Saturday, November 22, 2008

22 Nov 2008 08:58 pm

Faces Of The Day

A newly born elephant baby plays with its mother at the Hagenbeck Tierpark in the northern German city of Hamburg on November 22, 2008. The baby Asian elephant was born yesterday. By Roland Magunia/AFP/Getty.

22 Nov 2008 08:20 pm

It Could Be Them

Toby Young believes celebrity culture sustains the illusion of meritocracy:

If the existence of the celebrity class does play a role in securing people's consent to our winner-takes-all society, then the fact that the entry requirements are so low helps this process along. If people believe there is a genuine chance they might be catapulted to the top, they're more likely to endorse a system in which success is so highly rewarded. To paraphrase the advertising slogan for the National Lottery, it could be them. As with the lottery, people may know that the actual chances of winning are low but the selection mechanism itself is fair—a level playing field. After that, their "specialness" will take care of the rest.

22 Nov 2008 07:32 pm

Netflix For Books

A new venture:

Here’s how it works: Readers order books online and receive them through the mail. They can choose among plans that would allow them to receive from three to 11 books at a time. These books can be kept for as long as the reader likes with no late fees.

I don't see how this is better than a library. And it will never compete with the Kindle.

22 Nov 2008 06:20 pm

Pink And Blue

Korean artist Jeongmee Yoon photographed children who would only wear and buy gender specific clothes and toys. Here's one from the blue series:

Pink after the jump:

Continue reading "Pink And Blue" »

22 Nov 2008 04:45 pm

Suicide Online

A disturbing new media first:

About 185 people were viewing the feed on the San Francisco-based live-streaming service. The teen had announced his pending suicide on a bodybuilding.com chat forum, which linked to the broadcast. He left an online suicide note. Viewers were seen egging him on. The chat's moderator called the authorities, Baker said, and police broke into the residence.

And they goaded him as a "faggot."

22 Nov 2008 04:11 pm

I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

One of those moments when the Onion gets to the truth in ways no serious outlet could:

Now, granted, there are some Christians on the lunatic fringe who take their beliefs a little too far. Take my coworker Karen, for example. She's way off the deep end when it comes to religion: going down to the homeless shelter to volunteer once a month, donating money to the poor, visiting elderly shut-ins with the Meals on Wheels program—you name it!

But believe me, we're not all that way. The people in my church, for the most part, are perfectly ordinary Americans like you and me. They believe in the simple old-fashioned traditions—Christmas, Easter, the slow and deliberate takeover of more and more county school boards to get the political power necessary to ban evolution from textbooks statewide. That sort of thing.

Continue reading "I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians" »

22 Nov 2008 03:50 pm

Moore Award Nominee

"...if Obama really wanted change, if he really wanted to honor progressives who backed him early on and then did the grunt work against McCain, he’d nominate Dennis Kucinich as Secretary of State," - Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive.

22 Nov 2008 02:48 pm

The View From Your Window

Takarazuka City, Japan, 5.01 pm.

22 Nov 2008 01:20 pm

"Under Coercive Conditions"

Ben Wittes ups the Orwellian ante:

Detainees who pose a grave national security threat might be unprosecutable for a variety of reasons: because of deficiencies in the criminal law as it stood in 2001, because evidence against them would not stand up in court, because the government might not have enough evidence to convict or because it obtained key evidence under coercive conditions.

"Under coercive conditions". Excuse me, but what does that mean in English? Try: Because they got intelligence from torturing people. Coercion means force. It means they forced "information" out of them. Not coax, trick, lure, force. That means the victims had no choice. And the only way in which human beings can seriously have no choice at all is by subjecting them to such severe mental and physical pain and suffering that they have no option as human beings but to tell their torturers something.

This is the defining line of torture: not some arbitrary comic book technique, but a psychological and physical fact: pushing another human being to the point where choice becomes unavailable to him or her. You can do this in any number of ways; it can take three seconds of electrocution or it can take two months of sleep deprivation, hypothermia and darkness. But the line it eventually crosses is the same line. Throughout human history, human beings have known what that line is, and the West was constructed on a disavowal of ever crossing it again. Why? Because a society that endorses torture commits itself not to limiting, but to extinguishing human freedom. And a protection of human freedom in its most minimal form is what our entire civilization is premised on.

Once that force is unleashed - and it is pure evil - it is almost impossible to stop it destroying your entire system of government. Maybe Europeans like me, who grew up in a land where torture was practiced by government widely in the distant past, and had that history dinned into us, understand this more acutely than those who have never known anything but a New World. But trust us Old Worlders passionate about the New: America and torture are mutually exclusive as ideas and realities. You can have one or the other. You cannot have both.

So when I read an American use the meaningless euphemism - "under coercive conditions" - as if force can be a condition that hovers in the air without anyone accountable for it, I shudder. When I read him tiptoe around what we are actually talking about, and express sympathy for those who tortured, illegally and secretly and against their oath of office, I shudder some more. Because we are numbing ourselves from moral responsibility and the only true protection we have from tyranny: the rule of law.

Even the word "torture" can be too vague and abstract a term. So let us state in plain English how Bush, Cheney, Tenet, et al. actually got information. They did it by subjecting prisoners to repeated drowning, or freezing, or heating, or sadistically long sleeplessness, or shackling or crucifying them until the pain could be borne no longer, or beating them until they pleaded for mercy, or threatening to kill or torture their children or wife or parents. Or all of the above in combination, in isolation, and with no surety of ever seeing the light of day again, with no right to meaningful due process of any kind, sometimes sealed off from light and sound for months at a time, or bombarded with indescribable noise day and night in cells from which there was no escape ever. This is what "under coercive conditions" actually means. It drove many of the victims into become mumbling, shaking, insane shells of human beings; it killed dozens; it drove others still to hunger strikes to try to kill themselves; and it terrified and scarred and "broke" the souls of many, many others. For what? Intelligence that cannot be trusted, and the loss of the sacred integrity of two centuries of American history. Did it save lives? We do not know. We do know that the people who are claiming it did have been unable to bring any serious case to justice based on their original claims, and are the people who are criminally responsible for the torture they have committed. Why would they not say it saved lives? And yet we have no other way to know. And we have the terrifying possibility that false information procured by torture provided a pretext to torture others in a self-perpetuating loop in which any ability to find out the actual truth is lost for ever. That, after all, is how some of the flawed intelligence that took us into Iraq was procured.

To paraphrase Hitch: torture poisons everything.

And people wonder why I seem so angry and concerned about this issue, about its centrality to this election, and about the unique, once-in-a-century chance to put it behind us before it infects us beyond cure. It is, in my judgment, the biggest single crisis we now face, because it does not simply affect our wealth or our safety, but because it affects who we are.

We cannot know hope until we end torture.

(Photo: a detainee killed by US forces in Abu Ghraib prison, after being beaten and forced into a position with his arms bent back over and behind his head, with a hood restricting his breathing. All the techniques used against him were authorized by president George W. Bush.)

22 Nov 2008 11:54 am

Extreme Brewing

Well, someone has to be the party-pooper:

Beer has lagged well behind wine and organic produce in the ongoing reinvention of American cuisine. Yet the change over the past twenty years has been startling. In 1965, the United States had a single craft brewery: Anchor Brewing, in San Francisco. Today, there are nearly fifteen hundred. In liquor stores and upscale supermarkets, pumpkin ales and chocolate stouts compete for cooler space with wit beers, weiss beers, and imperial Pilsners. The King of Beers, once served in splendid isolation at many bars, is now surrounded by motley bottles with ridiculous names, like jesters at a Renaissance fair: SkullSplitter, Old Leghumper, Slam Dunkel, Troll Porter, Moose Drool, Power Tool, He’brew, and Ale Mary Full of Taste.

Ridiculous? Inspired, I'd say.

22 Nov 2008 11:14 am

End Of The Backlist

James Surowiecki:

...the flattening out and eventual decline of DVD sales had to be completely anticipated. After all, every year there are fewer and fewer good films for the studios to release on DVD. I’m not making a point about the quality of Hollywood’s new movies. Rather, I’m talking about the fact that a huge chunk of DVD sales over the years has come from the studios’ film libraries. The introduction of the DVD was a great boon to the studios’ bottom lines because DVDs were significantly better than videotapes (much better picture, and much longer-lasting) and people were, as a result, far more interested in owning them (rather than simply renting them). And people were interested not just in buying new movies, but also in buying older ones. So the studios have been able to turn their libraries into billions of dollars in sales.

The problem, obviously, is that those libraries, while vast, are limited.

22 Nov 2008 10:31 am

Not Bad

Peter Suderman praises negative reviews.

22 Nov 2008 09:17 am

A Funny Barack?

Jocelyn Guest says that SNL is re-casting Obama. I vote for this guy.

22 Nov 2008 08:06 am

Dissent Of The Day

A reader writes:

Allow me to be a dissenter on the criticism people have been leveling at Obama for wanting to move slowly on DADT.  The public and younger folks may be perfectly supportive of opening the military to gays serving openly, but that's not the case with the military.  No matter how delicately the administration approaches the issue, there will be resentment within the military. And it could turn violent at the lower echelons.

Continue reading "Dissent Of The Day" »

Friday, November 21, 2008

21 Nov 2008 08:19 pm

Geithner, Treasury Secretary

Justin Fox:

One thing Geithner doesn't have much background in is economic policy other than financial policy (at Treasury his big job was jetting around the world fighting the emerging markets financial crises of the late 1990s). So the other names on the economic team that Obama is set to announce Monday are going to be important. They're likely to be the ones designing a stimulus package while Geithner spends his days trying to make the banking system work again.

James Surowiecki:

Continue reading "Geithner, Treasury Secretary" »

21 Nov 2008 07:22 pm

Face of The Day

Linda Barnett, mother of of slain U.S. Army Sgt. Jon Stiles, clutches a U.S. flag during Stiles funeral at the Fort Logan National Cemetery November 21, 2008 in Denver, Colorado. Stiles, 38, of Highlands Ranch, Colorado, was killed in action in Jalalabad, Afghanistan November 13 when a roadside bomb detonated near his vehicle. He had survived a suicide bomb attack just the month before and had refused medical leave in order to rejoin his unit. By John Moore/Getty.

21 Nov 2008 07:14 pm

"A Close Friend Of Barack Obama"

How insufferable will Arianna get in the next few years? Maybe this insufferable:

“I only text three people - my two teenage children and Barack Obama.”

I might as well confess: I don't know the president-elect personally and don't intend to get to know him socially. I do intend to watch him like a hawk, as I have now for two years. And I hope he is everything his first supporters saw in him. So far, the solid conventionality of his cabinet picks - with the sole exception of torture apologist Jim Brennan - seems exactly what I'd expect from a serious man intent on serious government.

Which must stagger Sean Hannity, Stanley Kurtz, Jonah Goldberg, Hugh Hewitt, et al. I mean: this far left, Islamist, terror-loving America-hater just picked ... Timothy Geithner. Noam Chomsky was unavailable?

21 Nov 2008 07:03 pm

Clinton Accepts?

That's what the Times is reporting. Ackerman is afraid that Clinton will fill the State Department with loyalists:

Obama loyalists wonder whether the same people who attacked Obama on foreign policy during the primaries can implement Obama’s agenda from State Dept. perches. “Look, Clinton and Obama are both smart people,” said one Democratic official who would not speak for the record, “and I’m sure their one-on-one relationship would be OK. But when you hire a Clinton, you hire more than just that one person, you get the entire package.” If Clinton becomes secretary of state, it’s possible that the fissures between her loyalists and Obama’s would be a significant undercurrent of the administration’s foreign-policy decision-making.

Drezner thinks the outcry is overblown. Me too. The differences between Clinton and Obama were always exaggerated; and we need all the talent we can get. I defer to no one in Clinton Derangement Syndrome, which is why I believe it's good for them to have their hands full and to be kept under surveillance. But it's not a done deal yet, anyway. Bill could still derail it.

21 Nov 2008 05:46 pm

Credibility In Israel

Goldberg explains why he likes Clinton at State. I do think that the Clinton appointment will utlimately come down to the Israel-Palestine question. And Clinton enables Obama to overcome unnecessary resistance and paranoia from the Israeli right. She credentializes him with Israelis and American Jews - which will help build support for a sustainable compromise before it is too late for the Jewish state. I remain a fan of the pick, but wonder if Clinton has the poise to accept it.

21 Nov 2008 05:11 pm

Tom Daschle, Elephant Hunter

James Pethokoukis suggests that Obamacare could kill the GOP:

Recently, I stumbled across this analysis of how nationalized healthcare in Great Britain affected the political environment there. As Norman Markowitz in Political Affairs, a journal of "Marxist thought," puts it: "After the Labor Party established the National Health Service after World War II, supposedly conservative workers and low-income people under religious and other influences who tended to support the Conservatives were much more likely to vote for the Labor Party when health care, social welfare, education and pro-working class policies were enacted by labor-supported governments."

Passing Obamacare would be like performing exactly the opposite function of turning people into investors. Whereas the Investor Class is more conservative than the rest of America, creating the Obamacare Class would pull America to the left. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute, who first found that wonderful Markowitz quote, puts it succinctly in a recent blog post: "Blocking Obama's health plan is key to the GOP's survival."

21 Nov 2008 04:39 pm

The Swarm Of Careerists

Thomas P.M. Barnett on transition hires:

There is always the feeding frenzy when a new president takes office, especially if the break for the party in question is 8 years or more. You have this entire universe of super-talented, ambitious and supremely focused players who’ve gone into the exile of think tanks for the long winter, cranking all manner of—admittedly—pretty dull books (you want to say careful things) and attending conference after conference to network like crazy, and never turning down any commissions or what not. So when the floodgates open, it’s not pretty. I mean, you’re talking about true addicts to power—as in, people who’ve organized their entire lives around these moments of possibility.

Yes: it's not pretty in DC right now. But at least, unlike the Clinton transition, people aren't openly buying their appointments.

21 Nov 2008 04:20 pm

Mental Health Break

Bruce Lee plays ping-pong:

21 Nov 2008 04:14 pm

Ponnuru And The Gays

He writes:

Some Republicans believe that their reputation for intolerance is costing the party the votes of the next generation of Americans. But that argument got harder to make when California, one of the most liberal states in the country, passed a ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage.

But the next generation of Californians, even after the dreadful No on 8 campaign, still favored marriage equality by huge margins. Ramesh may be right that gay-bashing can still produce some small gains for the GOP (although in most states, it cannot be banned any more than it has been), but California sure didn't disprove the generational argument.

And assume also that banning marriage rights is popular for a while. Does the GOP not realize that it needs openly gay people in its ranks to show that it is not completely anachronistic or regional?

Continue reading "Ponnuru And The Gays" »

21 Nov 2008 04:02 pm

Spineless?

Brian Doherty isn't happy that Obama is moving slowly on DADT:

I imagine if Obama makes this change cleanly at any time in his term, he'll be fondly remembered. Still, his apparent unwillingness to be bold on something he considers a matter of both justice and wise policy--and that he has clear political support on--should be disconcerting to his fans.

It is. Because it is a caution based on caution - not reality.

21 Nov 2008 03:40 pm

No Way. No How. No Brennan: Ctd.

A reader writes:

  While I agree with you that Brennan would be an awful choice at CIA, for both substantive and symbolic ("branding") reasons, I do see one significant ray of light appearing from this "Dark Side" guy:  He wants to have a real debate on these issues:

"It's a tough ethical question, and it's a question that really needs to be aired more publicly. The issue of the reported domestic spying -- these are very healthy debates that need to take place. They can't be stifled, because I think that we as a country and a society have to determine what is it we want to do, whether it be eavesdropping, whether it be taking actions against individuals who are either known or suspected to be terrorists. What length do we want to go to? What measures do we want to use? What tactics do we want to use? "

He wants the American people to be forced to make explicit moral choices, instead of acquiescing implicitly to the soft dictatorship of a secretive and dishonest "unitary executive".  This is closer to Democracy, at least.  Where there is openness and truth, there is hope.

Agreed. But it disturbs me that this man, while urging debate, never tells us which side of the debate he'd be on. I fear he'd be on Tenet's side. As he has been.

21 Nov 2008 03:39 pm

Paul On Obama

Ron Paul on what he expects from the new administration:

I don’t expect many good things. I do expect a lot of spending and even more debt. To really cut spending and balance our budget, we need to change foreign policy. Obama’s rhetoric on foreign policy is better than what we have gotten recently, but don’t expect any real change.

Continue reading "Paul On Obama" »

21 Nov 2008 03:24 pm

Medved: Full Civil Equality For Gay Couples

But not the M-word. A key member of the religious right backs civil unions containing all the rights - federal and state - that apply to civil marriages. So if the far right now favors comprehensive civil unions at the state and federal level, why won't Obama propose a federal civil unions bill? Or will the Human Rights Campaign try to dissuade him?

21 Nov 2008 03:04 pm

War Doesn't Expand Government?

Now, after eight years of Bush, Glenn Reynolds is suddenly worried about big government. Now that defending libertarianism will not hurt Republican power, he will rediscover his "principles."

21 Nov 2008 02:37 pm

Learning To Love The Trillion Dollar Deficit

Matt Miller, a former "deficit fetishist," claims that the current economic situation demands a large deficit:

The key (and here you'll see I haven't really changed my stripes) is to enact a long-term framework for fiscal sanity even as we test the limits of how much debt the Treasury can peddle.

Continue reading "Learning To Love The Trillion Dollar Deficit" »

21 Nov 2008 02:24 pm

The Cameron Model?

Here's a very helpful and insightful piece by Tim Montgomerie. I'm drawn to two elements in particular. The Conservatives returned to a concern for civil liberties:

Once the party of authoritarianism the Conservatives have about-turned and become a vigorous opponent of Labour's plans for a national ID card and for an extended period of detention without charge.  A more respectful view of same-sex relationships has also bought David Cameron greater opportunity to make the case for traditional marriage.

And if I were part of the degenerate "conservative" think-tank-magazine establishment, I would also note this:

The two think tanks that have had most influence on Project Cameron didn't exist when the Conservatives were last in power: Policy Exchange and the Centre for Social Justice.  Policy Exchange (or PX as it is known) was founded by Nicholas Boles and Michael Gove. Boles now runs the Conservative Party's preparation-for-government unit and Michael Gove MP is the party's education minister-in-waiting with an ambitious programme for schools reform in his briefcase.

And Nick Boles is openly gay. Imagine that in today's Dixified GOP.

21 Nov 2008 02:16 pm

Adam Smith Meets Charles Darwin

Via Catherine Rampell, a study on division of labor among ants:

My results indicate that at least in this species, a task is not primarily performed by individuals that are especially adapted to it (by whatever mechanism). This result implies that if social insects are collectively successful, this is not obviously for the reason that they employ specialized workers who perform better individually.

Mark Thoma thinks through why Smith's theory doesn't apply in this case.

21 Nov 2008 01:50 pm

Princeton's Proposition 8

They don't hate freshman, they just want to protect the sidewalks:

More details here.

21 Nov 2008 01:47 pm

No Way. No How. No Brennan, Ctd.

Anonymous Liberal counters:

The universe of people who have the experience and expertise necessary to competently oversee our enormous intelligence apparatus is very small. When looking for someone to run our intelligence agencies, a candidate's competency from an operational standpoint is arguably more important that his policy views (remember that policy decisions are generally made by others, a point I'll get to in a moment).

I understand this point. But any confusion about a clear break with Bush-Cheney destroys Obama's potential for a fresh start with our allies and muddies the rule of law. It is going to be very difficult to take over what have been lawless and criminal policies without some taint. All the more reason to get someone at the top who is clearly not on the "dark side." Brennan does not do that. And this core, central mandate for Obama cannot be muddied. There must surely be someone capable of running the place who isn't implicated in the defense of war crimes.

21 Nov 2008 01:36 pm

No Worries?

Felix Salmon says the stock market slump isn't another meltdown:

The TED spread today is 213bp -- more or less exactly where it's been for the past few weeks. Which says to me that for all that financial stocks are being crushed, this is no reprise of the financial crisis we saw in the wake of Lehman's collapse. Rather, it's an old-fashioned economic crisis, which severely erodes the equity of leveraged banks, but where money still flows and even the occasional IPO can get away if it's priced at a discount. Or, to put it another way: it's a bear market, not a financial meltdown. Which might be little solace to anybody whose stocks have been crushed of later, but which might help reassure policymakers at least a little.

21 Nov 2008 12:52 pm

No Way. No How. No Brennan. II

Greenwald, who raised the alarm in the first place, explains why it's a betrayal:

To appoint someone as CIA Director or Director of National Intelligence who was one of George Tenet's closest aides when The Dark Side of the last eight years was conceived and implemented, and who, to this day, continues to defend and support policies such as "enhanced interrogation techniques" and rendition (to say nothing of telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping), is to cross multiple lines that no Obama supporter should sanction.  Truly turning a page on the grotesque abuses of the last eight years requires both symbolism (closing Guantanamo) and substantive policy changes (compelling adherence to the Army Field Manual, ensuring due process rights for all detainees, ending rendition, restoring safeguards on surveillance powers).  Appointing John Brennan to a position of high authority would be to affirm and embrace, not repudiate, the darkest aspects of the last eight years.

21 Nov 2008 12:35 pm

And Who Endures?

Nate Silver wonders which websites that were extremely popular in the election season will retain their readerships in the aftermath. I'm delighted to see that the Atlantic has so far done the best of all of them. Because we're still working our butts off.

21 Nov 2008 12:26 pm

Obama Follows Clinton On Gay Rights?

Two major Clinton hacks are among the transition team - Fred Hochberg, perhaps the central pillar of the Human Rights Campaign and Clintonite dead-ender, and Roberta Achtenberg, formerly at HUD. The legacy of these people was DOMA, a doubling of the rate of discharges of gay servicemembers, and the perpetuation of the irrelevant Human Rights Campaign. Appointing people like these Clinton retreads and establishment Dems is of a piece with pushing DADT repeal back years.

Let us review the politics of this: the most recent poll shows 75 percent of the American public favors lifting the ban, including 64 percent of Republicans. But Obama cannot go there until 2010. It's sooo controversial. I understand the need not to repeat Clinton's errors, especially at the very beginning of an administration. Delaying and consulting is fine. But the way in which gay servicemembers, risking their lives for their country as we speak, are still regarded as radioactive in the Democratic establishment, enabled by the internalized homophobia of the Human Rights Campaign, is appalling.

21 Nov 2008 11:48 am

No Way. No How. No Brennan.

Marc reports the Republican, former chief-of-staff for George Tenet (who authorized war crimes as CIA head), admirer of Dick Cheney, CEO of the company one of whose contract employees improperly accessed Obama's and McCain's passports, and defender of renditions and "enhanced interrogations" is still Obama's front-runner pick to head the CIA. No, I'm not making this up. Brennan was high up in the agency during the run-up to the Iraq war and has since conceded this about the intelligence he was in part responsible for:

Looking back on it now, as we put pieces together, it probably is apparent to some, including Paul, that it was much more politicized than in fact we realized.

So Brennan was complicit and naive in the run-up to the Iraq war. And Obama wants to reward him? Brennan is also a believer in Cheney's term "the dark side," wishing merely to have some limits within it. He clearly has a mindset that has far more in common with the war crimes of his former boss than with the clear, and indisputable beliefs of the Obama movement. Listen to the ambivalence about torture here:

I think George [Tenet] had two concerns. One is to make sure that there was that legal justification, as well as protection for CIA officers who are going to be engaged in some of these things, so that they would not be then prosecuted or held liable for actions that were being directed by the administration. So we want to make sure the findings and other things were done probably with the appropriate Department of Justice review.

But at the same time, there is a question about how aggressive you want to be against terrorism in terms of, what does it mean to take the gloves off? There was a real debate within the agency, including today, about what are the minimum standards that you want to stoop to and beyond where you're not going to go, because we don't want to stoop to using the same types of standards that terrorists use. We are in this business, whether it be intelligence or the government, to protect freedom, democracy and liberty, not to violate that.

When it comes to individuals who are determined to destroy our nation, though, we have to make sure that we take every possible measure. It's a tough ethical question, and it's a question that really needs to be aired more publicly. The issue of the reported domestic spying -- these are very healthy debates that need to take place. They can't be stifled, because I think that we as a country and a society have to determine what is it we want to do, whether it be eavesdropping, whether it be taking actions against individuals who are either known or suspected to be terrorists. What length do we want to go to? What measures do we want to use? What tactics do we want to use?

Hopefully, that "dark side" is not going to be something that's going to forever tarnish the image of the United States abroad and that we're going to look back on this time and regret some of the things that we did, because it is not in keeping with our values. ...

Sometimes there are actions that we are forced to take, but there need to be boundaries beyond which we are going to recognize that we're not going to go because we still are Americans, and we are supposed to be representing something to people in this country and overseas. So the dark side has its limits.

The simple answer to the question - what length do we want to go? - is to abide by the rule of law. Why is that so hard to understand? And yet Brennan and Tenet didn't. They authorized clear torture sessions. Why is such a man even considered for the post under Obama? This man cannot end the taint of Bush-Cheney. He was Bush-Cheney. In fact, if Obama picks him, it will be a vindication of the kind of ambivalence and institutional moral cowardice that made America a torturing nation. It would be an unforgivable betrayal of his supporters and his ideals. It would be an acknowledgment that Tenet himself is not a war criminal, while the facts indisputably prove that he was.

Continue reading "No Way. No How. No Brennan." »

21 Nov 2008 11:39 am

Kill Da Turkeys

A reader writes:

I'm certainly no fan of Gov. Palin's, but the widespread reaction to the turkey-slaughter backdrop -- the horror, the horror! -- is pretty amusing to me. See, when I was 14, I took a job at a turkey farm near my parents' house. Part of the job included working in the slaughterhouse. I didn't kill the birds myself, but I was privileged to yank out their still-warm innards with my bare hands. This tends to shock people when they find out -- they can't hide the disgust that flashes across their faces. Yes, it was truly disgusting. But all these people are excited to sit down to their piping-hot turkey dinners next week! That food has to come from somewhere.

Continue reading "Kill Da Turkeys" »

21 Nov 2008 11:08 am

"Gov. Palin Apparently Oblivious To Turkey Carnage Over Her Shoulder"

Best caption ever:

Seriously, Matt Scully wrote a speech for this woman?

21 Nov 2008 10:59 am

How They Blew It

Three post-mortems for No on 8: here, here and here.

21 Nov 2008 10:43 am

Holder: Drug Warrior

Holder, Obama's AG, has unapologetically supported the war on drugs in the past. Radley Balko talks to drug policy reform groups about the pick:

The consensus seemed to be mild disappointment tempered with cautious optimism that despite his recent staff selections, Obama will keep his campaign promises to end the federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries and work to ameliorate the discrepancy in crack/powder cocaine sentencing...Who Obama ends up choosing to head up the DEA and ONDCP will be a far better indicator of whether he intends to continue the Bush administration's aggressive prosecution of the drug war, or if he's looking at a more tempered approach.

21 Nov 2008 10:25 am

An Aesthetic Masterpiece

Kevin Walsh loves Drudge's design. Althouse seconds:

There's something about Drudge that makes us want to look at it all the time. The sense that this is what the news looks like right now feels so right, even if you know it's wrong. Even that wrongness is part of the addictive power. Everything works exactly as it should.

Many years ago, on a pilgrimage to meet the Yoda of the web, Drudge told me how proud he was of how ugly his site was. He vowed never to change its tabloid crudeness or its sublime simplicity. It remains a model of economy and panache. Remember: only two people really run it. Think of how many people contribute to HuffPuff, how bewildering the design is, how impenetrable it can seem to a newcomer. But Drudge is as accessible and as simple as ever. It's a brand he created out of thin air. And changed the media for ever. By courage and sheer hard work.

If only he hadn't screwed up the election coverage. He missed the story. Drudge never used to miss the story. But he'll recover.

21 Nov 2008 10:17 am

The View From Your Window

Netanya, Israel, 4.25 pm.

21 Nov 2008 10:09 am

The How, Not The What

Ross makes an important point:

This problem is not, repeat not, a matter of conservatives needing to abandon their core convictions in order to win elections, as right-of-center reformers are often accused of doing. Rather, it's a matter of conservatives needing to apply their core convictions to questions like "how do we mitigate the worst effects of climate change?" and "how do we modernize our infrastructure?" and "how do we encourage excellence and competition within our public school bureaucracy?" instead of just letting liberals completely monopolize these debates, while the Right talks about porkbusting and not much else.

I agree we need to get much more policy-specific. I haven't, really, and the big difference between my book and Ross' and Reihan's is they get in the policy weeds. I felt and still feel that the deeper philosophical questions need confronting first if we're talking about a revived conservatism, as opposed to a revived Republicanism. But I hope to lay out an agenda for the right in the coming months and air the policy questions more thoroughly.

21 Nov 2008 09:55 am

Face Of My Day

21 Nov 2008 09:44 am

Brooks Over Kristol

Conor gives some advice on the GOP's media future.

21 Nov 2008 09:42 am

The Top 50 Philo-Semites

Goldblog starts a contest.

21 Nov 2008 09:37 am

When Christianist Socialists Attack

Jon Henke defends libertarianism from Mike Huckabee:

This is easily as contemptuous, as offensive as anything Kathleen Parker has written about social conservatives.  So, yeah, a columnist express disdain for social conservatives.  Cry me a river.  We libertarians had a social conservative Governor and Presidential candidate call us the "real threat" and "smug", and brazenly misrepresent our views before calling our message un-American.

Social conservatives have to realize that they need the fiscally conservative, socially moderate/tolerant voters if they want to be a part of a winning coalition.  The limited government message won revolutionary victories for Republicans in 1980 and 1994; it is the only viable organizing principle for the current Republican coalition.

21 Nov 2008 09:16 am

Accountability, Please

Another call for the leading gay groups to understand that they were a reason for the success of Proposition 8. But they are incapable of self-criticism. Which is why their strategy has remained all but unchanged for twenty years, while the gay movement has had to bypass them to succeed.