Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2684

Against Republican Amnesia

Anne Applebaum tries to insist on some basic honesty on the right:

Parties, of course, can change; politicians can see the light; lessons can be learned; and perhaps some Republicans have learned them. But you cannot start from scratch. You cannot forget history. You cannot pretend that the Republican Party has not supported big and wasteful spending programs -- energy subsidies, farm subsidies, unnecessary homeland security projects, profligate defense contracts, you name it -- for the past...

ScienceBlogs Goes To War

In Sunday's NYT Magazine Virginia Heffernan dinged the twenty-odd science bloggers to leave ScienceBlogs over the drama now called PepsiGate. Money quote:

Clearly I've been out of some loop for too long, but does everyone takefor granted now that science sites are where graduate students,researchers, doctors and the "skeptical community" go not to interpretdata or review experiments but to chip off one-liners, promote theirbooks and jeer at smokers, fat people and churchgoers? And can...

Living Wills And Living Deaths, Ctd

A reader writes:

I sent you the email regarding my 88 year old father-in-law. Here is some additional information.  When my wife made the decision to let him go, the physician from his medical group that was stationed at the hospital told my wife that the process was that they would move him to a private room, leave in the breathing machine but removing the feeding tube and let him starve to death.  She said that process could take up to two weeks.  That would have been a terrible burden for...

America's Dead End?

"If we ever get out of this hole, we're merely back to the lip of the abyss," - Ezra Klein, cheering us all up.
















Ezra Klein - Health - Washington Post - Republican - Politics

The Bummer Summer

Says it all, really:

Barring some August surprise, this is largely set till September. Here's what I think has not been factored in: the president has barely begun to make his case for his first year and a half. The case is much stronger on fundamentals, in my view, than is now believed. I don't doubt that the GOP will do well this fall. What i do doubt is that it's based on anything more than protest in an amnesiac era of no good choices, and almost no margin for error either.

...

Drones Over Iceland? Ctd

Mark Thompson takes a moment to digest Thiessen's latest:

He is quite literally arguing that the power of the US government toprohibit the disclosure of information that it – and it alone –designates as sensitive is strongest when the person makingthe disclosure is neither an American citizen nor a resident of theUS.  Think about that for a moment.  Then think about the cognitivedissonance involved in Thiessen simultaneously decrying the injustice of and impropriety of other countries'...

Big Brother On The Web

Julian Sanchez expounds on the digital power grab: 

The Obama administration and the FBI's demandthat Congress approve a huge expansion of their authority to obtain thesensitive Internet records of American citizens without a judge'sapproval is a brazen attack on civil liberties.... We increasingly live online. We flirt, shop, read, speakout, and organize in a virtual space where nearly every action leaves adigital trace — and where those breadcrumb bits often track us throughthe physical...

Why Preschool Matters, Ctd

Drum seconds Lehrer:

More early childhood interventions, please. And lead abatement too. If
you're looking for projects that are likely to have really high ratios
of benefits to costs, these are your babies.

Education - Early Childhood - Children Youth and Family - Research - Organizations

Running Against Amnesia

"They have not come up with a single, solitary, new idea to address
the challenges of the American people. They don't have a
single idea that's different from George Bush's ideas — not one," - president Obama, getting feisty.
















United States - Barack Obama - George W. Bush - President - History

The Daily Wrap

Today on the Dish Andrew used David Stockman's op-ed to jab the GOP for fiscal irresponsibility and outed Mike Pense as a fiscal fraud. James Antle III took a hard look at the Republican party and declared it unready to take back the majority. In international coverage, Frum gave China its due, Argentinians got hitched, Drezner watched Israelis head to the beach, some Palestinian children tagged along, and David Cameron addressed the gay community. Obama is zero for four on foreign policy...