×
- Michael Steele’s big pep talk to the RNC today is like something from a different dimension. “The era of apologizing for Republican mistakes of the past is now officially over,” he said. Really? When was that “era?” “We are at a crucial juncture for our party, and more importantly for our country. Simply put, America needs us now more than ever before,” Steele claimed. Nope. Steele then went on to describe “an end to the era of Republicans looking backward” before framing the Republican comeback in terms of a president who left office twenty years ago and has been dead for five.
- What the GOP really needs, as Jacob Heilbrunn suggests, is its own secret speech denouncing the likes of Dick Cheney. Agreed. Of course, this is a party that can’t even stand up to radio talk show host, so good luck.
- Kudos to the good people of Hardin, Montana, who recognize that incarceration is is something America does very well. They've requested to have 100 Guantanamo detainees sent to an empty prison there. Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are threatening to cut off funding for closing Gitmo because they don’t believe the administration has provided enough adequate security for the transportation of these supervillians.
- Jeffrey Toobin on Chief Justice John Roberts: “The kind of humility that Roberts favors reflects a view that the Court should almost always defer to the existing power relationships in society. In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff.” I guess protecting the powerless from the powerful just isn’t in style any more.
- A special shout-out to Jon Meacham, editor of Newsweek, for retaining George Will, whose ability to substitute his irrational hatred of my home city for actual understanding of transportation policy surely ranks him as one of America’s finest columnists.
- Remainders: Harry Reid looks vulnerable, but has no real competition as of yet; Lanny Davis argues we should accept Dick Cheney’s challenge to indict him for authorizing torture; Politico experiments with bold new WTF? journalism; and a Democratic Senator from Oklahoma?
—Mori Dinauer
