The best critical reviews--in terms of the quality of the criticism, not the glowing raves it offers--come at moments when the writer brings knowledge of a related subject to bear. Josh Marshall writes the well-known blog Talking Points Memo, but also holds a PhD in American colonial history. Marshall relates the political instability in those times to the ongoing failure of Congress to police itself in a recent post showing how patronage trumps ideological discipline in parliamentary groups. To balance my previous post on the overlong Empire of Debt, Bill Bonner notes remarkably similar problems with bribery, graft, kickbacks, self-dealing, and a public & political leadership totally uninterested in reports of same...in the Roman Empire. The more things change...