JUST POSTED ON TAP: THE TCHOTCHKE ECONOMY. Robert Kuttner explains that while electronics and other consumer goods have become more affordable, the costs of housing, college education, and health care are rising.

You know what else is affordable? A subscription to The American Prospect. It�s just $19.95 for 12 issues.

--The Editors

THE GATE IS CRASHED. I like Chris Hayes's argument that much of the revolutionary rule changes suggested in the netroots manifesto Crashing the Gates are rapidly emerging as conventional wisdom -- moreover, I think it's correct. Despite widespread beliefs that the base is locked in mortal combat with some sort of coherent Democratic establishment, I've never really noticed that to be the case. This is ground largely covered by Prospect alum Nick Confessore's The Myth of the Democratic Establishment, but it's worth going over again.

META-BROOKS. It was weird to crack open The New York Times this weekend and see David Brooks publishing not an op-ed column, but a meta-op-ed column. If he ever did publish a compendium of his columns entitled The Essential David Brooks, it would require only one page, on which would be printed Sunday's piece.

THE POWER OF IMMIGRANT CATHOLICS. The Catholic Church's welcome support for Mexican immigrants to the U.S., both legal and illegal, has occasioned much speculation about the potential of immigration policy to become a wedge issue driving apart Catholics and Evangelicals, who have been more united than not on a host of other hot-button issues in recent years. The one question I haven't seen answered yet, though, is to what extent the Catholic Church's support for illegal immigrants is a result of noble principle in regards to treatment of the poor and justice for immigrants, and to what extent it's a product of equally valid self-interest in maintaining and defending vibrant congregations.

DEMOCRATS AND SECURITY. Two more brief notes related to the Democratic security plan. First, the Iraq material is, of course, some pretty thin gruel. The Dems' position on Iraq involves calling for 2006 to be a "significant year of transition," even though the party won't have a chance to actually affect policy until (possibly) 2007 -- this confusion is sort of inherent to an "agenda statement" that's really a campaign document.

POST-PATRIOTIC PROGRESSIVES AND THE PUNDITS WHO LOVE THEM. I found this post of Michael Lind's, supposedly lampooning post-patriotic progressives who believe nation-states outmoded and all men to be brothers, notably absurd. Lind's a sharp mind and a good writer, so it's strange to see him swing and miss so widely. The question in the immigration debate is not one of globalization but one of tradeoffs: Should we help tens of millions of desperate immigrants pull themselves and their families from third-world levels of poverty at a cost of -- and this is the high estimate -- eight percent wage depression for native high school dropouts? Cruelty, thy name is McCain-Kennedy!

THE SORT OF FOLKS YOU BRING HOME TO MOM. Got to love the American right. When a hostage gets kidnapped and killed in Iraq, they blast the left for insufficient outrage. When a hostage gets kidnapped and not killed, they speculate "something stinks," predict that she'll going to become a suicide bomber, and wonder if she's not already carrying "Habib's baby." Classy stuff.

--Ezra Klein