From Gallup:
Americans are somewhat less likely to consider gay or lesbian relations to be morally acceptable than to say they should be legal. However, the 56% who consider gay or lesbian relations morally acceptable is the highest Gallup has measured since this question was first asked in 2001.
The Supreme Court ordered California to release tens of thousands of prisoners. Marc M. Howard isn't anticipating a crime wave:
Much of Michael Tonry’s research has discredited the crime-prison argument. In a piece with David Farrington, the authors show that the U.S. and Canada have had similar trends in crime rates over decades … , yet there is “no resemblance between American and Canadian imprisonment trends.” The incarceration rates in the U.S. have soared since the mid-1970s, while the Canadian rates have remained level—at about 110-110 prisoners per 100,000 people—over that same time period. If the crime-prison argument were accurate, the Canadian crime rates should have gone up, rather than remaining at stable or declining levels.
Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 7.20 am
With the help of economic thinker Garett Jones, Reihan explores why "Scandinavian-Americans are about 50% more productive than Scandinavians":
One has to assume that Scandinavian Americans are meaningfully different from Scandinavians, e.g., they’re descended from immigrants who presumably had higher risk-tolerance than those left behind, which could have an influence on economic outcomes. But this suggests that Danes and Swedes *might* do better under a more work-friendly tax regime, with “do better” understood as “engage in more productive economy activity,” which is of course different from doing better in some spiritual sense.
A self-explanatory tumblr.
Should Palin run, Larison bets Romney will benefit:
GOP and movement elites will rally to Romney to stop her, and the larger part of the party that cannot stand her or simply wants to have a fighting chance in 2012 will do what they can to stop her from getting very far in the primaries. For once, there actually will be something of a conspiracy to “get” Palin, and barring something extraordinary happening it’s hard to see how she does very well. If both Bachmann and Palin run, Pawlenty may as well give up.
David Makovsky sketches a border between Israel and Palestine. It looks like one of the more absurd gerrymandered congressional districts – and makes Israel vulnerable at several points. The Washingon Institute has interactive maps attempting the same. Yglesias sighs:
This is a very strange-looking border. I don’t want to say it’s unworkable. The hurdles to the alternatives—dismantling the settlements or a binational single state—seem to be even bigger. But this isn’t easy. And the difficulty isn’t in identifying equivalently sized swathes of Israel to hand over to Palestine, it’s in imagining how these jigsaw-puzzle countries are going to fit together.
(Photo: A Jewish settler girl rides a bike May 24, 2011 in the West Bank settlement of Havat Gilad. During an address to a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will not return to the pre-1967 borders. By Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)
Stan Collender explains the politics of next week's debt ceiling vote:
The GOP leadership says it wants to use the vote to demonstrate that there's no support for raising the debt ceiling unless the legislation also includes deficit reductions. But there's no mistaking the fact that, by allowing members to vote against it now, the leadership will also be making it easier for some of them to vote for a debt ceiling increase later this summer.
Just another day at the Andrew Jackson Senior Center in Bronx, NY:
Nothing beats Allan Pearl's senior entertainment from the end of "Waiting For Guffman", though. I couldn't track it down on Youtube alas.
Christian Schneider lambastes Pawlenty for politicizing his blue-collar roots:
Should we discount Paul Ryan because his family was fairly well off? Did Mitch Daniels drop out of the presidential race because his father was an executive at a pharmaceutical company? Is Al Gore’s opulent upbringing more objectionable than, say, everything he’s done since then?
Douthat defends T-Paw:
[T]he point of highlighting a candidate’s humble background isn’t just to suggest a “jes’ folks” common touch. It’s to emphasize how far they’ve come in life — all the way from that “house with a car up on blocks” to whatever distinguished office they hold now. In these kind of political narratives, growing up poor isn’t just being presented as evidence of character and accomplishment in and of itself. Rather, what’s being suggested is that growing up poor and then making something impressive of yourself is a more significant accomplishment than being born in relative comfort and doing well in life.
The Dish 