Wednesday, June 19, 2013. Last Update: Wed 11:00 AM EST

Campaign Desk

Is the Past Prologue?

The pedigree of Alan Simpson

Before too many weeks pass, I want to comment on an illuminating Gray Matters column by Saul Friedman, an old... More

How to Cover a Non-Story

The Globe knew about that Scott Brown lawsuit—and passed

On Thursday afternoon, Gawker reported that Scott Brown—the Republican whose victory in a special election in Massachusetts has cost Democrats... More

Medicare Kicks Out Fox Insurance

And therein lie some lessons for the press

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) took strong action the other day when it kicked Fox Insurance out... More

When a Story Comes Along, Must You Whip It?

Competing approaches to covering the legislative endgame

Since it became clear sometime during the past few weeks that the fate of health care reform rests in the... More

What Was Sebelius Saying?

David Gregory didn’t probe too deeply

The president and his staff have brought us to the stump-speech stage of health reform: the familiar talking points, the... More

Audit D.C. Notes: WSJ Good on Wall Street Muni Fees; Newsweek on Design, Bloomberg Goes Contrarian on Obama, Etc.

The Wall Street Journal digs into Build America Bonds, enacted as part of last year’s stimulus plan “to create jobs... More

A Weak Excuse for an Unemployment Story

The Washington Post takes some Senate bait for its page-one story about the long-term unemployed, and the result, is, well,... More

Strategic Error

Times Axelrod profile gets mixed up on messaging

Mark Leibovich’s front-page piece on the sufferings of David Axelrod in Sunday’s New York Times—the press apparently having decided to... More

Regulating Health Care, Part III

When is an insurance company too small to cover?

The pols and the advocacy groups have told us for months that health reform is supposed to produce tighter regulation... More

Audit D.C. Notes: Medicaid, Rest Stops, Galbraith, Etc.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities previews the upcoming congressional debate over whether to extend the federal support for... More

Support for WSJ’s Jobs Optimism is Thin

There’s plenty of green-shoot glory in the Journal’s Ahead of the Tape column, which uses accelerating corporate profits to help... More

Bad Diagnoses

The recent ‘Rahm’ stories offer plenty of prescriptions. Are we sure Obama is sick?

As my colleague Holly Yeager noted the other day, the spate of Rahm Emanuel stories that have lately been clogging... More

NYT’s Rose-Colored Small Biz Scenario

The New York Times paints an awfully pretty picture of older workers who decide to launch their own businesses. Trouble... More

Meme Change

It looks like an economic meme change is on the way, with some thoughtful columnists charting the course. The Times’s... More

Health Reform Lessons from Massachusetts, Part X

Unintended consequences for low-income workers

Four years ago, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts enacted a far-reaching health reform law that politicians and the media hailed as... More

Missing Michael Hastings

One of the great reporters of his generation died Tuesday at 33. The stories he wrote, and the ones he didn’t live to write

Michael Hastings: my friend and his enemies

Hastings was fearless and shook things up - especially with his McChrystal expose. The haters in the media couldn’t forgive him

Snowden versus the dragons

Journalism is about finding flaws and magnifying them, and surely someone who would spill massive loads of state secrets must contain a few broken parts, right?

Call it the Politico rhetorical crutch

The inside-the-beltway publication’s go-to phrase

Rachel Maddow’s tribute to Michael Hastings

“Michael was angry … he was angry about things that weren’t right in the world. He was angry with war and with loss, and that drove his reporting.”

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