JUST SAY NO. This is what Peggy Noonanwrote today on a website sponsored by one of America's most influential publications: "Bush The Younger would breastfeed the military if he could."
This is one of those moments in which I love to imagine how the editing process at a place like OpinionJournal works: "Jesus, Bill, I told you to hide the damn mushrooms."
Feed your head, Peg-o-my-heart. One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small.
SCOTUS STANDS UP. I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised by the Supreme Court's ruling in the Hamdan case. Ordinarily, the Court is very deferential to executive assertions of national security authority and then turns around and changes its mind years after the fact. Note also that conservative "strict constructionists" continue to believe that the Bill of Rights secretly doesn't apply . . . when the President says it doesn't.
LONG HOURS, HIGH PAY?Greg Mankiwpoints out a new study showing that, in 2002, the top income quintile was twice as likely to work long hours as the bottom quintile. "That is," he writes, "wages and hours worked went from being negatively correlated to being positively correlated. This may be an important piece of the puzzle of rising income inequality." Possibly so. Of course, the bottom quintile are low-wage workers in jobs that rarely pay benefits and often keep employees in a sort of part-time twilight so they don't qualify for health care -- that may be a piece of the puzzle as well.
DICK MORRIS IS RIGHT!! He has this column in The Hill saying that Lieberman should forego the Democratic primary entirely and just run as an Independent, and that if he did so, he would win �overwhelmingly.�
JUST POSTED ON TAP ONLINE: THE FROG IS US. Ok, so apparently a frog won't actually stay in a bowl of water that's slowly brought to a boil. But it's still a damned good metaphor! Jim Sleepertakes a look at the mainstream media bowl and sees too many frogs drifting listlessly in the rising heat.
ACTUAL CONSERVATIVE MAGAZINES: ALSO BAD. This Jonah Goldbergpost on Linda Hirshman is really pretty revealing. And I'd like to say, for the record, that contra Jonah, I think her arguments should be taken seriously because they deserve to be taken seriously and not as part of some marketing ploy. At any rate, Jonah writes:
MAGAZINE BLOG FEUD: NOW WITH POLICY SUBSTANCE. I'm afraid the Lawrence Kaplan post on Kerry and Iraq that Ezramentioned below is actually way, way, way worse than Ezra's post would lead you to believe. The thing of it is that the article Kaplan links to is a clear-cut piece of evidence against his basic view of the Iraq War and a strong piece of evidence in favor of the Spencer Ackermanline that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is a "prerequisite for success." Read the lede:
The New York Times apparently doesn't think so. In an article assessing the Mexican presidential campaign in its final days, there is no mention of the economic performance of the current administration. Since one of the two leading candidates is from the same party as the incumbent president, and pledges to continue the same policies if elected, the recent economic record would appear to be relevant.
WHEN THE LEFT HAND DOESN'T KNOW WHAT THE FAR RIGHT HAND IS DOING. A couple days ago, TAPPED contributor Ben Adlernoticed the contrast of a Marty Peretz post proclaiming his paper's strong, if occasionally heterodox, liberalism sitting atop a Lawrence Kaplan post sighing over "how deeply unserious" Democrats are about Iraq.
