The “relentless GOP attack” on the federal bureaucracy “amounts to an assault on the very idea of professional government,” Dan Zegart writes in The Nation (subscription required) after an eight-month investigation. “It would alter a cornerstone belief of American governance, dating to the Pendleton Act of 1883, that it is essential to insulate public servants [...]

“On the rare occasions when officials have been pressed, usually in congressional hearings that garner little attention, Bush aides insist there are ‘no plans’ to build permanent bases,” Spencer Ackerman writes in The American Prospect. This is “a nondenial-denial that focuses attention on unprovable administration intent. But beyond intent is actual construction. That is, the [...]

Note to reporters covering House and Senate races: It’s not too late to raise some questions unrelated to the news-of-the-moment but very much related to people’s lives. For example: Is universal access to affordable, high-quality health care a human right and a public good, such as roads and fire and police protection? C.E.O.s of the [...]

Eric Boehlert, Michael Massing, Frank Rich and other critics have rightly raised hell over the mainstream media’s coverage and non-coverage of issues related to the war in Iraq. There was what Boehlert called the “lapdog” reporting of the run-up to the invasion. Then came the burial of devastating post-invasion revelations such as the Downing Street [...]