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- If conservatives axiomatically believe that the conservative movement represents the interests of the American public, then the converse must also be true: that the public rejects liberal policy. You can see this on full display as Jon Chait introduces his Wehner Fallacy award for outstanding achievement in the field of propagandist punditry, the first being awarded, natch, to Charles Krauthammer for penning a column about the public rejecting Democrats for their liberalism without once mentioning the terrible economic conditions that continue to dog the party in power.
- Speaking of weak argumentation, Charlie Cook -- a political handicapper by trade -- argues that Barack Obama made a "colossal miscalculation" by chasing health-care reform and climate change instead of focusing on the economy "like a laser beam." I'm sure this will be pleasing to conservatives (who paradoxically also believe government is incapable of creating jobs) but everyone else is pretty confused. Perhaps if Cook offered criticism of some specific policy I could agree that Obama did not push Congress hard enough. But given that Congress is a broken political institution, I think Obama's pragmatism was probably justified.
- Having recently lived vicariously through the process of earning a law degree, one thing I can tell you is there's no way you'll graduate and pass the bar without knowing the material cold. Which is why I'm amazed that Andy McCarthy was ever able to do so. Here he is arguing that terrorists should not be tried in civilian court because these decisions "shouldn't be made by a branch that is not accountable to the electorate and that, to make matters worse, is lacking in the expertise necessary to make correct judgments about our security requirements." In other words the public, manipulated into a paranoid frenzy by the executive branch, has superior "expertise" to Supreme Court justices, who have been practicing and adjudicating law for the bulk of their lives.
- I'm trying to figure out who, exactly, the Harold Ford constituency in New York is because for the life of me I'm unable to think of a single reason why anyone would vote for him. It seems, according to Harold Ford, that the Harold Ford constituency is "Democrats [who] are looking for a stand-up, independent guy to represent them in this race... So, in that sense, I would run as an independent." Spoken like a true man of principle and integrity. I think Kirsten Gillibrand could put this one away by simply asking New York Democrats whether they'd be interested in having a second Joe Lieberman in the Senate.
- Remainders: This might be the most, er, reasonable thing Reason has published on the subject of health care; public transit gets some much-needed attention, funding; at least according to one poll, we're still living in the Bush economy; it's going to be a real shame when this alien straight-talkin' Arlen Specter no longer has reason to exist; this dust-up between Matt Yglesias and one of his former readers resembles nothing so much as Doc McCoy haranguing Mr. Spock; and gated communities are just plain creepy.
--Mori Dinauer
