Visual source:
Newseum
Paul Krugman zeroes in on the American Legislative Exchange Council:
And if there is any silver lining to Trayvon Martin’s killing, it is that it might finally place a spotlight on what ALEC is doing to our society — and our democracy.
What is ALEC? Despite claims that it’s nonpartisan, it’s very much a movement-conservative organization, funded by the usual suspects: the Kochs, Exxon Mobil, and so on. Unlike other such groups, however, it doesn’t just influence laws, it literally writes them, supplying fully drafted bills to state legislators. In Virginia, for example, more than 50 ALEC-written bills have been introduced, many almost word for word. And these bills often become law.
E. J. Dionne writes that we were blessed with the three moments last week that took us beyond "the spin and obfuscation": Rep. Paul Ryan is a fake deficit hawk; the consequences of a gun law based on feelings was brought home in Sanford, Fla.; and an inadvertent truth slipped from the lips of a Romney campaign advisor when he forever linked the candidate's views to Etch-a-Sketch.
Rush says it's okay, so Larry Kudlow buys in:
On economic policy, for example, he would limit the government budget to 20 percent of gross domestic product, slash $500 billion in his first term and restrain Medicaid, food stamps and other entitlement transfers before block granting them to the states. His Medicare reform is nearly identical to the Wyden-Ryan approach. He's for a true all-of-the-above energy policy that would take the regulatory handcuffs off drilling on federal lands. He would repeal Obamacare. And he has come up with a supply-side tax cut that would lower marginal rates by 20 percent across the board and drop the corporate tax to 25 percent.
Those are very conservative positions. One could seriously ask whether Romney isn't the most conservative presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan.
Jonathan Capeheart writes that the thoughtful outpouring of something more than sympathy over the shooting of Trayvon Martin has given him hope that America will "use this tragedy to further engage in the soul-searching President Obama urged us to do on Friday." The emails he has received tells him this is already going on—messages like this one:
Miki Straughan recounted a story from 50 years ago in New Orleans where she hired a woman to help with her ironing. After lunch one day, Straughan’s blond, blue-eyed, five-year-old daughter played with the black woman’s 4-year-old grandson.
The grandmother proceeded to tell her adorable, chubby little black grandson NOT to get on the swing, NOT to touch the little white girl, Not to push her too hard on the swing. Not to run after her.
I said, “For heaven’s sake, he’s just a little boy.” I never forgot her response. She said: “You’re going back to Seattle but he has to live here . . . and I’m saving his life.”
Gregory Rodriguez:
Hate speech is a form of vandalism. It defaces the environment, and like a broken window, if left untended, signals to other hoodlums that the coast is clear to do more damage.
But unlike the proverbial broken window, which urban police departments and criminologists urge us to repair to maintain the aura of social order, nobody seems to be in much of a hurry to nip hate speech in the bud. That's because since the ill-fated attempt by several universities to regulate hate speech in the 1980s and '90s, any discussion of reining in racist taunts inevitably degrades into charges of political correctness and ends abruptly with the invocation of the 1st Amendment. [...]
I'm not worried about anyone's hurt feelings. What I am concerned about is the extra burden nonwhites (and other minorities) are expected to bear when entering the public square, and the way tolerated hate speech may keep them on the sidelines and weaken our democracy.
Having apparently spent a few minutes paging through his Cliff's Notes copy of Western History,
Ken Blackwell stretches way on on a limb to compare Obama's decision on birth control coverage to Bismark's anti-Catholic
kulturkampf. Call it pre-Godwin.
Mijin Cha writes that despite President Obama's "rhetoric on clean energy, it really is business as usual and dirty fossil fuels will continue to receive support and preference."
Randal Amster:
Swipe across that touchscreen, scroll down with that mouse, click that ad banner, pull that lever in the booth, change that channel repeatedly, post a link to that viral video, accept that new credit card offer, text while in that drive-through line, gas up the car and eat up from the microwave. Modern life is a veritable hall of mirrors for narcissists, complete with the rush of affirmation from every "like" attained and text message received with a sonorous chime. It's all so smooth and slick and seamless, how we've gone in less than one generation from people having time to ones being had by it. Yes, you can buy time, share it on vacation, put it on a sheet at work, use it for making a bomb, or turn it into an uncritical magazine — but at the end of the day, there is no longer an end of the day.