Richard Hanna

Michael Kinsley’s second-best-known contribution to political discourse, trailing only the “Kinsley gaffe,” is his observation that “the scandal isn't the illegal behavior -- the scandal is what's legal.” In a Thursday post, Steve Benen, a producer for MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show and the primary writer for the TRMS blog, sought to apply Kinsley’s wisdom to the congressional inquiry into the…

Last night, after Scott Brown took one of the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seats, there was a call by some in the media and even among some prominent Democrats to modulate by shifting away from the so-called "far left." One might think a start would be to tone down some of the rhetoric, take a step back and consider retooling the strategy, instead of lobbing more bombs. But the Democratic…