Where Credit Is Due

"Protoge of Karl Rove" is a term that induces the gag reflex, we admit.

"Architect of The McCain Campaign" fills us with disgust.

But we have to be fair, and for a guy with those credentials to take a stand for Gay Marriage is just not very self-serving, especially in the short-run.

Ex-McCain aide to call for gay marriage support

WASHINGTON (CNN) - Steve Schmidt, a key architect of John McCain's presidential campaign, is making his first public return to Washington a bold one.
Schmidt will use a speech Friday to Log Cabin Republicans, a gay rights group, to urge conservative Republicans to drop their opposition to same-sex marriage, CNN has learned.

"There is a sound conservative argument to be made for same-sex marriage," Schmidt will say, according to speech excerpts obtained by CNN. "I believe conservatives, more than liberals, insist that rights come with responsibilities. No other exercise of one's liberty comes with greater responsibilities than marriage."
Schmidt makes both policy and political arguments for a Republican embrace of same-sex marriage.

On the policy front, Schmidt likens the fight for gay rights to civil rights and women's rights, and he admonishes conservatives who argue for the protection of the unborn as a God-given right, but against protections for same-sex couples.

"It cannot be argued that marriage between people of the same sex is un-American or threatens the rights of others," he says in the speech. "On the contrary, it seems to me that denying two consenting adults of the same sex the right to form a lawful union that is protected and respected by the state denies them two of the most basic natural rights affirmed in the preamble of our Declaration of Independence — liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

"That, I believe, gives the argument of same sex marriage proponents its moral force," Schmidt will say.

Maybe Steve and Scott McClellan can form a consulting business targeting the three Republicans still alive in the North East.

Insulting The Brits

John Oliver is offended by the teabaggers

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SaveStephen!

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The Colbert Coalition's Anti-Gay Marriage Ad
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Joe Taxes You To Protest Taxes

Words Fail.

No Ability To Self Monitor

Not only do they suck balls, but they admit that they are pieces of shit.

You just can't make this stuff up.

More Tasteful Fun

Fox anchor Megyn Kelly: "Fox News covered these Tea Parties, and we were one of the only organizations to give it any publicity or p.r. ..."

Hope So

Holder: No surrender on rule of law

In a speech Wednesday extolling the rule of law, Attorney General Eric Holder rebuked members of the Bush administration for casually dispensing with longstanding American legal principles while pursuing the fight against terrorism.

Holder declared that officials prosecuting the war on terror, whom he did not name, “surrendered faithful obedience to the law to the circumstances of our time.”

“We will not sacrifice our values or trample on our Constitution under the false premise that it is the only way to protect our national security,” Holder said, speaking to a conference at West Point. “Discarding the very values that have made us the greatest nation on earth will not make us stronger—it will make us weaker and tear at the very fibers of who we are.”

“There simply is no tension between an effective fight against those sworn to do us harm and a respect for the most honored civil liberties that have made us who we are,” he said.

At the same time, the attorney general did offer a rare caution that President Barack Obama’s oft-stated pledge to bring transparency to the federal government has its limits.

“Even as we usher in a new period of openness and transparency, many national security decisions must by necessity be made in a manner that protects our ability to gather intelligence, investigate threats and execute wars,”

FYI

You all know that I'm an Andrew Sullivan fan, and have been since the late 80's.

There's a nice piece on Andrew out this week. You can find it here.

A salient quote:

Sullivan is often accused of flip-flopping according to political expediency, but it’s revealing that almost all the later tensions in his thought are prefigured in his writings about Oakeshott from his early 20s, recently published as “Intimations Pursued”. In 1984, he wrote that Oakeshott offers “a conservatism which ends by affirming a radical liberalism”—precisely the charge against Sullivan since 2004.

Heartwarming

I'm sure he has a fine Mother and Father.

A Big Test Later Today

Today is the deadline for the administration to release three famous Bush Admin Docs: the 'Torture Memos'.

Most of what is in them has already been leaked. But BHO promised to air this out officially.

That's the part of his promise that I fell in love with.

The NYT is reporting this:

After a tense internal debate, the Obama administration this afternoon will make public a number of detailed memos describing the harsh interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency against al Qaeda suspects in secret overseas prisons.

The interrogation methods were among the Bush administration’s most closely guarded secrets, and today’s release will be the most comprehensive public accounting to date of the interrogation program that some senior Obama administration officials have said used illegal torture.

The documents are expected to include Justice Department memos from 2002 and 2005 authorizing the C.I.A. to employ a number of aggressive techniques- including sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme temperatures and “waterboarding,” the near-drowning technique.

This is Pass/Fail Barry ....

Why We Have To Pay ... Or At Least What We Pay For

Once Again Going To Jon Stewart For The Clarity Lacking In Our News

What's going on with the TARP? And why was it needed? And What's Needed Next?

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Unbiased

Colbert righteously goes after Obama's Baghram position

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Great Opportunity!

Can we let them just go this time?

Perry Raises Secession at Tax Protest

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) said that his state could secede from the United States because "the federal government has strayed somewhat from what our founders wanted and is choking Americans with excessive spending and taxation," reports the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Said Perry: "Texas is a unique place. When we came into the union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that. My hope is that America, and Washington in particular, pays attention. We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that? But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot, to boot."

First Read: "Perry is definitely ambitious -- is he prepping himself for more than a GOP primary against Kay Bailey Hutchison? -- but this secession talk is pretty amazing coming from the governor of the country's second-largest state."

Yes! ... ?

TPM

Obama Laying Down the Law

According to reports out of Israel, Rahm is telling top Jewish organizations Obama doesn't care who the Israeli PM is. He wants two states in his first term. End of story. MJ Rosenberg has more.

Joe Klein Has Had It ... And So Have We

Look, the smart and sane will always be polarizing to the very stupid and insane. That's how man has survived. It's called Meritocracy.

World's Stupidest Argument

Given the fact that Obama had to take dramatic action, at home and abroad, to start lifting the country from the mess Bush made almost everywhere -- and also begin to turn the country away from the myopia and greed of the Reagan era -- it's amazing that he hasn't raised more dust or teabags. And, I should add the fact that the alleged polarization mostly results from the fact that Obama gets extremely low ratings from self-identified Republicans, who constitute an extremist shard of a party at this point, is a badge of honor. (Commenter sgwhiteinfla points out that the polarization is also the result of overwhelming -- 88% -- support from Democrats.)

In the long run, it's a safe historical bet that Bush will prove more polarizing than Obama because he was such an abject failure in the job -- I doubt we'll ever see Obama submerge to approval ratings in the mid-20s, or launch wars peremptorily without cause or purpose. The constant sniping from Rove, Wehner and the others during Obama's first 100 days is a deeply neurotic reaction to the enormity of their own cockups in office. It shows a profound lack of class or grace, but then, that's no surprise with these guys, is it? They ran the country like thugs, and thugs they remain.

Nothing

George Will has recently been skewered in 4 different attacks, by writers from his paper, for his breathtakingly fact free articles on Glbal Warming.

Republican economics are simply discredited.

He's got nothing left, nothing at all.

So, he takes on ... blue jeans

Denim is the carefully calculated costume of people eager to communicate indifference to appearances. But the appearances that people choose to present in public are cues from which we make inferences about their maturity and respect for those to whom they are presenting themselves.

... Edmund Burke -- what he would have thought of the denimization of America can be inferred from his lament that the French Revolution assaulted "the decent drapery of life"; it is a straight line from the fall of the Bastille to the rise of denim -- said: "To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely." Ours would be much more so if supposed grown-ups would heed St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, and St. Barack's inaugural sermon to the Americans, by putting away childish things, starting with denim.

... This is not complicated. For men, sartorial good taste can be reduced to one rule: If Fred Astaire would not have worn it, don't wear it. For women, substitute Grace Kelly.

Will has clearly never watched 'What Not To Wear' or ever spoken to a person who does not regularly wear a bow-tie (Full Disclosure: I love bow ties). I think denim in his life comprises 'mommy jeans' and pot-gutted Gap-relaxed-fit men.

But then maybe he's just trying to separate himself from the teabaggers. One commenter on TownHall.com noted

Today every freedom loving writer is reporting on the TEA Parties and Will writes on denim???!!!

I’ll bet that 90% of the ‘drapes’ [Wha huh? -- Ed.] on the ground yesterday were denim.

Is Will trying to alienate freedom-lovers?

Hmmm. OK, George. All is forgiven.

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