Gregg Easterbrook is a columnist at Reuters, as well as a contributing editor of the Washington Monthly, The Atlantic, and The New Republic. He was a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution until 2009. His most recent book is Sonic Boom(Random House, 2011). Other books include The Progress Paradox (Random House, 2004), A Moment on the Earth (Penguin, 1996) and Beside Still Waters(Quill, 1999). He is married to Nan Kennelly, a U.S. diplomat. They have three children and live in Maryland.
Religious criminals belong in jail … Use Amazon to order an X47B … Nowhere to go by up
Fire Mary Barra Early last winter, the Justice Department fined Toyota $1.2 billion for failing to disclose a possible electronic defect that turned out not to exist. Shortly afterward, it became clear that General Motors had spent years covering up an all-too-real defect that, by the Reuters count, killed seventy-four people. If $1.2 billion was… Read more »
Who Would Obama Rather Run Against: Mitt or Newt?
Conventional wisdom says the Republican presidential nomination will go to Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich. This could change – don’t be surprised if it changes more than once. But suppose conventional wisdom proves correct. If you were Barack Obama, which would you rather run against? A follower of polls might say, “Of course Obama wants… Read more »
Fire Politics
The Senate just rejected President Barack Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on multimillionaires in order to “create or protect 400,000 jobs for teachers, firefighters, police officers and other first responders.” Whether the country needs more teachers and police is a fair question for debate. But firefighters? Firefighting is already featherbedded. With stricter building codes, built-in… Read more »
An Election to Anticipate
Tired of cookie-cutter political contests between very similar candidates? Then you’re going to like the upcoming race for one of the Senate seats in the late Ted Kennedy’s haunting grounds. Elizabeth Warren, best known for creating and fighting for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is hoping to challenge Republican incumbent Scott Brown. They’re both qualified,… Read more »
The Former Governor Factor
If you’re thinking the jumbled Republican presidential field does not matter because whomever gets the nomination can’t win – think again. A Republican could well take the White House in 2012. At this point in the 1992 election cycle, the elder George Bush held an 89 percent approval rating. Back then, Democratic figures including Mario… Read more »
