Your one stop pundit shop.
Orrin Hatch (R-UT) argues against an up-or-down vote on health care reform and invents his own Constitution to make his case:
This is attractive to proponents because it sharply limits debate and amendments to a mere 20 hours and would allow passage with only 51 votes (as opposed to the 60 needed to overcome a procedural hurdle). But the Constitution intends the opposite process, especially for a bill that would affect one-sixth of the American economy.
And not only would an up-or-down vote fly in the face of the Hatch Constitution, it could:
... damage the prospects of bipartisanship.
Comedy.
Richard Cohen on apartheid and Israel.
Bob Herbert says that:
From 2004 through 2009, in a policy that has gotten completely out of control, New York City police officers stopped people on the street and checked them out nearly three million times, frisking and otherwise humiliating many of them.
Upward of 90 percent of the people stopped are completely innocent of any wrongdoing. And yet the New York Police Department is compounding this intolerable indignity by compiling an enormous and permanent computerized database of these encounters between innocent New Yorkers and the police.
Not only are most of the people innocent, but a vast majority are either black or Hispanic. There is no defense for this policy. It’s a gruesome, racist practice that should offend all New Yorkers, and it should cease.
David Brooks has the most bizarre take on why Norway won a lot of gold medals at the Olympics.
Alberto Fuguet has an up close and personal take on the earthquake in Chile:
The quake hit Chile in the middle of a presidential transition and right smack at the start of our bicentennial celebration. It’s a testament to our infrastructure and social institutions that the whole country didn’t fall down. But we did stumble. And now, live on HDTV, we hear things that make us remember the dark days of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, words like “the missing,” “curfew” and “state of emergency.”
Rumors come and go: The phones are down; that’s true at the moment. Running water will stop for a day; who knows? Supermarkets are full of people and empty shelves. You worry that no one is in charge or, if they are, the situation is too big to handle without force. The real tremor rumbling beneath the rubble is the threat of social upheaval, especially in Concepción and Talcahuano, where ships lie in the streets.
Frank Gaffney peddles homophobia.
Ted Nugent? Seriously?