Ed Kilgore

A lot of the conservative carping we are hearing about Paul Ryan as he ascends to the House Speakership is interesting, to say the least. As conservative commentator Matt Lewis notes at the Daily Beast today, a lot of the same people were praising him to high heaven when he emerged as the great crafter […]

Recent events in Washington have unsettled old and comfortable assumptions about how the federal Legislative Branch functions and how it deals with Executive Branch and with the pressures associated with the party system. So if you are in Washington, you might consider attending an event at the R Street Institute tomorrow featuring some well-known figures—including […]

Gage Skidmore/Flickr Since virtually all Republican voters currently love Dr. Ben Carson (or so suggest his nearly unanimous positive approval ratings among GOPers), and conservative evangelical voters are particularly attracted to him, David Corn, one of the few writers exhibiting interest in the good doctor’s world view, wants to know if all those good Christian […]

Another technologically nightmarish bout with Skype during the BloggingheadsTV taping, but I think we may have produced something workable, though it involved Paul Glastris dropping out and Paul Waldman dropping into the picture. We’ll see. Here are some much simpler midday news/views treats: * Speaking of Paul Waldman, he has a useful piece at the […]

Marc Nozell/Flickr As you may recall, the remarkable feeding frenzy of media speculation over a Biden presidential run that he finally ended last week really begin with a August 1 Maureen Dowd column suggesting the late Beau Biden had all but extracted a near-death promise from his father to make a go of it. A […]

Michael Vadon/Wikimedia Commons Not being a political scientist, and thus not being required to subscribe to the widely-held academic belief that elite endorsements are the best indicator of success in a presidential nominating contest, I haven’t been breathlessly updating the lists of home-state electeds and House backbenchers signing on with this or that lucky candidate. […]

Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons While getting ready to tape this week’s edition of Washington Monthly’s show on Bloggingheads TV, I read a Friday column at the Plum Line from Paul Waldman, who will be our guest this week, about the dynamics of the current debt limit crisis. He convinced me we’re in a bigger crisis than […]

Gage Skidmore/Flickr The rumors have been surrounding Dr. Ben Carson’s campaign almost from the beginning: multiple unauthorized Super-PACs raising money using his name; a heavy, heavy investment in direct mail; some sketchy people in the picture. This all added up, arguably, to a presidential campaign at a high risk of becoming one of those scams […]

Gage Skidmore/Flickr If you have been following the intra-GOP brouhaha in the U.S. House semi-carefully, you probably realize that much of the conflict between Freedom Caucus bravos and the other Republicans has been over how much hysteria to expend on efforts to force presidential vetoes of prized legislation instead of letting their bills succumb to […]

Maggie Roche of the musical sister act The Roches turns 64 today. Here are Maggie, Terre and Suzzy performing my favorite tune of theirs, “The Hammond Song” in 1983.