Year: 2013

Matt Lewis quits Twitter. And gets a life. Update from a reader:

Matt Lewis didn’t quit Twitter. He complained about people being too snarky on it while making a lame joke at Manti Te’o’s expense, said he made a private account for his friends and used the Wayne LaPierre embarrassment as his “people were mean and made too many jokes” example, which is a terrible example because if anyone deserved to have jokes made at their expense, it was Wayne LaPierre during that speech. At no point does he write that he quit Twitter.

Love the blog and was happy to contribute as a member. Keep up the great work, just didn’t enjoy Matt Lewis’ piece this morning and thought your link missed his point.

Here’s one of the main arguments (pdf) of Paul Clement, who is defending DOMA before the Supreme Court:

It is no exaggeration to say that the institution of marriage was a direct response to the unique tendency of opposite-sex relationships to produce unplanned and unintended offspring. Although much has changed over the years, the biological fact that opposite-sex relationships have a unique tendency to produce unplanned and unintended offspring has not.  While medical advances, and the amendment of adoption laws through the democratic process, have made it possible for same-sex couples to raise children, substantial advance planning is required. Only opposite-sex relationships have the tendency to produce children without such advance planning (indeed, especially without advance planning).

Weigel raises an eyebrow:

[O]ne of the ways gay couples find children to raise is by adopting them — adopting children who are the unintended product of opposite-sex relationships. In all seriousness, did no one proofread this?

Chait further unpacks the illogic:

[T]he problem here is that you can’t discriminate against people without good cause. You need some distinction to justify it. The traditional distinction that straight people raise kids doesn’t work, since gay couples can do that too. So Clement fell back on arguing that only straight couples have unplanned children. Gay couples don’t get drunk and wake up pregnant. It is, to say the least, ironic that after years of using alleged gay social irresponsibility as a rationale for discrimination against gays, heterosexual irresponsibility is now a rationale for discrimination against gays.

And it’s all they’ve now got: keep gays out of marriage because straights can get knocked up accidentally (and for some reason need an exclusive institution to keep up appearances). But I still fail to see how gays’ ability to get married somehow reduces the availability of straight shotgun marriages. There just isn’t a trade-off here. It’s win-win: for marriage, for gays and for straights.Unless you are working from a premise that gays are icky and their very inclusion in civil marriage inherently debases it.

Which is why David Blankenhorn’s new venture is so worth supporting. It gets us out of the gay-straight division and back to the real question: how civil marriage can help a society rear children more effectively and foster more responsible and happy adults. If you’re a conservative who believes this helps society stay stable, you will, like Blankenhorn, at some point leave the focus on what you’re against to regain the focus on what you are for.

A reader writes:

Following up on this, Dan LeBatard’s recent article, “Jason Taylor’s pain shows NFL’s world of hurt,” is a harrowing must read. As a big football fan who nevertheless understands the hypocrisy of my fandom, this details things happening that are more brutal, crude and neanderthal than I would have guessed. I wonder what would happen if more people knew.

A reader defends the organization:

You say the NFL is beginning to look more and more like Big Tobacco but I have yet to see a timeline of research that definitively proves the NFL had the same sort of knowledge on the dangers of concussions that tobacco companies had on tobacco use. The most damning part of the tobacco lawsuits always seemed to be how they knew about and had funded the research showing the incredibly high rates of cancer associated with smoking. They then continued to pretend that cigarettes were actually good for you. The NFL hasn’t done THAT.

Continue reading The NFL: NASCAR With Human Beings, Ctd

Gordon Adams criticizes America’s escalating involvement in Africa, shifting “from a focus on governance, health, and development to a deepening military engagement”:

Algeria and Mali, and the desperate-looking, one-dimensional focus on terrorists in the Maghreb, combined with the expanding appetite of U.S. Special Operators, suggest that we are entering another generation of misguided efforts to strengthen militaries and their security cousins at the expense of governance capacity and economic development in Africa. Each new “partner” with whom we are “building capacity” draws us more deeply into the internal politics of these countries, becoming a commitment, first with money and equipment, then training, then co-operation, then implicit political support.

And it’s all done through executive branch unilateralism. Meanwhile, news of a new US drone base in Niger is making the rounds:

[The base would] send a clear signal that the U.S. now considers North Africa to be a theater in the never-ending, non-declared war on terror (with lowercase letters).

Continue reading Neo-Imperial Creep Watch

Is it just me or are more people surprised by the snowballing impact of Obama’s re-election?

It’s not just the return to Clinton tax rates for the very wealthy; it’s a real cultural shift as well. In the last week, we have seen the Boy Scouts back off a national policy of excluding openly gay scouts and scout-masters (which means the Mormon hierarchy must have not made too big a fuss);we have Tom Tancredo almost smoking a joint in public (don’t make a bet with him on anything in the future); we have Sean Hannity’s ratings plummeting; we see gay couples included in the president’s comprehensive immigration reform; we have Limbaugh edging ever-so-slightly toward Rubio on immigration; and we have this somewhat astounding “favorable/unfavorable” chart for the president:

The ABC/Post poll has him at 60 percent favorable. Meanwhile, a plurality of Texans want an assault weapons ban. The ban on women in combat has been lifted, with little fuss. And here’s the latest poll of polls on Obamacare:

That’s the narrowest gap since 2009. A majority of Americans, moreover, now favor a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants – and a plurality of Republicans also agree. The forces against marriage equality are struggling to stay financially afloat; the NRA and AIPAC, two of the most toxic lobbies in Washington, have been off their game after the Newtown massacre and the Hagel nomination.

I’m sure the usual backlash is coming. I’m just as sure that honeymoons don’t last. But this doesn’t feel like a honeymoon; it seems to me that the size and composition of the electorate last November has shifted the mood and direction of the country – durably. The GOP now has to grapple with reality; and the president has to avoid any hint of hubris if he is to cement what is increasingly a lasting legacy.

Meep meep.

http://mediamatters.org/video/2013/01/29/limbaugh-backs-marco-rubios-immigration-plan-de/192443

When Rush agrees with Rubio on immigration reform … with extreme reluctance, cognitive dissonance, and obvious discomfort, it’s worth noting. Weigel writes up the exchange. It’s a rare example of reality-acceptance, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up too high. Allahpundit is impressed:

Can [Rubio] convince the most deeply skeptical members of his own party to at least keep an open mind about the sort of bill that made McCain’s “Maverick” label a curse word among conservatives? He’s doing pretty well so far, no? The real target audience here, I think, isn’t Rush’s audience but centrist Republicans and media types who are desperate to make the base more open to centrist policy ideas but completely confounded as to how to do it. Rubio’s message: I can do it. And maybe he’s right. Maybe each side’s ideological principles are basically only as sturdy as the support they get from charismatic leaders at the top.

Pareene thinks immigration reform is a long-shot:

I’m still pretty sure Republicans will play along on reform for a month or two before scuttling the entire deal over some exaggerated bit of Democratic “overreach.” Republicans want to be seen as supporting immigration reform more than they want actual immigration reform. If the end result here is that they get no immigration reform, but they do get points for trying, they will consider that a success.

But that won’t stop it being a failure. Do they realize just how completely Obama is wiping the floor with them right now? Or has Limbaugh absorbed this and adjusted a little? If he has, then, well, yes, we have a liberal Reagan on our hands, don’t we?

Suzy Khimm reviews the numbers:

[E]ven though the 2007 immigration bill ultimately failed, we’ve nevertheless hit nearly all of the targets that it established for increased border security—except for achieving absolute “operational control” of the border and mandatory detention of all border-crossers who’ve been apprehended. The 2007 bill sought to increase the number of Border Patrol agents to 20,000; in FY 2011, we hit 21,444 agents.

Bouie adds:

[T]here isn’t much more the administration can do with regards to border security. Far from more security, what we need is for Republicans to acknowledge the degree to which the administration has dedicated itself to protecting the border and ensuring safety for towns and cities that neighbor Mexico. If Republicans are going to make immigration reform contingent on the security of the border, we won’t be able to reach a compromise if they are unwilling to judge the current state of border security in a reality-based way. And the reality is that we don’t have a border security problem.

This aspect of Obama’s first term is under-reported, because the liberals are queasy about it and the conservatives cannot psychologically handle any conservative reform – like the individual mandate or healthcare insurance exchanges or tax cuts – that Obama has endorsed and implemented. But not only has Obama more than doubled border enforcers since the middle of the Bush years, we’re still hearing from the right that we need border security before any amnesty. We have about as much border security as we need right now – and the huge burdens required of legal immigrants with high skills remain a self-defeating national scandal. Then this actual piece of reality:

Although President Obama supports setting a path to citizenship for many illegal immigrants, his administration deported a record 1.5 million of them in his first term. In addition, the latest data released by the government in recent days show that an unprecedented 409,849 people were deported for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.

I wonder if the vast new numbers of border agents and the huge increase in deportations under Obama have ever been reported on Fox News.

(Chart from (pdf) cbp.gov)