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- Conor Friedersdorf's Newsweek opinion piece on how the press portrays libertarians as extremists while letting "centrist" politicians off the hook is making two cases, one convincing, the other, not so much. On the one hand, yes -- the war on drugs, invading Iraq, and unwavering support for farm subsidies -- the examples he gives -- are "mainstream" political positions that rightly should be criticized. But while opposition to these positions is a staple of libertarianism, that doesn't mean liberals can't agree while simultaneously being in favor of, say, single-payer health care.
- Jonathan Bernstein writes that "if Obama sits in the White House for six years with a GOP majority in the House of Representatives that the odds are very good -- better than 50 percent -- that he'll be impeached." A good way to think about this is why wouldn't a Republican majority impeach? Did I miss the watershed moment when Republicans abandoned political theater and the pursuit of raw power in favor of passing constructive legislation? Considering what induced the Republican majority to impeach Bill Clinton, I'd say it's only a matter of time before they do the same to Obama.
- Pew: "The media devoted comparable levels of coverage to the spill and news about last week's primaries and the 2010 midterm elections (each accounted for 18 percent of the newshole), but the public showed much less interest in the political developments (5 percent followed this most closely) than the crisis in the gulf (46 percent most closely)." This doesn't surprise me. Take for instance this Chris Cillizza post from yesterday that is still talking about the "May 18 'Incumbent Armageddon' primaries" and who was best able to guess the results. I'd say that he's just being lighthearted but Cillizza's track record suggests otherwise.
- It's amazing to me that alleged "intellectuals" are still talking, in all seriousness, about the grave threat to Western Civilization from radical Islam. Let's think about this for a moment. How, exactly, does radical Islam overcome Western Civilization? Presumably by force, because doing so would require eliminating not only the institutions of the West but also its far-reaching cultural influence. This, in my estimation, would require nothing less than a global totalitarian government, something radical Islam plainly does not have, and explains why wannabe George Orwells like Paul Berman constantly compare radical Islam to Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia.
- Remainders: John Podhoretz would prefer if Obama's foreign policy were more bellicose, capricious, and reckless; some Americans are strongly opposed to being counted for statistical purposes, congressional redistricting; for the millionth time, the only thing stock prices tell you is the price of stock; I hadn't thought it possible that over 1,200 words could be devoted to criticizing women's basketball, but here we are; and it's impossible to take social conservatives seriously if they continue to view female sexuality independent of reproduction as unnatural and morally pernicious.
--Mori Dinauer
