It doesn’t surprise me that Daniel Gross, writing in Slate, never gets around to describing the Republican position on unemployment benefits because he is too busy denouncing it. This sentence did surprise me, though: “In the White House, there’s probably a level of exhaustion and Zen-like acceptance—it pushed through a large stimulus package and monumental health care reform, two heroic measures that are working and whose benefits will continue to phase in over time.” The health-care reform is working? On the basis of what evidence?

Maybe the better question is: What fact pattern would be sufficient to get Gross to withhold judgment on whether this measure is working? Or does its “heroism” suffice to prove the point?