The New Republic

Another day, another internal Bush administration memo suggesting that regulatory agencies aren't doing their jobs: An official administration guidance document on wetlands policy is undermining enforcement of the Clean Water Act, said a March 4 memo written by the Environmental Protection Agency's chief enforcement officer. READ MORE >>

Matt Yglesias makes an excellent point: The interesting thing about the 2008 election is that the political marketplace has responded to the collapse in support for Bush and the GOP in a pretty efficient manner--with the Republicans nominating someone who's somewhat less conservative than Bush and whose association with the GOP brand is relatively weak, and the Democrats running on a more liberal agenda than they've had in recent cycles. READ MORE >>

To follow up on Isaac's sharp take below on Bill Voegeli's very good Claremont Review of Books piece, I have a slightly different objection to Voegeli's claim that "liberals find [the notion of states' rights] laughable, fantastic, and bizarre." First of all, many of us do not, and there's a compelling liberal READ MORE >>

Joel Kotkin argues that the rumors of the demise of suburbia have been greatly exaggerated--in part because suburbs aren't just bedroom communities anymore: READ MORE >>

There are a couple of real head-scratchers in his column today about Justice Kennedy, even by Broder's usual standards. First is this: It was only then--after that implausible scenario--that third-choice Kennedy was called to the White House and introduced by Reagan as his man. It turned out to be successful beyond Reagan's wildest dreams. READ MORE >>

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Last week, The New Republic sat down to discuss recent legal developments in the war on terror with Benjamin Wittes, a TNR.com columnist, fellow and research director in public law at the Brookings Institution and author of the new book Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror, and with Andrew McCarthy, director of the Center for Law and Counterterrorism at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and author of the recent book READ MORE >>

Ezra Klein has a nice web piece over at the American Prospect summarizing what we know about the success of Massachusetts's universal health care scheme. The gist of it is this: It's been quite successful in reducing the ranks of the uninsured, which have been roughly cut in half (results are even better for those with incomes below 300 percent of the poverty line). READ MORE >>

Blogging from the Aspen Ideas Festival, Matt Yglesias rejects the notion of having a cap-and-trade emissions scheme with a "safety valve," which would allow companies to buy emissions permits at a given price if the market price of for permits exceeds that price (in effect, setting a limit on how high the cost of carbon emissions can rise). Matt writes: READ MORE >>

I consider myself a fairly strong supporter of investments in public transportation, yet I often feel a vague sense of discomfort at the way some on the left frame the conversation. A good example is this recent interview that Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland gave to Grist's Kate Sheppard: READ MORE >>