THIS IS SO COOL

Long before he became one of my colleagues at The Writers Group, I was an admirer of David Ignatius for his innovative thinking and clear writing that presented the many changes going on around us in a new light.

To read his columns was to understand the significance of where globalization -- and its impact on the economy, foreign and domestic policy, and technology -- would be taking us.

Now, in what I consider one of the niftiest applications of new thinking in the Internet era, David and Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria have teamed together to moderate PostGlobal, A Conversation on Global Issues, at washingtonpost.com.

This feature, which launched this week, throws out a question to a panel of international commentators. The commentators then post their responses. And readers are invited to join the discussion as well.

Folks, this is synergy. We've had lots of neat things develop since the Internet started becoming an integral part of our lives, but this strikes me as something truly out of the box -- an international round table on the pressing matters of the day, all in real time.

I'll let David explain how it all came about, from a chat he did this week on washingtonpost.com:

"Many of the journalists and commentators (participating in PostGlobal) are people Fareed Zakaria and I have gotten to know in our travels around the world -- people we respect for their intelligence and independence. This is an idea that first came to me several years ago, when I was executive editor of the International Herald Tribune in Paris. We liked to call ourselves 'The World's Daily Newspaper,' and I hoped we could use the Internet to create an IHT-sponsored network of global journalists and commentators. Sadly, The Washington Post is no longer a partner in the IHT (despite our wishes to the contrary), but the Post's interest in global journalism remains strong, as I hope this experiment demonstrates."

And what he hopes it accomplishes:

"What we're doing at PostGlobal is an example of something that's happening all over the Washington Post Co., which is that we are looking for effective new ways to share our journalism with a wide readership, using new technology as effectively as we can. There are many pressures on our traditional print base, to be sure, but I actually think that opportunities for good journalism will expand, if we are smart and not too hidebound. We can be a global newspaper today, online, which was impossible when I joined the Post 20 years ago."

So now when you visit washingtonpost.com, take some time to read and participate in PostGlobal. As I said, cool.

James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.

WHY WE'RE IN THE BUSINESS

Signe Wilkinson was in Denver last week attending the annual convention of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists (AAEC). She shared the following report with us:

Denver was great. Bob Mankoff gave an inspiring talk about cartooning at our Cartoonists Rights Network dinner Friday night. It reminded us why we're in this racket and why we all secretly wish we could cartoon for The New Yorker. The honoree was a young cartoonist from Algeria, Ali Dilem, who has already been in jail six times for his work. My problems pale to insignificance. We also gave an award in absentia to the Danish cartoonists and one to John Temple, the editor of the Rocky Mountain News, in recognition of the handful of editors around the world who reprinted the cartoons.

Signe Wilkinson can be reached through the Washington Post Writers Group at writersgrp@washpost.com.

LIGHT BLOGGING

Writers Groupblog has been a little inactive of late, and will most likely be sporadic through June. Vacations and the crush of business have limited the time to blog.

Meanwhile, if you haven't read E.J. Dionne Jr., Marie Cocco, Charles Krauthammer and David Broder on this week's big political events, go here, here, here and here.

For events in Iraq (pre-Zarqawi and post-Zarqawi), check out these columns by David Ignatius and Jim Hoagland here, here and here.

And just for fun, see Eugene Robinson on Bus Uncle. Then watch the video.

SOMETHING'S IN THE AIR

The hot air that came billowing through Washington even before the first of June wasn't just from a ridge of high pressure parked over the mid-Atlantic, as the weather folks like to say. It was also blowing with blast-furnace intensity on Capitol Hill, in the major newspapers, on cable TV and radio talk shows, and in the blogosphere.

Politics -- raw, hot, down-and-dirty politics -- is never off the radar screen in Washington, a town often described as having only two obsessions: politics (how'd you guess?) and the Redskins.

Yet while politics is always in the air, the air this year feels a little more heavy, a little more unsettled, a little more threatening -- and a little more subject to change.

A president with low public-approval ratings, a Congress viewed with even more contempt, liberals wanting to punish the Bush administration over Iraq, and a brewing revolt of conservatives threatening to withhold their votes in order to help throw out profligate spenders in the Republican-controlled House and Senate all serve up a perfect storm of politics more than usual.

David Broder, the dean of Washington political correspondents, looked back at The Washington Monthly's 2004 issue in which 16 political observers were asked to predict what a second term for President Bush would look like.

"This second-term swamp is a far cry from what most of the Washington Monthly experts predicted -- and from what I would have guessed had I indulged in a crystal-ball exercise," Broder wrote in his column. "Grover Norquist, the conservative activist, said Bush and the Republicans would send the Democrats into permanent political exile. Paul Begala, a Democratic political consultant, said Bush would exact vengeance on his political enemies. Several people predicted that he would usher in a new era of good feelings, tackling global warming and avoiding divisive social issues. Wrong, wrong, wrong."

Who got it right? The Monthly's blogger, Kevin Drum, with this answer: "One word: scandal."

Broder sees a "stench of corruption" all over Washington, and getting "too close for comfort" for the president. And given the respect Broder has among his colleagues in the media, his readers, and the politicians he covers, that's a sure sign that the climate is becoming unstable.

Switching metaphors for a moment, Red Sox fan E.J. Dionne Jr. sees some classic brushback in the House leadership's outrage over the Justice Department's Saturday night raid on Rep. William Jefferson's office in a bribery investigation.

"Why would House Republicans be so concerned with Jefferson, a Democrat from Louisiana who, according to prosecutors, kept $90,000 in cash in his freezer?" Dionne asked in his column. "One answer is high principle. The more plausible answer is that Republicans are worried that the next shoes to drop in the congressional probes will belong to Republican members. Using a Democrat's case now to protect Republican members in the future is not so much clever as transparent."

Marie Cocco, meanwhile, worries what will happen if videotapes of the Jefferson raid are leaked.

"The biggest congressional scandal in a generation -- that is, the one involving convicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, disgraced former Republican leader Tom DeLay, a still-unknown number of mostly Republican lawmakers and enough former Republican staffers to fill the dining room of an expense-account restaurant -- will suddenly look like a Democratic scandal," Cocco wrote in her column. "Why? Because that's what will be on TV. The visuals are everything.

"There is only one thing for Democrats to do now: Show that they really are different from Republicans.

"They must demonstrate zero tolerance for corruption. They can't push Jefferson out of Congress -- only the voters in his New Orleans district can do that. But certainly Democrats can usher Jefferson out the door of his committee rooms and out of their caucus."

It's not just moderate and liberal columnists who see the storm coming. George F. Will, conservatism's leading voice, looked at the immigration bill and summed up the conundrum:

"As members of the House and Senate head for a conference to try to reconcile the stark and probably irreconcilable differences incorporated in their two immigration bills, Republicans are between a rock and a hard place. And another rock. And another."

Allowing me to get back to my weather metaphor, Will sums up just what is at stake in the immigration debate in a midterm election year:

"The House is supposed to be the barometer that measures the political weather of the moment. It is not failing to do that."

Critics say that journalists love messy politics because it gives them something to write about. I take a different view. I believe we are fulfilling a duty to inform and interpret the actions of our politicians to a public largely shut out of the process save for one critical moment: Election Day. It has worked for more than 200 years, through plenty of stormy weather. Or to quote one of my favorite contemporary philosophers, Jack Nicholson, this is "as good as it gets."

James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.