Your one stop pundit shop.
Gail Collins wants South Carolina to give another state a turn:
The political sex scandal spotlight is on South Carolina, which has hogged that stage so much lately you’d think it would be willing to give somebody else a turn.
Maybe there’s something in the water. Or perhaps it’s difficult to maintain marital unions in the state that invented nullification.
But what about the issues in the race?
The issues in the primary have basically been which Republican dislikes government most. During the Tuesday debate, Bauer claimed that illegal immigration was caused by lavish government welfare payments, which caused poor people to refuse to do manual labor. Haley bragged that she had opposed the federal stimulus program. The attorney general, Henry McMaster, who is currently suing to try to stop the federal government from bringing health care reform to South Carolina, attributed the failures of the state’s public schools to teachers’ being so busy “filling out federal forms that they can’t teach.”
“Here we are in this very poor state that needs help very much,” said Mark Tompkins, a professor of political science at the University of South Carolina. “We’re sixth in the nation in unemployment, and we’re fighting about whether the federal government can help us with health care.”
Government may not be the problem, but the people doing the governing could definitely use some work.
Nicholas Kristof says:
When reports first circulated on Twitter of a deadly attack by Israeli commandos on the Gaza flotilla, I didn’t forward them because they seemed implausible. I thought: Israel wouldn’t be so obtuse as to use lethal force on self-described peace activists in international waters with scores of reporters watching.
Ah, but it turned out that Israel could be so obtuse after all. It shot itself in the foot, blasting American toes as well, and undermined all of its longer-term strategic objectives.
Michael B. Oren defends Israel:
There is little doubt as to the real purpose of the Mavi Marmara’s voyage — not to deliver humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, but to create a provocation that would put international pressure on Israel to drop the Gaza embargo, and thus allow the flow of seaborne military supplies to Hamas. Just as Hamas gunmen hide behind civilians in Gaza, so, too, do their sponsors cower behind shipments of seemingly innocent aid.
E.J. Dionne highlights an underreported event:
It should become the philosophical shot heard 'round the country. In a remarkable speech that received far too little attention, former Supreme Court justice David Souter took direct aim at the conservatives' favorite theory of judging.
Souter's verdict: It "has only a tenuous connection to reality." [...]
Souter attacked the fatal flaw of originalism -- which he relabeled the "fair reading model" -- by suggesting that it would have led the Supreme Court in 1954 not to its Brown v. Board of Education decision overturning legal segregation but to an affirmation of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling upholding "separate but equal" public facilities.
"For those whose exclusive norm of constitutional judging is merely fair reading of language applied to facts objectively viewed, Brown must either be flat-out wrong or a very mystifying decision," Souter said.
Read the whole thing.
Dana Milbank discovers a kinder, gentler John Ashcroft:
It's not as if Ashcroft is some sort of squishy moderate. At Heritage on Wednesday, he could be heard arguing that it was "slander" and "bankrupt" to call the Guantanamo prison evil. "People are safe there; people are treated humanely there," he said. "The idea of detaining people who fight against you is an act of mercy." He also offered the quirky argument that "it's too easy to judge in retrospect" that it was wrong to force Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II.
The difference is that Ashcroft's rule-of-law conservatism now sounds genteel at a time when so many Republican leaders have gone off in the direction of anti-government hysteria.
David Broder comes up with his own idiotic variation on a GOP talking point ... instead of calling the oil spill "Obama's Katrina," he compares it to Jimmy Carter and the Iran hostage crisis.
Craig Shirley must have shared a cab with Broder this week.
Joan Vennochi says that:
After several months of terrible press, Pope Benedict XVI is getting religion.
When scandal strikes the Catholic Church, O’Malley knows how to quiet public outrage over it.
Charming, humble, and accessible, he’s a public relations pro. For a pontiff in dire need of better branding, it’s a good move to name O’Malley to a team of high-ranking prelates who will advise the archdioceses of Ireland about the clergy sexual abuse crisis that outraged that country.
Of course, calming outrage is quite different from fixing an institution that resists owning up to just how broken it is. And it is no substitute for holding child abusers and their enablers accountable for their crimes. Investigating alleged crimes in the religion is a job for outside law enforcement. The Vatican, however, is still allowed to investigate itself.
Mark J. Perry's thoughts on the current disaster in the Gulf:
Any sensible response to the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig - and the huge oil spill that's fouling Gulf waters - needs to recognize two facts: First, the demand for oil is expected to increase. Second, America cannot suddenly stop offshore drilling. [...]
We can expect oil firms to learn useful lessons from the accident, keeping in mind that any form of energy development poses safety and environmental challenges that must be faced, resolved and overcome.
Head hits desk ...