Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2833

Darkhorse Betting, Ctd

Douthat sizes up Huckabee. Larison leans on tradition to discount Palin's political future:

According to the pattern of the last thirty years, we all know that
the Republican runner-up in one cycle is treated as the heir in the
next open cycle. It doesn't seem to matter how flawed or deeply
disliked the runner-up is among conservative activists and journalists,
and it doesn't seem to matter how poor of a candidate he is.

McCainbecame the nominee in spite of all the conservatives who loathed...

The Other Other White Meat

Think Geek publishes "the best-ever cease and desist letter":

First, it's 12 pages long and very well-researched (except on one point); it even includes screengrabs of the offending item from our site. And we know they're not messing around because they invested in the best and brightest legal minds. But what makes this cease and desist so very, very special is that it's for a fake product we launched for April Fool's day. It wasn't the iCade, or the Dharma Initiative Clock, or even the

Anger Is Not A Platform

Frum believes that the tea parties will lose the GOP winnable seats:

It's difficult for a political party to think strategically after a political defeat as severe as 2008's. But the Tea Party elevated the inability to think strategically into a fundamental conservative principle. Its militants denounce those Republicans who have resisted the movement as ideological traitors: "Republicans in name only" or even (charmingly) as "Vichy Republicans". In fact, the unthinking rejectionism of...

"Imposing" Equality

Steinglass Thomas Messner et al:

Opponents of same-sex marriage may feel, subjectively, thatsomething would be imposed on them by the state's decision to recognisesame-sex marriages. But what is that something, exactly? It's mucheasier to show how the state is concretely imposing on gays by denyingrecognition for same-sex marriages. In a pluralistic society, you can'tclaim to have been harmed when the state declines to impose yourreligious norms on those who don't share...

60 Percent Of The Units For 1 Percent Of The Cost

Publisher's Weekly interviews Clay Shirky. He is asked when the book trade will suffer the same fate as the music industry:

I think someone will make the imprint that bypasses the traditionaldistribution networks. Right now the big bottleneck is the head buyerat Barnes & Noble. That's the seawall holding back the flood inpublishing. Someone's going to say, "I can do a business book or avampire book or a romance novel, whatever, that might sell 60% of theunits it would sell if I had full...

Keith Wagner: Journalist

And he's still in high school:

(Hat tip: HuffPo)

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Hillary vs Obama: Round II?

Beinart pops a Republican pipe dream:

It's easy to see why conservatives would be salivating at the thoughtof a Hillary primary challenge. Presidents who face serious primarychallenges—Ford, Carter, Bush I—almost always lose. The last presidentwho lost reelection without a serious primary challenge, by contrast,was Herbert Hoover. But in truth, the chances that Obama will face aprimary challenge are vanishingly slim, and the chances that he willlose reelection only slightly higher. No wonder...

Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber

Yes, we've posted this inspired Tumblr collection before. But it just made reality, with some cops in Maryland.

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Times Square Bomb: $12,000

Ackerman leafs through the DOJ indictment of Faisal Shahza:

So for $12,000, the Pakistani Taliban thought it could demonstrate global reach.And it clearly found a contractor in Shahzad. It's tempting to say, inthe wake of the plot's failure, that the TTP got what it paid for. Butthe failure is less important than the demonstration that attempts atterrorism plotted halfway around the world are extraordinarilyinexpensive, while the tools of counterterrorists — war, surveillance,homeland...

As The Church Heads Backward, Ctd

A reader writes:

There is an American Catholic
that for
decades has stood athwart dumb churchly authoritarianism, yelling "" The shorthand term for this tradition is "Commonweal
Catholicism", and I was raised in it. 

My parents were devout enough to ensure that the family attended mass every Sunday, and had meatless Fridays. They made sure that the kids attended the parish schools, and grew into all of the sacraments in mandated order.  They took the...