mickey Kaus once did me the bracing …
Enhanced Baloney
I am sitting here watching Congressman Peter King lie through his teeth on CNN about the role of torture in the capture and death of Osama bin Laden. King is insisting that the initial information about the Bin Laden couriers …
The Hazards of Punditry Cont.
I thought this column by Charles Krauthammer was a lazy piece of work last Friday, with “Bomber Boy”–as George W. Bush called him–flaying his dead horse of unipolarity:
Osama Gone, And Now…
This is, of course, a great day for the world, especially the U.S., our special operations teams and our President, whose crisp and appropriate decision-making when it came to the use of force was once again on display here. I …
Political Vindication in Obama’s Bin Laden Speech
This is an exciting day–I can’t remember ever feeling jubilant about someone’s death before–and it’s probably lame to start dissecting the politics. Especially since the basic politics are no-duh obvious: This is a really great day for President Obama. But since this is supposed to be a blog about politics, and the dissections have …
After Bin Laden: A Stronger America
President Obama walked down an empty corridor to the East Room of the White House on Sunday night to announce the killing of Osama bin Laden. It was like he was walking out of a forgotten dream. Remember that quest we began …
Changing the Dial
So the birther thing is kaput. That was easy. But the hijacking of the prevailing conversation in Washington by Republican extremists continues apace–in this case, abetted by elite establishment types (and especially by those high-minded Wall Streeters who gave you the Great Recession). And so, for the umpteenth time:
