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- Responding to his unhinged 2010 opponent, Harry Reid has decided to break with President Obama and come out against building the Cordoba Community Center in the vicinity of where the Twin Towers were felled. Now I thought that Reid had a sound strategy for re-election: portray his opponent as too extreme to be in the U.S. Senate. Now he's wading into a "controversy" that has no bearing on how Nevadans will vote in November. Does Reid believe his position on this issue will convince right-wingers in the Silver State to vote for him?
- Since Defense Secretary Robert Gates is once again in the news, it's worth pointing out that while his leadership at DoD has been laudably focused on making the military more responsive to real rather than imagined threats, he has only made defense spending more efficient, rather than reducing the total amount of spending. But of course, defense spending isn't like other spending, which is why a 1.2 percent increase in Social Security over 20 years is a horrible crisis while the same increase in 10 years on defense spending is no big deal.
- Josh Barro has a very reasonable post at National Review about the wisdom of conservatives fully embracing anti-Muslim sentiment, but it's clearly an outlying position. No one at The Corner has even mentioned Newt Gingrich's comparison of Muslims to Nazis, but there's a promotion for an interview with Thomas Sowell, in which Sowell states that Obama -- last seen defending fundamental American principles -- is part of "a group of people who fundamentally don’t believe in the principles of this country."
- Weekend Remainders: Five myths about midterm elections; the crazier Republicans get, the better past Republican presidents look; Obama steadily expands equality for homosexuals working in the federal government; Krugman was always right about Paul Ryan being evasive about his desire to abolish Medicare; the cost to Meg Whitman for purchasing the governorship of California is $104 million and counting; the penetrating historical insights of these C-list right-wing bloggers ought to warrant serious consideration for a Washington Post column; and is John Boehner's tan a distraction?
--Mori Dinauer
