GREAT PIECE ON ST. RALPH at the New Republic. The thesis: Ralph Nader is not a noble consumer advocate who incomprehensibly developed, at the end of his career, into a monomaniacal, paranoid fanatic who dismisses all who disagree with him as corporate stooges and traitors to liberalism. Rather, he has always been a monomaniacal, paranoid fanatic who dismisses all who disagree with him as corporate stooges and traitors to liberalism, even from his first days as the author of Unsafe at Any Speed. My favorite part of the article is a quote from Daniel Patrick Moynihan:

"He used to warn me that the phones at the Labor Department might be tapped. I'd say, 'Fine! They'll learn that the unemployment rate for March is 5.3 percent, that's what they'll learn.'"

(The article may require registration. But really, shouldn't you have subscribed to TNR by now?)