Josh Marshall
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Joshua Micah Marshall (born February 15, 1969 in St. Louis, Missouri) is a moderate American political journalist and writer. He writes one of the most prominent U.S. political blogs, Talking Points Memo, which debuted on November 12, 2000. Marshall is also a columnist for The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper.
He began his journalism career as an Associate Editor at The American Prospect in 1998. Later he became the magazine's first Washington Editor before leaving in early 2001.
Marshall's blog covers a wide range of topics including U.S. foreign policy, domestic politics (especially at the federal level) and domestic policy. During the first Bush administration, he wrote frequently about foreign policy and was especially critical of administration policy towards Iraq and North Korea. After the 2004 election, Marshall began to focus on Bush's proposals to privatize Social Security (Bush's terminology; Marshall refers to the proposal as "phase-out"). In addition to criticizing the substance of the proposals, Marshall has argued that a unified front in the Democratic Party would deny Republicans political cover and force a loss for them on the Social Security issue. He has closely tracked the positions of members of Congress on the issue, placing wavering Democrats in the "Faint-hearted Faction" and Republicans who doubted the President's plan into the "Conscience Caucus". These terms have since gained use amongst the wider liberal blogging community.
Marshall's latest project has been a website called TPMCafe, which debuted on May 31, 2005. This site features a collection of bloggers including Reed Hundt. An important section of the website is its "Table for One" section. This features a notable person who guest writes for a week. John Edwards was the first person to write for this section of the website.
Marshall is a graduate of Princeton University and has a Ph.D. in colonial American history from Brown University.