Yale Law School

"Oh this is so nostalgic," said Hillary Clinton as she walked into the Yale Child Study Center this morning.

Clinton was referring to her work here in the 1970s, but the tableau of the roundtable discussion, and a moving speech by the center's director and her old boss Penn Rhodeen ("Welcome home dear friend, we are so proud of you") and Hillary’s eyes, at one point, welling up, was reminiscent of something else as well: a recent much-reported display of emotion by Clinton in Portsmouth, N.H. a couple of days before the primary there.  read more »

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.