On Huffington Post, Bob Cesca writes an open letter of "congratulations" to Senator Joe Lieberman on keeping his Committee Chair: "One might be inclined to consider your conduct to date as somehow principled -- even mavericky, had it not been so transparently self-serving. Your behavior has been that of a man guided by nothing more than petty vengeance and retribution -- attention-starved opportunism not unlike grade-school instigators and gossip-mongers whose only path to relevance is to play two friends against each other. Worming your way from side to side depending on which kid or clique likes you more." (And it gets even better. Read it here.)
Athenae at First Draft is weary of the media's insta-analysis over who Obama might pick for what cabinet position, and she does a sterling job explaining all the angst out there in Blogo-World: "Part of it is that we're simply not used to having a president whose intelligence and decisions we can trust. It's not about whether you trust Obama, it's not even about whether he's trustworthy... I mean, for eight years we have basically had a president we were afraid was gonna sit on the button. We had this chewy little asshole who every time he opened his mouth caused an international incident, who couldn't pick up the phone without almost burning the place down. He and his people gave us absolutely no indication we could stop paying attention for a second because if this was the shit they did while we were watching, I mean, good God. It was like watching a guy juggle fire, and not well, and for eight years. It's gonna take us a minute to stop jumping every time the phone rings." (Yep, that pretty much covers it.)
Andrew Sullivan deconstructs part of Benjamin Wittes' recent Guantanamo story. Wittes argues that the government might not be able to convict certain detainees if evidence against them was obtained under coercive conditions. Sully sounds off: "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." (Sullivan has written an amazing piece that should be read in its entirety.)
Over at Politico, John Feehery examines the GOP's failure to connect in historical context, via Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson: "My theory is not that the new Democratic Party is so great for either the Hamiltonian financiers or the Jeffersonian populists. My theory is that Republicans, in their attempts to curry favor with both groups, alienated both instead. Republicans promoted a free-market philosophy meant to appeal to big business interests. Their economic philosophy is pure Hamilton. But while trying to stay true to their Hamiltonian roots, they also sought to curry favor with rural America — the Jeffersonians among us. In their efforts to do so, they promoted a socially conservative agenda that alienated many Hamiltonians who now live in the suburbs of both New York and Washington, D.C. It is not that Republicans have not been responsive to their base constituencies. Indeed, they have been too responsive to their constituencies. (I would call it ass kissing, but then I'm not a great thinker like Mr. Feehery.)
On Brad Blog, John Ponder responds to Law Professor Douglas Kmeic's plan to let the Governator resolve Prop 8 through an administrative order declaring civil unions for all, and marriages only in churches: So what are the chances Schwarzenegger would act on Kmeic's proposal? ...In short, Gov. Schwarzenegger's political career is coming to an end, and he has very little to show for it, so swooping in to save the day would appear to be a good career move. On the other hand, he has already whiffed on two chances to go down in history as the man who resolved this landmark civil rights case, so there's no reason to think he'll take this back-door approach. And there is the additional issue of whether he should. Is converting all marriages in California to civil unions fair? Would these new universal civil unions be a separate but equal class from existing "traditional" marriages? ...Prop 8 clearly violates the equal protection clause by amending the Constitution to restrict the rights of a minority group... The chances are arguably better than even that the California Supreme Court will overturn Prop 8, if not on the merits then on procedural grounds. (And then things will turn REALLY ugly.)
Taylor Marsh discusses fallout over the possible re-instatement of the Fairness Doctrine: "I have no problem with people being against the Fairness Doctrine, as long as they want to address the issue plaguing liberal talk radio hosts across the country, including those being taken off the air or kept away from a chance to prove they've got what it takes to stay on the air. But some of these people opining think radio is like blogging. It's not. The airwaves belong to the public, including the local community, so conglomerates supporting mostly wingnut radio hosts, not giving locals a chance to break through, is against the spirit of this reality... But one thing the wingnuts have done is get liberals opining that the Fairness Doctrine is wrong and nobody is for it without admitting that airwaves are monopolized by the right. Guess what, folks. Democrats have been played, because either way it gives Republicans the win. Shuts everyone up about the Fairness Doctrine, while no one takes it a step further discussing that media consolidation is a real issue... The right may be paranoid about the Fairness Doctrine, but the left is playing into their plan through their reactions that there's nothing on the radio dial worth fighting for." (Taylor makes sense. And it's worth noting that Obama doesn't plan to reinstate the policy.)
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