Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2702

"They" Ctd

A reader writes:

It might be worth pointing out to the knuckleheads who are protesting the building of a mosque near Ground Zero that there's been a Japanese Shinto Shrine very close to Pearl Harbor for a very long time.  I'd also be willing to bet that there are German Lutheran churches in NYC close to where German submarines were sinking US merchant ships in WWII.  Somehow the Greatest Generation managed to deal with these things.  Why can't we?

Another writes:

Lost in all of the...

Chart Of The Day

The Big Picture unpacks Glenn Beck's connections to Goldline.
















Glenn Beck - Big Picture - - - glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com

Placing Bets, Ctd

Balko and Les Bernal have finished off their debate on the legality of gambling. Here's part of Balko's closing argument:

Any number of our day-to-day decisions can have indirect repercussionson lots of other people. If you're going to argue that we shouldprohibit gambling because problem gamblers might go into debt, causinghardship on their families, or requiring them to seek publicly fundedsocial services or welfare, you could make similar arguments forbanning everything from unprotected...

Cartoon Of The Day

The mordant genius, John Callahan, is dead at 59. NYT obit here. Video of him here. The quality I loved about him was not just his extraordinary humor, but his indifference to his p.c. critics:

Callahan's quadriplegia was occasionally raised in defense of his more beyond-the-pale strips, particularly his frequent strips making a gag out of being in a wheelchair or otherwise disabled. But to make that argument -- to point and say, "Well, he's ALLOWED to make fun of that" -- misses the point...

The Other Affirmative Action, Ctd

Yglesias is open to class-based affirmative action. But he finds the debate mostly a distraction:

If you were to start writing a list of the problems faced by poorpeople in the United States of America you'd run out of paper longbefore you got to elite university admissions policies. Poor kids startschool already behind their higher-SES peers. They are thendisproportionately concentrated in low-performing schools featuringineffective teachers. And when they're in school is the lucky...

The Daily Wrap

Today on the Dish, Andrew followed up on his neoconservative pitch for Palestine, went toe-to-toe with Frum over Turkey, dropped his jaw at Bush's profligacy abroad, sounded off on energy reform, added to a discussion on government inertia, and defended his provocative record. A new paper appeared to prove that the administration prevented a depression. Oil spill update here.

More coverage of the crusade against mosques here, here, and here. Neocon spluttering over Turkey here and here...

Beneath The Waves

The oil on the surface of the gulf is shrinking, which is welcome news. But Susan Shaw continues to worry about the deep sea:

More caveats here. Kate Sheppard reports on natural gas, which was "some 40 percent of what is escaping from the well":

In the 10-mile radius around the well site, research teams havemeasured methane levels in the water averaging 100,000 times normallevels. [John Kessler, a professor of earth system science at Texas A&M University:] says levels are up to a million...

A Clean Slate

Timothy Lee applies the pitfalls of urban planning more generally:

The problem with trying to make society conform with reason is thatsociety is a lot more complicated than most planners realize. So whatlooks on paper like a perfectly rational social order—8-lane freeways,US-imposed democracy in Iraq, the dictatorship of the proletariat—turnsout to have fatal flaws when put into practice. This is why wisepolicymakers recognize that their knowledge is limited, and take apragmatic, incremental...

Face Of The Day

A cat shows interest in a frog sitting on a rock in the eastern German
town of Sieversdorf on July 27, 2010. By Patrick Pleul/AFP/Getty Images.

Rock music - Germans - Recreation - History - United States

Turkey's Importance, Or The Lack Thereof

Frum puts aside David Cameron's criticism of Israel to bash Cameron's kind words on Turkey:

Turkey is not determined to fight terrorism in all its forms, not when it is sending flotillas to support Hamas. Germany and Russia are European countries with much more important trade and strategic relationships with Iran. Egypthas much greater potential to build bridges with Israel than Turkey, acountry still mistrusted by many in the Arab world it once ruled.Turkey cannot help press Israel and the...