Free Republic

Things go wrong in government. Sometimes it’s just bad luck. Sometimes it’s rank incompetence. Sometimes it’s criminal wrongdoing. Most of the time you never hear about it. Or, if you do hear about it, the media eventually gets bored talking about it (see warming, global). But every so often an instance of government wrongdoing sprouts wings and becomes something quite exciting: A political scandal. The crucial ingredient for a scandal is the prospect of high-level White House involvement and wide political repercussions. Government wrongdoing is boring. Scandals can bring down presidents, decide elections and revive down-and-out political parties. Scandals can...

For listeners of my radio show, you’ll know that most Fridays we do a segment called Ezra Klein is an Idiot. We don’t just call out the fallacies of Klein during the segment, however. We include liberals like Al Sharpton and John Boehner too, who both recently bemoaned the effects of sequester on our economy. Our real problems of course aren’t the dramatic and manufactured small things like sequester or the “fiscal cliff� that are made up by Washington wonks to keep the gravy train rolling. They are much more complex, and more dangerous.      It takes a long time to...

Ezra Klein has unwittingly offered a telling insight into the liberal mind. On Morning Joe today, the liberal Washington Post blogger actually argued that quintessential big government programs like massive involvement in housing finance and the imposition of a carbon tax aren't "progressive" but simply "good policy." Joe Scarborough pushed back saying Klein's notion of "good policy" was only so for those who share his liberal mindset. View the video here.

Silver doesn’t quite go so far as to say that it makes a brokered convention or a late-breaking establishment candidate likely, but I’m willing to go that far. There’s just no way the Republican establishment lets Gingrich become their nominee. As Andrew Sullivan pointed out today, you’re already seeing the anti-Gingrich mobilization among conservative thought leaders: Here’s George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Brooks, Ross Douthat, Tom Coburn and Ann Coulter, just for starters. There’s this Politico story about all the Washington Republicans who hate Gingrich. Now, I think it’s more likely that this mobilization leads to a Romney win then...

Newsman Ezra Klein is making news again. (See "An Election Season Proposal," 9/10/11) [quote] Klein is famous for starting the secretive political-media members-only clique of some 400 journalists, political operatives, White House staffers, think tankers and lefty economists such as Paul Krugman known as JournoList. Until it was shut down by exposure from the Daily Caller and BigGovernment.com, the JournoList group discussed talking points to create a media echo chamber, tried to falsely smear opponents as racists, and cooked up ways to take Fox News off the air. [end quote] Now he's creating a "new paradigm," at the Washington Post:...

Media Bias: In the early days of the Gulf War, pundits marveled at the specter of Iraqi troops surrendering to journalists. Well, now it's even worse: Journalists are giving the Democratic Party its talking points. The Washington Post's 27-year-old star blogger Ezra Klein has been called "whiz kid," and "brat packer" and a "wunderkind." Now he's actually advising Democratic chiefs of staff, briefing them last week about the supercommittee in Congress, according to a report by Fishbowl-DC on MediaBistro.com. That means the relatively novel idea that bloggers can be placed on an equal footing with reporters in congressional briefings has...

What’s also important, but not evident, on this chart is that Obama’s major expenses were temporary — the stimulus is over now — while Bush’s were, effectively, recurring. The Bush tax cuts didn’t just lower revenue for 10 years. It’s clear now that they lowered it indefinitely, which means this chart is understating their true cost. Similarly, the Medicare drug benefit is costing money on perpetuity, not just for two or three years. And Boehner, Ryan and others voted for these laws and, in some cases, helped to craft and pass them. To relate this specifically to the debt-ceiling...

See Ezra, See Ezra and Nora Talk, See Ezra and Nora Get Confused... Ezra Klein, a very popular Liberal blogger who also writes for the Washington Post, finally made us all cognizant of the exact reason for his extreme popularity--as it regards the increasingly mind-numbed, diminutively numbered, Liberal automatons of the Nation. In a televised interview with Progressive info-babe Nora O' Donnell on the "Lean Forward and to the Left" network MSNBC, Klein was asked his opinion of the impending public reading of the Constitution in the House. Klein responded that the reading was, indeed, "a gimmick" that "had no...

...One of the first big applause lines of the speech came when Barack Obama said, "For all the hits we’ve taken these last few years, for all the naysayers predicting our decline, America still has the largest, most prosperous economy in the world." But as Matt Yglesias notes, soon, we won't. China will. And that's okay. A decent future includes China's GDP passing ours. They have many, many more people than we do. It's bad for both us and them if the country stays poor. A world in which China becomes rich enough to buy from us and educated enough...

Ezra Klein invokes a heartbreaking analogy to criticize the GOP for seeking to repeal ObamaCare. But this sad case has nothing to do with the new health law. Klein writes: In February 2007, Deamonte Driver died of an infected tooth. But he didn’t really die of an infected tooth. He died because he didn’t have consistent insurance.

Need to Know January 18, 2011 Ahead of the curve! Lib writer praises Jeb Bush Posted by Staff Ezra Klein writes: I think Jon Chait gets Jeb Bush very wrong here. When Bush says that "second-generation Hispanics marry non-Hispanics at a higher rate than second-generation Irish or Italians" and that "second-generation Hispanics' English language capability rates are higher than previous immigrant groups," he's directly answering a critique that has a lot of power among anti-immigration groups: that there's something different about this wave of immigrants as compared with previous waves of immigrants.

The Republican plan to start off the first session of the new House of Representatives today with a reading of the United States Constitution is giving the left the fantods -- and with good reason. At Salon, Michael Lind gives us a piece headlined, "Let's stop pretending the Constitution is sacred." Ezra Klein, a Washington Post blogger, told a TV interviewer that the reading as a "gimmick" and suggested the Constitution isn't binding (though he later backpedaled). And David Corn, under the title "The House GOP Weaponizes the Constitution," argues that the Founding Fathers "wouldn't cotton to lawmakers exploiting their...

1. Blogger Ezra Klein went on MSNBC and said the Constitution is a hundred years old and hard to understand. Apparently, this drew flak. 2. Then he blogged at 11:55 AM on Thursday: “…My friends on the right don’t like to hear this, but the Constitution is not a clear document. Written more than 200 years ago, when America had 13 states and very different problems, it rarely speaks directly to the questions we ask it. The Second Amendment, for instance, says nothing about keeping a gun in the home if you’ve not signed up with a ‘well-regulated militia,’ but...

As we reported yesterday, Republicans plan to read aloud the Constitution of the United States when the 112th Congress kicks off on January 6th, 2011.  Many find this to be a political tactic, a gimmick of sorts.  Republicans are attempting to hold support from the Tea Party and are howling for Congress to follow the Constitution word for word.  A firm skeptic of this Republican stratagem is Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, one of the most astute minds when it comes to procedure within Congress and fiscal concerns. Yesterday he appeared for an interview with MSNBC's Nora O'Donnell to discuss the matter:Returning To...

Via Michelle Malkin: Here’s a good piece by Doug Powers, commenting on the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein’s belief that the Constitution isn’t understandable because it was written over one hundred years ago. You’ve got to see this video, if you haven’t already: http://michellemalkin.com/2010/12/30/constitution/ Where do these journalistic jamokes like Klein come from, anyway? Who hires them? Who needs them? I can read – even the English that was written a few centuries ago – really. But here’s what Ezra says on MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown regarding the Republicans’ intention to read the entire Constitution aloud after the new Congress is...

Returning to the Constitution, that’s what Republicans want to do in the new Congress. In the last year, the two hundred and twenty-three year old document has been getting a whole lot a lip service so when the One hundred and twelfth Congress is sworn in next week expect to hear a lot more about it because the Constitution is at the center of three coming Congressional battles. —Nora Roberts Nora Roberts on the daily rundown interviewed Ezra Klein of The Washington Post regarding Republicans who have the majority in the House of Representatives coming in January. They discuss Republicans’...

Huffpo/WaPo blogger "superstar" Ezra Klein reveals everthing that you knew was wrong with the left, including their claim that they're smarter and better educated than you. This clownish juvenile deliquent who passes for informed opinion on the left is pleased to reveal that the Constitution is "over a hundred years old," and hence, out of date, irrelevant, and downright confusing. Video at the link.

One of the dumbest liberal bloggers out there, Ezra Klein, thinks the constitution is confusing because it was written over 100 years ago. He also thinks the GOP's insistence that it be read for the first time ever in Congress is a "gimmick"I don't want to get all technical and use big words that might be too hard to understand for "progressives"...but....WHAT!. I postulated in a previous post that the left has some sort of intelligence allergy, and I'm sorry to see Ezra Klein once again can't prove me wrong. Our government, and the Democratic Party especially, by their...

Yes, the Constitution is binding By Ezra Klein This morning, I gave a quick interview to MSNBC where I made, I thought, some fairly banal points on the GOP's plan to honor the Constitution by having it read aloud on the House floor. Asked if it was a gimmick, I replied that it was, because, well, it is. It's our founding document, not a spell that makes the traitors among us glow green. It's also, I noted, a completely nonbinding act: It doesn't impose a particular interpretation of the Constitution on legislators, and will have no practical impact on how...

Via Eyeblast. The good news? This clip has become such a hit among righties on Twitter that Iowahawk was inspired to cook something up in honor of it. The bad news? I think Klein’s getting a bit of a bad rap. His formulation is idiotic — not all old texts are confusing, of course — but that’s probably just rhetorical clumsiness while live on the air. All he means, I take it, is that it’s often not clear how constitutional provisions should apply to modern circumstances not envisioned by the Founders. This is why there are 5-4 decisions all the...

Come now Ezra Klein, economic and domestic columnist and blogger for the Post and master of … well … nothing. Your argument is that the Constitution is too hard to understand so we should just ignore it? When people actually start reading this founding document and figure out it is being blatantly ignored by leadership, Klein does what any good socialist blogger would do – inform his readers the document is irrelevant and not worthy of our time. Klein argues the founders could not comprehend what the United States would look like or need hundreds of years from now, so...

Thank you for your interest in the Washington Post's Young Pundit Essay Contest. As the leading newspaper in our nation's capital, we are always looking for budding journalistic talent to bring a fresh point of view our editorial pages, as well as our online site and sister publications like Newsweek and Slate. While competition for this prestigious prize is expected to be fierce, we will give each entry personal attention. Please provide background information about yourself, followed by your essay. This year's theme is "What the Constitution Means to Me." Please write or type legibly. Continued

Here is video of liberal Ezra Klein actually saying today that the U.S. Constitution “is confusing because it was written more than a hundred years ago.” Klein made the remarks in response to news that the new GOP-controlled House of Representatives is going to begin the new session of Congress by (gasp!) reading the United States Constitution out loud! No, Ezra – the Constitution is not “confusing,” and it was actually written more than 200 years ago! It is just inconvenient to liberals like you because it actually limits the power of the Federal Government, which goes against ever fiber...

Spencer Ackerman - Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect Thomas Adcock - New York Law Journal Ben Adler - Newsweek, POLITICO Mike Allen - POLITICO Eric Alterman - The Nation, Media Matters for America Marc Ambinder - The Atlantic Greg Anrig - The Century Foundation Ryan Avent - Economist Dean Baker - The American Prospect Nick Baumann - Mother Jones Josh Bearman - LA Weekly Steven Benen - The Carpetbagger Report Ari Berman - The Nation Jared Bernstein - Economic Policy Institute Michael Berube - Crooked Timer, Pennsylvania State University Brian Beutler - The Media...

For those who don't pay attention to how America's mainstream media actually functions nowadays, the recent JournoList scandal may prove a bit shocking. JournoList was a listserv[1] created by Ezra Klein, a sanctimonious young man who regularly appears on MSNBC. Mr. Klein writes for the Washington Post, which owns the JournoList email archive. According to Mr. Klein, the JournoList forum was created for members of the mainstream media as a "wonkish, [2] fun, political yelling match." During its existence, it accumulated tens of thousands of emails from its roughly 400 participants. Recently, it was discontinued when its contents were leaked...

Spencer Ackerman - Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect Thomas Adcock - New York Law Journal Ben Adler - Newsweek, POLITICO Mike Allen - POLITICO Eric Alterman - The Nation, Media Matters for America Marc Ambinder - The Atlantic Greg Anrig - The Century Foundation Ryan Avent - Economist Dean Baker - The American Prospect Nick Baumann - Mother Jones Josh Bearman - LA Weekly Steven Benen - The Carpetbagger Report Ari Berman - The Nation Jared Bernstein - Economic Policy Institute Michael Berube - Crooked Timer, Pennsylvania State University Brian Beutler - The Media...

Conservatives have long claimed that the media is biased against them and tries hard to shape stories in ways that help Democrats and hurt Republicans. This has sometimes been dismissed as paranoia - as in my former MSNBC co-blogger Eric Alterman's book, "What Liberal Media?" - but it turns out to be truer than they imagined. If this were a Hollywood movie, there would have been clandestine meetings in basements or bars or parking garages. But since it was real life, it was just an e-mail list, called "JournoList," set up by the Washington Post's Ezra Klein. It had over...

Spencer Ackerman - Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect Thomas Adcock - New York Law Journal Ben Adler - Newsweek, POLITICO Mike Allen - POLITICO Eric Alterman - The Nation, Media Matters for America Marc Ambinder - The Atlantic Greg Anrig - The Century Foundation Ryan Avent - Economist Dean Baker - The American Prospect Nick Baumann - Mother Jones Josh Bearman - LA Weekly Steven Benen - The Carpetbagger Report Ari Berman - The Nation Jared Bernstein - Economic Policy Institute Michael Berube - Crooked Timer, Pennsylvania State University Brian Beutler - The Media...

Spencer Ackerman - Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect Thomas Adcock - New York Law Journal Ben Adler - Newsweek, POLITICO Mike Allen - POLITICO Eric Alterman - The Nation, Media Matters for America Marc Ambinder - The Atlantic Greg Anrig - The Century Foundation Ryan Avent - Economist Dean Baker - The American Prospect Nick Baumann - Mother Jones Josh Bearman - LA Weekly Steven Benen - The Carpetbagger Report Ari Berman - The Nation Jared Bernstein - Economic Policy Institute Michael Berube - Crooked Timer, Pennsylvania State University Brian Beutler - The Media...

The following 107 names are confirmed members of the now-defunct JournoList listserv. 1. Spencer Ackerman – Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect 2. Ben Adler – Newsweek, POLITICO 3. Mike Allen - POLITICO 4. Eric Alterman – The Nation, Media Matters for America 5. Marc Ambinder - The Atlantic 6. Greg Anrig – The Century Foundation 7. Ryan Avent – Economist 8. Dean Baker - The American Prospect 9. Nick Baumann – Mother Jones 10. Josh Bearman – LA Weekly 11. Steven Benen - The Carpetbagger Report 12. Jared Bernstein – Economic Policy Institute 13. Michael...

Today's journalism scandal involving liberal media members of the invitation-only "Journolist" listserv discussing ways to help 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama or discredit his press critics is far more organized than the Clinton era "vast right-wing media conspiracy," according to former Clinton aides. While the two media conspiracies have been compared since the listserv E-mails started appearing on the Daily Caller website, former Clinton aides say that there is one major difference between the two. Unlike the current scandal, reporters with conservative media back in the 1990s were competitive and didn't share story ideas. What's more, the Journolist affair threatens...

The following 75 names are confirmed members of the now-defunct JournoList listserv. 1. Ezra Klein - Washington Post, Newsweek, The American Prospect 2. Dave Weigel - Washington Post, MSNBC, The Washington Independent 3. Matthew Yglesias – Center for American Progress, The Atlantic Monthly 4. David Dayen - FireDogLake 5. Spencer Ackerman – Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect 6. Jeffrey Toobin – CNN, The New Yorker 7. Eric Alterman – The Nation, Media Matters for America 8. Paul Krugman – The New York Times, Princeton University 9. John Judis – The New Republic, The American Prospect...

In the hours after Sen. John McCain announced his choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate in the last presidential race, members of an online forum called Journolist struggled to make sense of the pick. Many of them were liberal reporters, and in some cases their comments reflected a journalist’s instinct to figure out the meaning of a story. But in many other exchanges, the Journolisters clearly had another, more partisan goal in mind: to formulate the most effective talking points in order to defeat Palin and McCain and help elect Barack Obama president. The tone...

The following 65 names are confirmed members of the now-defunct JournoList listserv. 1. Ezra Klein 2. Dave Weigel 3. Matthew Yglesias 4. David Dayen 5. Spencer Ackerman 6. Jeffrey Toobin 7. Eric Alterman 8. Paul Krugman 9. John Judis 10. Eve Fairbanks 11. Mike Allen 12. Ben Smith 13. Lisa Lerer 14. Joe Klein 15. Brad DeLong 16. Chris Hayes 17. Matt Duss 18. Jonathan Chait 19. Jesse Singal 20. Michael Cohen 21. Isaac Chotiner 22. Katha Pollitt 23. Alyssa Rosenberg 24. Rick Perlstein 25. Alex Rossmiller 26. Ed Kilgore 27. Walter Shapiro 28. Noam Scheiber 29. Michael Tomasky 30....

f any large publication stands to suffer from the JournoList controversy, it’s the Washington Post. The paper hired JournoList founder Ezra Klein from the left-wing publication The American Prospect, and Klein continued to run JournoList while at the Post. In June, the paper quickly accepted the resignation of David Weigel, whom it hired from the left-wing publication The Washington Independent, over comments made on JournoList. (Klein announced he was shutting down the list-serv shortly thereafter.) It is not known whether other Post writers, some of whom also came to the paper from left-wing publications, took part in JournoList; I have...

Here’s the new spin on why voters may be about to vote for the GOP in the Midterm Election – They are “Schizophrenic.” So says Newsweek’s Ezra Klein to a man who ought to know about such things – MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. Klein argues that we have a “schizophrenic voter population” right now who supposedly trust Democrats more on issues but are going to vote for the GOP in the Fall. After what the Democrats have done with their power over the last couple of years, I think Klein is “whistling past the graveyard” if he thinks voters trust Democrats....

I do not understand how this bill will affect my family and me. I am a self-employed single mother. I cannot afford health care for myself and my children. I made $38,000 last year and I expect to make less than $35,000 this year. What does this health care reform mean for me? Will I be able to get coverage for my children and myself in this first year?

The Washington Post's Ezra Klein has some doubts about those who oppose abortion on moral, religious or ethical grounds. Apparently to him, it's just an anti-class issue in which the poor are locked out of abortion. Klein appeared on MSNBC's March 21 special coverage of the House's debate about health care reform which was prelude to the body's final vote on the legislation. According to Klein, despite the language in this bill with so-called "family planning" provisions and its questions about a presidential executive order restricting them, abortions will actually go down with ObamaCare. ...more (w/video)...

In an article titled "Page 16 of the House Health-Care Bill Does Not Make Insurance Illegal The Washington Compost's "rising star" on various things tries to take on the claim about how page 16 doesn't really make private individual coverage illegal. I knew this was false for two reasons: 1: Ezra didn't give you the text of the bill. That right there is a tip off. If you wish to see the text of page 16, take a look here at a more honest conservative media outlet. Page 94 of the newer house bill contains virtually the same language. 2:...

Return to the Article February 16, 2010Liberals Say U.S. Is Ungovernable. Again.By Christopher Chantrill Liberals are at it again. They are worrying that the U.S. is "ungovernable." Political scientist Jay Cost has the details: Ezra Klein argued that it was time to reform the filibuster because the government cannot function with it intact anymore. Tom Friedman suggested that America's "political instability" was making people abroad nervous. And Michael Cohen of Newsweek blamed "obstructionist Republicans," "spineless Democrats," and an "incoherent public" for the problem. Liberals were saying exactly the same thing in 1980, thirty years ago, in the darkest days...

California's Scary Sneak Preview By Ezra Klein Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, January 3, 2010 We Californians pride ourselves on the crystal-ball quality of our state. Auto emissions regulations, the tech boom and bust, Ronald Reagan, Hispanic immigration, the anti-tax revolt, the mortgage bubble, the struggle for gay rights, most movies, the popularity of Richard Nixon, the unpopularity of Richard Nixon, plastic surgery, and Tiger Woods's marital problems were all tested in the Golden State before being released to audiences nationwide. The next likely item on that list is not a happy one, however. California is in a total fiscal...

The lies exposed.

There's been a weird talking point bubbling up that the House health-care plan makes private insurance -- sigh -- illegal. Rep. Michelle Bachmann, who breathes out crazy like the rest of us exhale carbon dioxide, warns that "on the 16th page, it says whatever health care you have now, it’s going to be gone within five years." Investor's Business Daily says, "right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal." Sigh. Not really. Shadowfax does the lord's work and explains what's actually going on here. The short version is that your insurance doesn't become illegal....

Some of these I haven't yet seen, and I've seen a lot of these clips. Words from: Russ Feingold Kathleen Sebelius Paul Krugman Barney Frank Ezra Klein Rahm Emanuel and Jan Schakowsky

George W. Bush has a new website up, and upon seeing it, you have to admit -- this is a campaign that "gets" the web. Their website consolidates many of the tools that the Democratic challengers and their supporters have been experimenting with, and they are well implemented. Particularly impressive is their Action Center, which has one the the coolest, most useful tools I've ever seen: If you scroll about halfway down the page, you'll see a field where you can input your zip code -- once you do, you'll be given a large list of newspapers and radio shows...