Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2563

The Right's Heretic Hunting

Even a blogger at Powerline has now failed the Mark Levin purity test.
















Power Line - Mark Levin - Powerline - Ethernet - HomePlug Powerline Alliance

428 Districts

Nate Silver believes that the GOP is reprising Howard Dean's 50 state strategy:

According to research by Derek Willis of The New York Times, theRepublicans will nominate candidates in 428 Congressional districtsthis year, leaving only seven races — all in overwhelmingly Democraticareas, like the South Side of Chicago — uncontested. This contrastssharply with 2006, when Republicans left the Democrats unchallenged in45 districts, or 2008, when they failed to nominate a candidate in 42races.

The...

The Survivors

A reader writes:

I know this feeling well. My small town in Pennsylvania hosts an annual AIDS Walk each autumn. A few years ago, I was involved as a volunteer, handing out tee shirts to participants. As part of the event, the organizers had arranged for a small portion of the AIDS Quilt to be displayed in the middle school gym for the day, a beautiful, azure-skied, October day. I had not been near the Quilt since the early '90s, when I served on the organizing committee for a display at...

The Untamed Prince, Ctd

Jane Mayer:

Much has been written about the denial of due process for the five men who claim to have been victims of the extraordinary-rendition program. But equally disturbing is the message that this verdict sends to individual American citizens, like the former Jeppesen employee, who felt a call to conscience that made him speak out, even at the risk to his own future employment, because he believed that secret kidnapping and torture were crimes in a country founded on the idea that all...

Yglesias Award Nominee

"I would hope that Pastor Terry Jones and his supporters will considerthe ramifications of their planned book-burning event. It will feed thefire of caustic rhetoric and appear as nothing more than mean-spiritedreligious intolerance. Don't feed that fire. If your ultimate point isto prove that the Christian teachings of mercy, justice, freedom, andequality provide the foundation on which our country stands, then yourtactic to prove this point is totally counter-productive," - Sarah Palin.

She...

Quote For The Day

"We will stop printing the New York Times sometime in the future, date TBD," - Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.

New York Times - Arthur Ochs Sulzberger - United States - New York - Metro Areas

The Untamed Prince

Marc Ambinder reports on the dictatorial powers held by many in government and upheld yesterday by a judiciary that gives unaccountable power - even the power to torture and kill - a drop-shadow, not a check. Marc has been following this state secrets issue for a long time, sensing, before some others did, that it was the key to Obama's protection of Bush's torturers and his objective disdain for the tortured.

Greenwald - another early skeptic - notes that this is not news, however shocking i...

Who's Funding The Cordoba Culture War?

Some clues from Laura Rozen via Mondoweiss, which I missed on my break. I didn't know that the same people who fund Pajamas Media also donate to the settlers on the West Bank. But can one be surprised?
















West Bank - Middle East - Pajamas Media - Laura Rozen - Palestinian Territory

The Lies Of The US Government

A classic from the U.S. Department of State's Report to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Conjunction with the Universal Periodic Review:

The United States prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment of persons in the custody or control of the U.S. Government, regardless of their nationality or physical location. It takes vigilant action to prevent such conduct and to hold those who commit acts of official cruelty accountable for their wrongful...

The Power Of The Personal Brand

Jeff Jarvis keeps up his campaign to persuade his favorite shock jock to go it alone:

Why the hell would I pay for Howard Stern and not pay for news? BecauseHoward is unique. News isn't. There's no end of potential competitionfor any news provider and its unique value expires in seconds. Not soHoward. Arianna Huffington was wrong when she says that people will payfor business news and porn. There's no need to pay for porn becausethere's no scarcity of people who will strip and shtupp in front...