Mark Schmitt's post on the narrow missions of foundations reminded me of something Nick Confessore wrote a few weeks back in his New York Times Magazine expose of Bush's tax plans (behind the archive so no link):

You should read Ed Kilgore's comments on the latest salvo in the abortion battle, wherein Carol Tobias of the National Right to Life Committee firmly rejected Hillary Clinton's call for compromise. As Ed notes, hardcore anti-choice folks don't see a moral difference between birth control and abortion procedures, forcing them to explain that publicly drives a wedge in their colaition. But at the end, Ed writes that:

Hillary Clinton has just given us all a textbook case of what it really means to "seize the center": it does not mean "moving to the right," it means moving to higher and stronger ground.

Well this is brilliant. We're outsourcing the war to incompetent soldiers from poor countries with shoddy human rights records. And, just like with regular outsourcing, the manpower is being massed through a byzantine web of contractors and subcontractors and no one can figure out what country's laws, if any, these guys fall into. In addition, our contact point was Custer Battles, the same Custer Battles that defrauded us out of $15 million by, among other shenanigans, providing security to an airport that wasn't in use. Excellent.

If you haven't been already, you should really be checking out the newly-launched Campus Progress. As the kids say, it's the shizzle.

Update: While you're there, you really have to check out "So Speaks Some Guy With a Website". Brilliant.

So I thought it was a good idea. You know, a fun one. I'd write a review of Hugh Hewitt's new book, Blog, get a byline and a check, go home happy. I mean, the book isn't really long or anything, is it?

Well, no, it's not. But it certainly the most distasteful piece of waste I've handled since maturation imbued me with the good sense to stop handling garbage. I think I was three years old, then. Why is Hugh so bad? Well, aside from the towering egotism and the blistering partisanship, the guy is constantly lying. Here are three, just from the introduction:

Justin's thoughts on my post arguing the merits of the EU's lead role in Iran deserve a quick response. The world, he argues, is more complex than I give it credit for, mainly because the EU has no credible military force nor the appetite to introduce sanctions and our threats don't matter because they've been spoken aloud. I'll grant him the EU's military impotence, but nobody's talking about an invasion of Iran. The most violence being considered are surgical air-strikes, and even they're out of favor given the spread and secrecy of Iran's nuclear facilities.

The Kyoto Pact takes effect today. Without us. In some ways, it's more symbolic than anything. Sans our involvement, it'll barely make a dent in global carbon dioxide emissions. But our opposition neither killed nor derailed it, and that in itself was meant to send a message.

It's worth noting that, in this too, Bush was for it before he voted against it:

Bush, who campaigned before his first term on the promise that he would regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, changed his mind after taking office and withdrew from the Kyoto talks in 2001, advocating voluntary steps to reduce greenhouse gases.