Strassel named WSJ columnist

Kimberley A. Strassel, a member of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, has been named the paper’s new Washington columnist, writes the New York Times’ Katherine Seelye.

Strassel, 33, will be resuming the weekly Potomac Watch column, which has been in hiatus for the last five years. It ceased when Paul A. Gigot, who wrote the column for 14 years, left Washington for New York in August 2001 to become The Journal’s editorial page editor. His column won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2000.

Strassel has been an editorial writer since January 2002 and was elevated to the editorial board in November.

Her signed op-ed pieces indicate that her thinking is in line with the free market philosophy of The Journal’s editorial page. She has written extensively about the multibillion-dollar asbestos litigation. And she has questioned the validity of cases brought by Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, who is the New York State attorney general and is running for governor.

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