Sunday Papers

It's probably pretty late in the day for a post like this, but since I'm only just getting a chance to read the papers, I figured I might as well remark on a few of the articles I found most interesting. I hope that things will be (almost) back to normal tomorrow but posts may remain somewhat sparse until I get a little more settled.

Linton Weeks' piece in the Washington Post on the state of the Virginia gubernatorial election, "New Dominion," is definitely worth a read. Russ Potts gets short shrift, as the piece mainly is concerned with the obnoxious squabbling between the Republican and Democratic candidates, Jerry Kilgore and Tim Kaine. But right at the outset is a great Potts line, cutting right to the heart of the Mutt & Jeff routine from Kaine and Kilgore: "They are like two little kids fighting in a sandbox," Potts says. Absolutely right. Remember, Virginians - you can vote for a sandbox-brawler in November ... or you can take a look at what Russ Potts is talking about.

Bill Marsh has a New York Times "Week in Review" article on the highway bill's pork components, which I discussed at great length last week. Marsh makes the excellent point that the speed with which bills today (particularly big fat spending measures like the highway and energy bills) get finished and then voted on before anyone's really had a chance to read them makes public scrutiny practically impossible. I want to touch on this issue of legislative transparency just briefly now, since it's something I really want to come back to very soon with a more in-depth look. Marsh also includes a great graph showing the skyrocketing of pork projects in the five most recent highway bills (10 in 1982; 6371 in this year's).

Nicholas Kristof's column today, "When Pigs Wi-Fi," is a good luck at the state of wireless access in America, and how some large rural areas are doing a much more effective job of providing that access than most major cities.

For '08 politics, don't miss "The Skinny on Politics" from the Times Magazine, a series of questions and answers with Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.