Ed Kilgore

If watching the House Benghazi! Committee questioning of Hillary Clinton yesterday, or following it via the excellent updates here from Martin Longman and Nancy LeTourneau, didn’t convince you the whole enterprise has gone badly awry, consider the views of Erick Erickson, who called the hearing “a waste of time” and a “carnival road show of […]

Zydeco musician Boozoo Chavis was born on this day in 1930. Here he is performing his first big hit, “Paper in My Shoe.”

Thanks to Martin Longman and Nancy LeTourneau for keeping us apprised of developments in today’s Benghazi! Committee hearing. We’re experimenting with different ways of varying the news coverage here at PA, so please bear with the occasional timing issues. Having said that: Nancy’s still watching the hearings, and Lord knows when they will conclude. So […]

I was reading Anthony Faiola’s piece at WaPo over the tense deliberations of the Roman Catholic Church’s Bishops’ Synod on the Family when I reached this jarring comparison: As the synod races toward a close, there has been a last-ditch push to find common ground that could at least open the door to policy alterations. […]

Marc Nozell/Flickr The New York Times‘ Patrick Healy and Jonathan Martin have dutifully penned the obligatory column on the wooing of Joe Biden’s devoted followers by other candidates now that he’s finally foresworn a candidacy. For the most part, they are naturally falling into line for Hillary Clinton, though at least one is quoted as […]

The only thing I’d add to Martin’s reporting on Hillary Clinton’s testimony to the Benghazi! Committee is that her early and pointed reference to the Beirut bombings wasn’t just (as Martin put it) a matter of going “right for the throat.” It was pretty close to a blasphemous statement from the POV of Reagan-worshiping Republicans. […]

Gage Skidmore/Flickr Yesterday I discussed Mike Murphy’s elaborate everything’s-under-control interview with Sasha Issenberg that presented Team Bush’s official take on the Republican presidential nominating contest. In short, Murphy argued with a supreme self-confidence bordering on arrogance that everything we’ve seen up until now is a complete illusion disguising the imminent victory of his candidate on […]

This will be far, far down the list of Google searches involving Hillary Clinton today, but it’s important to note that she is showing signs of understanding one of the biggest policy challenges of our era: the renewed threat of corporate monopoly power created by industry consolidations. In a column at Quartz that appeared late […]

Tony Alter/Flickr So at some point last night, after it became apparent he wasn’t going to get the support necessary for a formal endorsement as Speaker by the House Freedom Caucus, which he had demanded the day before, Paul Ryan decided a “supermajority” was enough and declared victory. This isn’t 100% arbitrary; it is clear […]

The long-awaited appearance of Hillary Clinton before the House Benghazi! Committee occurs today, in what many are expecting to be a “marathon” session beginning at 10:00 AM EDT. Since this could be a pivotal political event for the cycle, and because following it isn’t terribly compatible with blogging about other topics, we’ve decided to offer […]