GUEST STARRING... Starting in January, TheNation.com will host some of the most incisive, cutting-edge political bloggers in a new rotating guest blog, Passing Through, featuring frequent posts by experts on economics, the environment, youth culture, the Middle East and more. First up is Jessica Valenti, a 29-year-old writer from New York and founder of the nationally celebrated blog Feministing. Jessica writes regularly for the Guardian and Salon and is the author of Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters, released last spring by Seal Press. She is also a co-founder of the REAL Hot 100, a campaign that highlights the important work that young women are doing across the country. Look for Jessica's posts starting January 3 and continuing until the end of the month--at which point she'll pass the baton to a soon-to-be announced fellow blogger.

KRISTOL BALL: The war in Iraq may have cost 3,900 US soldiers their lives, destroyed America's reputation abroad and turned George W. Bush into one of the most unpopular Presidents in history, but it has proved curiously beneficial to one group of people: the pundits who promoted it. Nobody has been rewarded more generously than William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, neocon extraordinaire and, now, weekly columnist for the New York Times. Some might imagine that slavishly endorsing the lies of the Bush Adminis­tration might tarnish the credibility of a commentator on foreign affairs. But Kristol, who before this had been a columnist at Time magazine (which declined to renew his contract) and who is a regular fixture on the TV pundit circuit, is the latest proof to the contrary. What might have inspired the Times to sign him up? The paper's owners apparently felt that having one neoconservative op-ed columnist who supported the war, David Brooks, was not enough. And they apparently felt in a more forgiving mood than the man they chose to hire.

In 2006 Kristol suggested that the Justice Department should prosecute the Times for reporting on a secret Bush Administration program to monitor international banking. In 2003 he dismissed the paper of record as "irredeemable," something his own reputation, clearly, is not.   EYAL PRESS

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