Time to rethink the implicit secrecy bargain.

Pat Buchanan really is racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic, but he's a member of the right tribe, so it's OK.

The shrink-ray theft scene in Despicable Me was racist, but the minions seemed to me to be unionized, genetically altered corn pops and not really racialized. What does it say that supervillains allow their employees to bargain collectively but Republicans won't?

When the Umar Abdulmutallab incident happened, I was among those (Sanchez, Greenwald, Ackerman) pointing out that "we need to consider that part of the problem is the sheer volume of information being gathered almost indiscriminately, making it difficult to divine real threats from false ones." The broad

Pivoting off a 2000 speech in which Pat Buchanan accused Ivy League schools of discriminating against "white Christians," Ross Douthat writes that "it’s worth recognizing what Pat Buchanan got right." Douthat isn't too specific on what Buchanan got right, and he never actually makes the claim that Ivy League schools aren't mostly made up of white Christians, but he does conclude that "lower class whites" are being harmed by affirmative action.

So there's a game Rush Limbaugh likes to play, where he'll express a sentiment he actually holds in the form of a joke, and when called out on it he'll remind everyone that it was intended as "satire." He calls it "illustrating absurdity by being absurd." Often the idea is that you're accusing liberals of holding the abhorrent belief in question. In practice both Limbaugh and his audience understand that this is actually a way for him to express something offensive without taking responsibility for it.

It's really astonishing that David Vitter is still a senator.

Tim Geithner vs. Elizabeth Warren?

Just read this.

Ann Friedman explains that the way to make friends of other races is not to treat them as anthropology projects.

Ben Smith destroys the NBPP story.

Jay Bybee on the torture memos he helped write:

He said he was “proud of our opinions” at the Office of Legal Counsel, too, calling them “well researched” and “very carefully written.”

Still, he said the controversy surrounding his tenure there had been difficult.

“I have regrets because of the notoriety that this has brought me,” he said. “It has imposed enormous pressures on me both professionally and personally. It has had an impact on my family. And I regret that, as a result of my government service, that that kind of attention has been visited on me and on my family.”

The decision to drop two defendants from the New Black Panther case and focus solely against the individual who held the baton has been presented as proof positive that the Obama administration is racist.