Political Crack

If you are a political junkie, you really need to be reading Chris Cilizza's The Fix at the Washington Post. The Post is hands down, bar none, the best newspaper in the United States for national-level American politics, and Cilizza's coverage is like an elixir for political nerds -- a perfect combination of juicy tidbits, gossip, speculation, fact and analysis. Today he looks at "the next five" in each party. Regularly he updates a list of the top five contenders for 2008 in each party; today he lists 6-10 in each with his reasoning. Recently he has had the case for and against Barack Obama running and much, much more -- and each of his entries often contains within it its own world, so if you read the full Obama section, you'll also get a for and against list of several other fence sitters. You won't always agree with Cilizza and his seemingly inexhaustible rolodex of informers. But this is what the merging of the so-called "old"and "new" media is supposed to be all about.