Category: General

$720 billion for that drug benefit through 2015? The cost was already too high at $400 billion.

I like this thoughtful, long expose by Marty Sieff on what Dean’s takeover of the Democratic Party helm means for Hillary Clinton’s political life. I’m much more of a believer in Dean than most of my friends on both sides of the aisle (and even those in the middle).

The London Review of Books will soon publish one of the best pieces I have read on the politics of the next Supreme Court appointments. Bruce Ackerman basically takes a subtle, game-theoretic approach to thinking through the likely set of choices Bush might make and considers how Democrats and progressives should respond.

When Senators Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) and Representatives Harold Ford (D-Tn.), Thomas Petri (R-Wis.), Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), and Phil English (R-Pa.) are all on the same bill in this humorless Congress where bipartisanship is rare, we should probably see what’s drawing them together.

Chris Nelson’s Nelson Report is just too good not post in its near entirety. (I will not italicize for easier reading) He gives Condi credit on her quick action on the Israeli-Palestinian standoff, but then slams her on Iran and the administration’s absence of strategy regarding nuclear non-proliferation. Chris Nelson hits all the buttons: ***2….

Christopher Hitchens is clearly controversial and elicits either the deepest adoration from or seething hatred in people. We have enjoyed discussing big thoughts when we ran across each other at various birthday parties that went too late in Adams Morgan and Kalorama-ish homes in Washington.

About eighteen months ago, I was invited to a small dinner at the home of the German Deputy Chief of Mission in Washington, Peter Gottwald, who is a very good guy by the way but not someone who seems to enjoy debate around his dinner table.

I told you I knew nothing of football. I went to high school in Japan. Sumo we can discuss.

The National Bureau of Asian Research runs a really terrific list-serve on Japan that covers Japanese political, historical, economic, and cultural questions in (sometimes excruciating but nonetheless interesting) detail. To subscribe, click here. This morning, an entry by my former Japanese politics professor Hans Baerwald came over the line.

I’m told that the Superbowl is on today. I haven’t seen Matthew Yglesias post on the big game today — but his earlier exposes on big guys chasing a ball in the cold have intimidated me regarding my ignorance of the game. Jim Plunkett and his wife once gave me a Plunkett/L.A.