Friday opinion. See Middle East protests mothership for latest info, including In talks, White House seeks Mubarak exit.
Timothy Egan:
Breathtaking, these last few days in Egypt. What started with a scent of jasmine, the world’s biggest Arab country trying to chase out a dictator, is now devolving into violent chaos and police-state terror. Smiling families one day, thugs on camelback the next.
The brutal truth is this: where it ends in the cradle of civilization will not be America’s call. The particles of political energy are scrambled; to presume to know where they will re-align is to think the sun can be kept from rising on a given day.
Nicholas Kristof:
Mr. Mubarak has disgraced the twilight of his presidency. His government appears to have unleashed a brutal crackdown — hunting down human rights activists, journalists and, of course, demonstrators themselves, all while trying to block citizens from Tahrir Square. As I arrived near the square in the morning, I encountered a line of Mr. Mubarak’s goons carrying wooden clubs with nails embedded in them. That did not seem an opportune place to step out of a taxi, so I found a back way in.
National Journal:
In a strong statement of support for anti-government protesters in Egypt, the Senate passed a bipartisan resolution, introduced by two key senators, calling for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to resign immediately.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., and Senate Armed Services ranking member John McCain, R-Ariz., authored the resolution that was passed by unanimous consent Thursday evening.
Bipartisan sentiment, indeed.
Paul Offit on autism, Andrew Wakefield and MMR vaccine:
So what did we learn from this? What disappoints me about the British Medical Journal editorial was that the focus was on fraud -- that essentially this man should not be believed because he was fraudulent. But to me it doesn't matter whether you're fraudulent and wrong. In this case, the only thing that matters was that he was wrong and that his paper certainly did a lot of damage. Thousands of parents in England chose to not vaccinate their children. Hundreds were hospitalized and 4 were killed. Three in Ireland and 1 in London died because their parents feared the MMR vaccine more than they feared the measles. You could argue that the Wakefield paper killed 4 children.
I'd like to think that in the future we'd be more circumspect. When an article that could have a tremendous negative impact on the public's health is submitted for publication, both journal reviewers as well as the media should be far more circumspect. Thanks for your attention.
Jonathan Chait:
As Thune notes, many of the other contenders do not have jobs, so they're pretty much all-in on 2012. But Thune can pick when he wants to run for president, and running against a fairly popular incumbent president may not be the best time to pick.
National Journal: Presidential Power Rankings, including Mitt, T-Paw and Huck in that order.
Robert Shrum:
There was always a fear that the Conservatives were "novices" — that they couldn’t be trusted with the economy. This is almost certainly what deprived them of an outright parliamentary majority. But with their coalition partners, they managed to lay claim to Downing Street — and promptly set about chopping budgets and government at a fragile point in the recovery. Growth fell to .7 percent — and then in the last quarter of 2010, the economy went negative, shrinking by .5 percent. December brought the worst British retail sales in over a decade. A Bloomberg analysis put the situation bluntly: "Confidence plunged."
Matt Miller:
"Good afternoon, I'm Brian Williams reporting from Washington, where it looks like October 26, 2017, will be a day that truly goes down in history. In a few moments, at a table not far from where I now stand, President Hillary Clinton will sign into law the universal health-care legislation - "Medicare for All," as she calls it - that completes a journey Mrs. Clinton began nearly 25 years ago. Back then, as first lady, her attempt to reform the health-care system proved a fiasco that cost Democrats their hold on power. Who would have thought then - or later, when President Barack Obama's big health reform was overturned by the Supreme Court in a controversial 5 to 4 ruling in 2012 - that today's bipartisan bill would be the result? For some perspective on the twists and turns of history, we're joined by NBC's David Gregory. David, health reform seemed dead in the water in 2012. How did we get from that Supreme Court ruling to today?"