Peter Beinart

It was only a matter of time before the people who go to Disneyland/World would want to live there.  read more »

New York Times White House correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller is close to signing a deal with Random H  read more »

New Republic editor Peter Beinart is not going to be the next editor of The Atlantic, he told the Observer two weeks ago. But he may not be editor of The New Republic much longer, either. Persistent Beltway rumor has Beinart stepping down from his post, to be replaced by TNR senior editor Franklin Foer. An announcement could come as early as Tuesday.

[Update: In a story for tomorrow's paper, posted on the Web this evening, The New York Times confirms that Foer is replacing Beinart.]

"I'm not going to confirm anything," New Republic owner and editor-in-chief Martin Peretz said by phone this afternoon, as he prepared to catch a flight to Israel. "Call me tomorrow."

Neither Beinart nor Foer returned calls seeking comment.

Beinart has been editor of the weekly since November of 1999. His presence has diminished recently, however. For much of the last year, he was on leave writing The Good Fight, a book based on a 6,000-word meditation on John Kerry's defeat he wrote for TNR in 2004. The book is due out from HarperCollins in June.

Foer has recently been courted by The New York Times, which hoped to hire him to write about the culture of Washington, D.C.

Some New Republic staffers said they were unaware of any pending masthead changes.

"I don't know what's going on," one staffer said. "Beinart is definitely back and 90 percent of where he was before. Before the book, he was committed 24 hours [a day] to TNR. Now it's 20 hours. He's still very committed, but with the understandable coda that he's writing his book."

--Gabriel Sherman

Apologies for linking this Washington Post piece (a version of which also ran in New York) a few days late, but it's worth reading.

Peter Beinart agrees with our longstanding gripe that despite the attraction of the "Hillary Moves Right" storyline, it happens to be false.

The narrative has gained strength from the fact that everyone seems to like it: the mainstream media, who are looking for signs of a Clinton run for president; some of Hillary's aides, who see it as affirmation of what the've argued all along -- that she's a centrist; and perhaps most of all, the right.

Beinart looks at that last piece and argues:  read more »

"The 'Hillary shifts to the center' line isn't innocuous at all. It's crucial to the campaign that conservatives will wage against her in years to come. That campaign is likely to revolve around character."

We venture into the realm of people with actual power in Washington today with a profile of Jeff Ballabon, a little-known, extremely well-connected Jewish Republican who is among the leaders of the movement of Orthodox Jews into the Republican Party.

Peter Beinart's definitive piece on that trend is here, but Ballabon's a fascinating character as much for his personal complexities -- Yeshiva boy, Yale Law School and, as Spitzer aide Cindy Darrison would have it, neanderthal/feminist.  read more »

The profile also gave us an excuse to read an excellent detective novel called Bag Men, one of whose characters, Detective Shecky Bliss, is modeled on Ballabon.

Read the piece for some Ralph Reed fun and a different perspective on John Ashcroft from the one usually heard around here.

Peter Beinart and Diana Hartstein Met: Aug. 6, 2001

Engaged: Feb. 14, 2003  read more »

Here we go again: The New Republic 's railing on the Democratic Party.  read more »

Just call him the Butcher Boy. On Nov.  read more »

Peter Beinart, a self-effacing, 28-year-old former intern at The New Republic , is set to become the  read more »

The hailstorm that's coming down on Jonathan Pollard's head is a veritable wonder to behold.  read more »