I'm browsing the Washington Post op-ed pages this morning. Let's see: "Revenge of the Tax Code", a column by some guy I never heard of named Chris Edw
February 8, 2009

I'm browsing the Washington Post op-ed pages this morning. Let's see: "Revenge of the Tax Code", a column by some guy I never heard of named Chris Edwards which starts out tagging Democratic nominees for their tax problems and turns into a full-court press for... the regressive flat tax! I mean, WTF? But then all becomes clear: Chris Edwards is tax policy director at the Cato Institute!

Then I move on to "Here's How to Make a Real Stimulus Take Flight", a piece by two guys named Tom Donnelly and Gary Schmitt, in which they explain that the absolute best use of stimulus money would be... to further expand the military! I became suspicious when they started singing the praises of the F-22 Raptor in the dreamy tone most men reserve for talking about their first car. ("A 1968 Dodge Dart, the kind with the slant six engine!")

So I skipped ahead to the end of the column. Sure enough: Tom Donnelly is a resident fellow in foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Gary Schmitt is director of strategic studies there.

How can this be? Surely there's a Democratic liberal in here somewhere...oh wait, here's a pitch for more cancer funding from pancreatic cancer victim Patrick Swayze. Well, he is a Hollywood actor, he probably is a Democrat...

Oh wait, something approaching a liberal position: "You Can Cap The Pay, But the Greed Will Go On."

Author note: Rakesh Khurana is a professor at Harvard Business School. Andy Zelleke is co-director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Hot damn, I finally found me some liberal elitists!

I move on to "Foreign Spies Are Serious. Are We?" Michelle Van Cleave served as head of U.S. counterintelligence from July 2003 through March 2006. She is a senior research fellow at the National Defense University and a special adviser to the Project on National Security Reform. Well, she's not affiliated with any right-wing think tanks, but she worked for Doug Feith and was a consultant to the CIA - so I'm guessing not a Democrat, and not a liberal.

Oh wait, better luck in the other sections. Here's a Georgetown professor talking about a revival of liberal patriotism.

But then David Broder says he's skeptical of terms like "blue wall" - even though he exhorts the Republicans to climb it.

Personally, I really liked this article about finding your one true Valentine. But then, I would - after all, I'm a bleeding heart liberal.

Generally speaking, though, if you were looking for liberal voices to speak out on national policy issues, issues that might interest the politicians (okay, their staffers) who pore over the Washington Post every day, well, you should probably look elsewhere. They say they have liberals over at the New York Times, so maybe next week I'll give it a look!

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