Blogs: The Big Con

Nuclear power is about to rise from the grave like a reanimated zombie, and it looks like we're going to have a harder and harder time escaping some very brain-dead discussion about it. Neither supporters nor opponents seems to be even remotely aware of emerging second-generation nuclear technologies that pretty much render every argument on either side absolutely wrong. more »

Marc Ambinder at theatlantic.com notes that Crocs (which are probably what your children are wearing right this moment) seem to be a perennial favorite when GOP presidential candidates come to Colorado and need to call out a Great American Company. Once again, they either have incompetent fact-checkers, or they're lazy, or they're just plain lying. more »

Having read some of Tom Frank's new book, and having had the privilege of playing a small part in its gestation—I saw documents from Tom basement file cabinet that will make your hair curl—I'm prepared to testify that the mofo's a thermonuclear bomb. more »

As a scholar of the American past, the most powerful tool I have access to is ProQuest Historical Newspapers—basically, Google for newspapers going back to the 19th century. more »

How do the rise of Rush Limbaugh and the lionization of Jesse Helms explain the bankruptcy of the conservative project? Read Ezra Klein. The brother nails it. more »

I published this in the New York Times Week in Review section upon the occasion of Senator Helms' retirement in 2001: more »

Very fine piece on On the Media today on how the Evangelical right gulled and guilted the media into habitually giving it three times more coverage than its actual numbers deserve: more »

Thank you, Washington Independent: more »

More than 600 people from all over the country have responded in the first 48 hours of our call to tell Fox News to stop branding progressives as unpatriotic, and instead contribute to a respectful debate about the future direction of the country. more »

Contest: caption this photograph...

Here's my entry: In a bid for Midwestern voters devastated by runaway manufacturing jobs, John McCain and Joe Lieberman pose with shipping containers in Third World country seeking free trade deal.