This week, I’ve been reading Kirsten Powers’ new book The Silencing: How the Left Is Killing Free Speech. And it’s fantastic.

Powers is a liberal Democrat-she cut her teeth in the Clinton administration-but I’ve been a fan of hers for years because she’s a truly brave writer. She calls it like she sees it with no regard for the cost she’ll incur from her own side. For instance, she was the only mainstream writer to fixate on the horrors of Kermit Gosnell’s infanticide mill and she forced the rest of the media to finally grapple with the story. Because while the bien pensant media could ignore conservatives who were on the Gosnell case, they couldn’t ignore a liberal who was ringing the alarm.