Chait's departure from TNR is surely a body blow to the place. He had become its spine, its central voice, without which a magazine is in trouble. Here's hoping Tim Noah can somehow match him, and the new writers the still-excellent magazine has hired can keep the standards up. And a big welcome to neocon reporter Eli Lake here at the Beast. He's an old friend, and sparring partner, and has more sources in the Israeli government than even Jeffrey Goldberg, who is now writing columns for Bloomberg.