“[T]he greatest obstacle to sustaining a healthy, globalised economy is no longer insufficient openness,” writes Dani Rodrik, a Harvard professor of international political economy, in The Financial Times. Rodrik explains:

[N]o country’s growth prospects are significantly constrained by a lack of openness in the international economy. Even if the Doha trade round fails, poor [...]

As interesting as Kyle Sampson’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee was, it still didn’t answer “the single biggest question” about the Gonzales Eight, notes Washington Monthly blogger Kevin Drum. “It’s this: so why did you choose those particular eight prosecutors to fire, anyway?” Drum continues:

He still didn’t have any plausible, documented reasons for [...]

Writing on the op-ed page of The Los Angeles Times, Joseph D. Rich, chief of the voting section in the Justice Department’s civil rights division from 1999 to 2005, alleges that there has been a “destructive pattern of partisan political actions at the Justice Department” under President Bush, long before the Gonzales Eight. “Over the [...]

A National Review editorial says it is time for Alberto Gonzales to resign as attorney general. The editorial also comes perilously close to calling Gonzales stupid: “While we defended him from some of the outlandish charges made during his confirmation hearings, we have never seen evidence that he has a fine legal mind, good judgment, [...]

What about the 85 U.S. attorneys who weren’t fired? Andrew Sullivan cites “a month-old statistical study that seems to me to be worth wider examination,” indicating that the Justice Department under President Bush may have engaged in “political profiling” by targeting local Democratic politicians for prosecution. Sullivan writes:

The authors of the study notice a [...]

Former Tennessee senator and current “Law and Order” district attorney Fred Thompson finished third among the potential Republican presidential candidates in a weekend poll conducted by USA Today and Gallup. Ross Douthat, an associate editor at The Atlantic, writing at The American Scene, sees a problem with this, beyond the fact that a Fred Thompson [...]

Is there too much “Freak-” in the new economics? Writing in The New Republic, Noam Scheiber worries that economists have begun valuing “ingenuity above usefulness.” [$] He writes of his experiences interacting with graduate students in the Harvard economics department:

How was it that these students, who had arrived at the country’s premier economics department [...]

Monica Goodling, a Justice Department official who is counsel to the attorney general and liaison to the White House, is taking the Fifth rather than testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the firing of the Gonzales Eight. George Washington law professor Orin Kerr, writing at the group legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy, says he [...]

Is Barack Obama the new Eugene McCarthy? Or the new Gary Hart? Or the new Paul Tsongas? Or the new Bill Bradley? Or the new Howard Dean? Maybe, to all of those questions, says Ronald Brownstein from his new perch as a columnist on the op-ed page of The Los Angeles Times. “Obama’s early support [...]

“With nearly two years remaining in his presidency, George W. Bush is alone. In half a century, I have not seen a president so isolated from his own party in Congress — not Jimmy Carter, not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment,” Robert Novak writes in his Chicago Sun-Times column. As for Alberto Gonzales, [...]

Sorry, Jesus, no bong hits for you: Jonathan Zimmerman, director of the history of education program at New York University, says “both sides are wrong” in the Supreme Court case over whether a high school student can display a banner that says “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.” Zimmerman writes in The Christian Science Monitor: “The banner [...]

An anonymous — because he (I think it’s a he) is required by law to remain that way — “president of a small Internet access and consulting business” writes in a Washington Post op-ed about his experience as the recipient of a national security letter from the F.B.I. “Three years ago, I received a national [...]

Ezra Klein thinks Chuck Klosterman was missing the point on steroids: “Insofar as there’s a rationale for keeping athletes from doping up, it’s not because it gives them an unfair advantage, but because it will kill them. In other words, it’s good ol’ liberal paternalism.”

“Why Do Sportswriters Hate Capitalism?” That’s Matthew Yglesias’s question [...]

Now that The Huffington Post has identified the creator of the Macintosh-inspired, anti-Hillary YouTube ad for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign as an employee (now former employee) of a political-consulting firm that does business with Obama, will there be lasting effect from the discovery?
“Will this incident change any votes in Iowa? (Or New Hampshire?) – [...]

Michael Kinsley, now a Time magazine columnist, is squatting at the Time staff blog Swampland this week, where he announces that he’s skeptical of the significance of the scandal over the “Gonzales Eight.” Citing Adam Cohen’s Editorial Observer column in The New York Times, Kinsley writes, “I’m not sure that I buy it.” He explains: [...]