Your one stop pundit shop.
Gail Collins is thrilled that Tom DeLay is going to be on Dancing With The Stars:
DeLay’s entry into the world of competitive TV dancing is also the answer to two critical problems facing the American economy. One is a serious celebrity shortage. This is something I really didn’t see coming. But the proliferation of low-cost reality shows on television has drained the nation’s hitherto-robust supply of slightly famous people to the point that last year’s “Celebrity Apprentice” featured a woman whose claim to fame was opening briefcases on “Deal or No Deal.”
John Aloysius Cogan, Jr. thinks that what's lost in all of the talk about health care reform is the fact that most people don't understand what's in their own health insurance policies.
E.J. Dionne on the intimidation tactics of the right:
This is not about the politics of populism. It's about the politics of the jackboot. It's not about an opposition that has every right to free expression. It's about an angry minority engaging in intimidation backed by the threat of violence.
There is a philosophical issue here that gets buried under the fear that so many politicians and media-types have of seeming to be out of touch with the so-called American heartland.
The simple fact is that an armed citizenry is not the basis for our freedoms. Our freedoms rest on a moral consensus, enshrined in law, that in a democratic republic we work out our differences through reasoned, and sometimes raucous, argument. Free elections and open debate are not rooted in violence or the threat of violence. They are precisely the alternative to violence, and guns have no place in them.
Harold Meyerson, pointing out the daily dose of garbage from Chuck Grassley, wonders:
Why, then, does Max Baucus, the committee's Democratic chairman, persist in the charade of bipartisan negotiations with Grassley? Does he -- does anybody -- really believe that a Republican Party so deeply invested in defeating President Obama's campaign for health-care reform is open to a scaled-down version that Obama can still claim as a victory? On Tuesday, the Republican Senate whip, Jon Kyl of Arizona, called Democrat Kent Conrad's proposal for cooperatives in lieu of a public option "a Trojan horse" for a government takeover of health care. Hard to find the green shoots of compromise in that response.
Marshall Ackerman gives one doctor's view on health care reform.
Donald Lambro declares the public option dead due to a:
... massive grass-roots protest movement and deepening fears and divisions among Democratic lawmakers.
Karl Rove says he's owed an apology from John Conyers, the Washington Post and the New York Times for accusations made about him in the U.S. Attorney scandal. Seriously.
Jeffrey Bell's title says it all: "Bob Novak, Truth Seeker."
Peter Funt says that:
After decades of abuse, racial profiling of blacks may actually be in a slight decline - not enough, certainly, but moving in the right direction. Yet, other forms of profiling are increasing, in some cases with the government’s encouragement.
And it seems that no one is safe from this practice.