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- It's a good thing Max Baucus made six big concessions to Republicans and got nothing in return in crafting the Senate Finance Committee's health care bill. It's even better that not one Republican will vote for it, not even Oympia Snowe. Yet there are signs that Snowe is becoming tired of the pressure being applied to her by the Republican caucus, observing that she hasn't changed -- it's the GOP which has.
- I couldn't tell you what a "values voter" is. Nor could I tell you what the Family Research Council researches. But on the basis of the titles of some of the panels at their summit in DC this weekend, they seem interested in things like the left-wing "thugocracy," the "threat" of illegal immigration, how "redefining" marriage "threatens religious liberty" and my favorite, "The New Masculinity."
- Matt Yglesias has a challenge for libertarians: Denounce publicly-funded parking garages, which receive a far larger slice of tax dollars than any efforts at promoting bicycle commuting. Unsurprisingly, a response from the Cato Institute confirms that when it comes to limited government, libertarians are often quite selective about what they find abhorrent. Almost every day you can read something in Reason about how wasteful the war on drugs is. They're right! But almost as frequently you'll find something about how smoking bans are crushing our liberties. These two issues aren't even remotely comparable, yet they're treated like equals down the road to serfdom.
- Time magazine showed a real lapse of editorial judgment by putting Glenn Beck on the cover of their latest issue. The piece itself seems more interested in portraying Beck as the hot new media thing rather than taking the stronger stance that he's at best a demagogue, at worst an inciter of rebellion. Most insultingly, David von Drehle, the author of the piece, is convinced that there isn't anything uniquely corrosive about Beck -- he's just a right-wing version of Rachel Maaddow or Keith Olbermann, who, as everyone knows, have "opinions based on nothing."
- Remainders: Former Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton is in big trouble; cap-and-trade isn't all that unpopular in some conservative districts held by Democrats; Massachusetts takes one step closer to allowing an interim replacement for the late Edward Kennedy; CNN wonders whether tea party protesters carrying signs featuring Obama as a witch doctor aren't just misunderstood satirists; and the private insurance industry is an abomination.
--Mori Dinauer
