This would be the same Christie who, in September 2012, headlined a fundraiser for Iowa congressman Steve King, who is not just one of the craziest members of the GOP crazy wing, but who also announced a month later that he probably wouldn't vote for relief money for Sandy victims for the same reason he refused to vote for federal aid for victims of Hurricane Katrina: Because he was pretty sure people spent the relief money on "Gucci bags and massage parlors." This is a man Christie wanted to win reelection, in order to help Republicans maintain control of the House of Representatives, so that they could continue ignoring the priorities and desperate needs of liberal, urban coastal states like New Jersey.

Continue Reading...

Austerity

It's coming. Congress will obsess over crafting a long-term deficit deal no matter what happens with the tax rates and the sequester. In all likelihood, we'll get regressive budget cuts at all levels of government, plus, for good measure, tax hikes not just on the rich but on working people. The well-funded "Fix the Debt" monsters will still demand massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Republicans are justifiably confident that they can use the debt ceiling to force more spending cuts less than a month from now. If all of this sinks the still-sluggish economic recovery, that'll be just one more sign that we need to cut more, and "tighten our belts." Plus the debt ceiling fight might just crash the world economy anyway.

Congress Isn't Going to Do Anything

As historically unproductive as the 112th Congress was, there's not much reason to expect more from the 113th. The Senate has gotten marginally more liberal and the House has gotten marginally less Republican, but the basic makeup of both is the same. It's still the case that House Republicans have no incentive to compromise on anything, while Senate Democrats live to compromise.

Continue Reading...

I think, though, that regardless of how completely lost the Republican party is -- and they are well and truly lost, and not currently "negotiating" with anything resembling a coherent plan or unified voice -- they will emerge from the current mess unscathed.

Continue Reading...

In all likelihood, the Senate will vote today to reauthorize the FISA Amendments Act for a few years, just before the act was scheduled to expire. The House reauthorized it all the way back in September, but the world's most deliberative body likes to take its time (plus Ron Wyden placed a hold on the bill until Senate leaders agreed to at least have a debate on proposed amendments to the Amendments).

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

Surprise! It's Politico.

I have written tens of thousands of words on what, precisely, is wrong with Politico. But I can put the case much more simply here: It's Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei.

Continue Reading...

The Washington Post is the hometown paper of the city that everyone in America hates, usually for good reason. And the things Americans hate about that city and the people who work there are reflected in its pages.

The newspaper itself is an ever smaller and more starved-looking thing. The people running it used to actually compete with the New York Times, for readers and writers and national influence. Now they can't really decide if they even want to try.

Continue Reading...

One shouldn't speak ill of the dead, I know. But if Newsweek has taught me anything this year, it's that death is not truly the end, because Heaven Is Real, According to Science.

Yes, that was an actual, for-real Newsweek cover this year: "Heaven Is Real." It was the dumbest, probably, but not actually the worst. This year's Newsweek covers also included naked bondage lady, and sexy lady about to fellate asparagus (a stock image that had also quite recently been used in at least two other magazines). There was "what if Princess Di was alive and my friend," too, but that was from 2011.

Continue Reading...

Every Sunday morning, the big four broadcast networks all air their FCC-mandated "public affairs" programming, which consists of a host (a white guy) interviewing the same dozen lawmakers, journalists and pundits in a rotating order. The lawmakers are usually not the most powerful members of Congress -- often they're somewhat marginal figures in terms of influence, in fact -- and the pundits and journalists all generally share the same, or very similar, worldviews. The only people I actually know who watch these things do so out of professional obligation.

Continue Reading...

Shortly after noon on Nov. 6, Time's Mark Halperin posted this on Twitter: "When John Harris & I wrote 'Drudge rules our world,' we were describing what IS, not what ought to be. Doubters already proven wrong today." A few hours later Barack Obama won reelection, which I assume came as a shock to people who do get most of their news from Matt Drudge.

Here's a brief tour of 2012 as the Drudge Report covered it.

Continue Reading...

Arianna Huffington is brilliant. Her intellect is usually ignored by her detractors, who focus on her relentless ambition. Old-fashioned sexism taints so many pieces critical of Huffington that one sometimes feels a strong urge to defend her from the charge that she's cannibalizing and destroying American journalism.

Continue Reading...

MSNBC, we're told all the time, is the liberal Fox News. That's reductive and stupid. It isn't. MSNBC isn't the liberal Fox News for two very important reasons: It usually demonstrates a greater respect for the truth than Fox News, and it's not as good as Fox News. It's not as good at being liberal as Fox is at being conservative. Fox is rigidly ideologically consistent, with its "straight news" programs echoing the same talking points and pushing the same slanted stories as its opinion shows. While there's no doubt that MSNBC is more unapologetically liberal than it used to be, it's still all over the place, with a conservative anchoring its flagship morning show, objective Beltway "straight news" proponents like Chuck Todd and Andrea Mitchell dominating in the daytime, and weekends full of ... prison shows. But more important, it's not as good as Fox at being compelling TV, which is why millions more people watch Fox every day. (There are demographic reasons for Fox's advantage, too, but it's still a huge number.)

Continue Reading...

Magazines are great. I am a big fan of magazines. The Atlantic does a lot of things right, as a magazine. First of all, it makes money. Most magazines don't, really. I also give them credit for "figuring out The Web." Here is the secret of The Web: People like to read thoughtful people writing about and debating the issues of the day, and also they like really infuriating trolling. The Atlantic gives them both.

Here are some pieces from the latest issue: Jeffrey Goldberg on why more guns will solve gun control (counterintuitive!), Jessica Bennett and Rachel Simmons on how writing "xoxo" in emails is "feminizing the workplace," something on wacky Silicon Valley workspaces and offices. This is a fairly representative sample of the sort of thing in your average issue of the Atlantic.

Continue Reading...

The New York Times is America's Last Newspaper, and because of that it is the recipient of a lot of grief that it doesn't always entirely deserve. Conservatives think it's the Daily Worker. Liberals blame it for Iraq and Bush's second term. Young people refuse to pay to read it.

The truth is, it is a good newspaper. It has great reporting that it spends a bunch of money on. It has a crossword puzzle. It has David Carr.

Continue Reading...

Maybe we beat up on poor CNN too often. I have previously bemoaned CNN's inability to get breaking news right, offered advice on how to save the network and offered constructive criticism of their decision to hire Jeff Zucker. CNN was also well represented in 2011's Hack List, with Wolf Blitzer, Piers Morgan, Erick Erickson and Erin Burnett all making appearances.

Continue Reading...

America is home to 310 million nonmilitary firearms. That's nearly one gun for every resident of the country, or just about three for each "household."

Gun control legislation powerful enough to make obtaining guns difficult enough to dissuade criminals from using them would, I think, require Prohibition-like manpower and government expenditures. It'd be as impossible a task as ending recreational marijuana usage. With lots of time and money you could make some progress toward a gun-free America. You might think it's worth it. Lots of people would agree. More Americans wouldn't. Even registering all of America's guns would be a massive, hugely expensive undertaking, as Canada learned a decade ago. And it would meet fierce, hysterical resistance.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

Instead the feds are either looking to have a judge declare the state regulations invalid, or are out to browbeat states into recriminalizing the demon weed by withholding federal money. (A similar strategy got the drinking age raised to 21 in every state, though it required legislation.)

Continue Reading...

When I agreed to write about my time At Sea, I did so knowing that it is unwise to invite comparison to the beloved author of That One Essay everyone mentions when you tell them you are going on a cruise. I've read it, of course, though not in 10 years, at least. I'm not half the writer that the author of that particular beloved piece was, though I think I'm perhaps better able to enjoy myself than he was. (Though not without assistance, as my bar bill showed by the end of the week.)

Continue Reading...

The Gangnam dance thing was done on behalf of a transparently phony Pete Peterson-funded "youth organization" operated by old rich people, and you really don't need to see the stupid video. The "Daily Show" interview aired last night, and it was depressing.

Continue Reading...