The Atlantic's James Fallows, among the most reasonable and thoughtful people in Washington, responds to a crude article by Elliot Abrams that appeared on his magazine's website by writing a characteristically reasonable and thoughtful post explaining why Abrams' approach to criticizing the Obama administration is enormously unhelpful.

Since entering the Republican presidential primary in August, Rick Perry has led the pack in South Carolina -- according to Public Policy Polling’s most recent survey of the state, Perry led the entire field by at least twenty points.

Shortly after that poll was released, I spent some time in South Carolina, and found that -- among the rank-and-fle at least -- opinions weren’t as cut and dry. Admiration for Perry was widespread, but there was plenty of ambivalence about his ability to lead when compared to more established candidates like Mitt Romney or Michele Bachmann.

While liberals cheered President Obama’s speech on deficit reduction, New York Times columnist David Brooks was disappointed. “This wasn’t a speech to get something done,” Brooks writes, "This was the sort of speech that sounded better when Ted Kennedy was delivering it. The result is that we will get neither short-term stimulus nor long-term debt reduction anytime soon, and I’m a sap for thinking it was possible."

Rick Perry is apparently amping up his attacks on the health reform Mitt Romney passed in Massachusetts, explaining that "the model for socialized medicine has been tried before … whether it was in western Europe or in Massachusetts." This is, of course, complete nonsense, as Trudy Lieberman of the Columbia Journalism Review tries to explain. It isn't like we haven't heard this before, but since Perry and Romney are running for president, maybe reporters could demand some clarification from the Texas governor.

Chris Mooney -- Prospect alum, science journalist, known smart person -- is unsettled when liberals say conservatives are dumb:

Over the weekend, Maureen Dowd penned the column that somebody—some liberal—was bound to pen eventually. Basically, it was about, uh, why conservatives have embraced being "stupid," or at least anti-intellectual.

Over the weekend, President Obama proposed a new tax to make sure people earning over a million dollars a year don't get away without paying taxes, something that sounds a lot like what the Alternative Minimum Tax was supposed to do. He's calling it the "Buffett Rule" in honor of Warren Buffett, who often tells people that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. That's clever, because every time the term is used, journalists will have to repeat the explanation of where the name comes from, thereby repeating the White House's message.

One of the most remarkable accomplishments of the Obama administration is that it has been in office nearly three years without a significant scandal, or really any scandal at all. This is pretty much unprecedented in recent decades. It's particularly notable that the Recovery Act, with a few hundred billion dollars spread around the country to all kinds of projects, came off without any charges of graft or waste.