Ed Kilgore

I looked over at the headlines at Ten Miles Square this morning and saw a post from Martin Longman entitled “KY and LA Elections Spell Trouble For the GOP,” and thought “Huh! Louisiana? That’s some hopeful thinking.” Turns out, though, Martin was just ahead of me in reading some political news, in this case a […]

The New York Times‘ series on the use of binding arbitration to “privatize” disputes usually resolved by the courts continues today with a piece (again by Michael Corkery and Jessica Silver-Greenberg) focusing on the use of arbitration requirements which substitute religious for secular law. A sample: For generations, religious tribunals have been used in the […]

Kentucky’s state elections are the most prominent event being held today. But another high-profile ballot test is in Ohio, where a pot legalization initiative is on tap. But this isn’t just any old pot legalization initiative, as German Lopez tells us in a Vox “explainer: Ohio is already an unexpected candidate for full legalization compared […]

Gage Skidmore/Flickr Juxtapose these two data points if you will. The first is from NBC News’ First Read: Why Ben Carson isn’t just your new GOP frontrunner; he’s a strong GOP frontrunner That’s our takeaway from our new NBC/WSJ poll. Not only is Carson leading the Republican horserace with the highest percentage yet in our […]

Gage Skidmore/Flickr I realize news outlets (and for that matter, news-cycle blogs) have to go with what they’ve got, but I hope a few eyes were rolling over the weekend at the Great Debate Debate of 2015, said to be a rallying point for the vast Republican presidential field that was “rebelling” against CNBC and […]

Lap steel guitar virtuoso Sonny Rhodes is 75 today. Here he is performing “Black Cat Bone” in Lima, Ohio in 2009.

Good thing for non-Kentuckians about Kentucky elections: the polls close really early (6:00 PM local time, or 3:00-4:00 PDT). Here are some remains of the day: * At TNR Cecilia Hyunjung Mo explains the massive recent tilt to Democrats among Asian-American voters. * At the Prospect Paul Starr discusses shocking new data on the premature […]

Tomorrow Kentucky is holding its gubernatorial election for the successor to Democratic governor Steve Beshear, and Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway is narrowly favored by the polling averages. That’s remarkable because Kentucky is a red state that’s arguably trending redder. Presidential races aside (the closest election in this century was in 2000, when Bush won […]

Back in June, we discussed the need for “ban the box” laws that prohibit the categorical exclusion of non-violent offenders from employment opportunities, often for the rest of their lives, in the context of Gilad Edelman’s review of a book on the subject. We noted then that sixteen states and many local governments have adopted […]

kelly/Flickr It’s a reductio ad absurdum case, to be sure, but there is an important point of clarification coming from a dispute in Texas over parents who aren’t teaching their home-schooled kids a whole lot because they all expect to get snatched up in the clouds with Jesus pretty soon. Seriously. Here’s the story from […]