Author: Andrew Sullivan

E.D. Kain explains:

I would suggest that perhaps the conservative movement itself is the most sacred of sacred cows here, and also the greatest impediment to conservatism as a ‘reality-based force in American politics’. More than anything, it is the movement itself which creates these closed information circuits, which revels in anti-historicism and the weaving of conservative illusion. In some ways it is also a great political force, but I also suspect that it is nearing its zenith in terms of both heat and light.

These sorts of movements by their very natures have poor immune systems which is why they guard themselves so fiercely, why they are forced to create alternative narratives, alternate histories. They are brittle. The conservative movement, for all its ferocity and political savvy, is brittle, because it relies too heavily on its own illusions – illusions which have been made in recent years all too convincing by outlets like Fox News.

And when such reality-divorced movements collapse, they collapse very suddenly.

Adam Serwer's take away from my argument with Greenwald:

I actually agree with Sullivan that this is substantively different from how we treat people in U.S. custody, but I think he's largely missing the point with his reminders that al-Awlaki is a really terrible human being. No one is arguing that he isn't. The question here is whether or not the government has the authority to kill an American citizen apart from any declared battlefield based on secret, internal deliberations that a judge will never be allowed to look at. But the fact that as principled a person as Sullivan on matters of executive power is swayed by the argument that al-Awlaki is simply a vile individual who deserves to die is a reminder of how isolated opponents of targeted killing actually are.

That's a ridiculous distortion of my position. I don't know whether Awlaki is a terrible human being. I do know he has targeted for death writers and cartoonists and has been deeply enmeshed with recent attempts to kill many Americans in what he believes is a war. Moreover, Yemen surely is a "declared battlefield" – at least as far as al Qaeda is concerned. Awlaki is currently issuing death threats against Americans who have had to go into hiding and is connected with several recent terror attacks. According to Nick Baumann, Goldblog sides with Greenwald.  From Baumann's "edited notes"on Jeffrey's remarks:

I don't think enough proof has been presented that [al-Awlaki] is an actual operator of terrorist cells, that he's actually directing the actual murder of others. I think he's fundamentally functioning as a propagandist…. The Israelis have never conducted an assassination against an Israeli citizen…. It would be interesting to look at what the Israel Supreme Court might say about the Prime Minister-directed killing of someone considered to be a terrorist, an Israeli citizen. I have a feeling, maybe I'm crazy, that there might be a more active judicial debate and Knesset debate on that than we have here.

… I don't want to be represented by a government that without judicial and congressional oversight and the benefit of courts decides to assassinate an american citizen. What I'm saying is I'd like to see more evidence….

I'd prefer an open administration argument as to the evidence linking Awlaki directly to terrorist murder. Baumann then writes that Goldblog's "position seems to clash with that of Andrew Sullivan, his fellow blogger and Atlantic colleague. Sullivan doesn't seem to have many serious qualms about the government killing al-Awlaki. " I have many qualms, and would prefer evidence against Awlaki to made public in court. Which I think is Jeffrey's position. From my long post on al-Awlaki:

I agree that the Obama administration's decision to shut down inspection of the evidence behind the decision to regard Awlaki as someone waging an active war against the US under "state secrets" is a step way too far. I think the president has a duty to explain in court why he believes this person must be treated as an active enemy at war with the US, and therefore treated as all such enemies in wartime as someone to be killed. Instead, they have told us much in the press, but not backed it up in court. I strongly disagree with this, and think reiterating in court what is already in the public domain could help, not hurt them. I will gladly join with Glenn and everyone else in this in demanding this invocation of state secrets end. I regard it as a core betrayal of Obama's campaign, just as I believe his refusal even to give torture victims a day in court on the same grounds is a war crime itself.

Nonetheless, I think Awlaki is a dangerous terrorist and traitor acting in a war zone trying to engage in mass murder. If he cannot be captured, he is a legitimate target for killing.

A reader writes:

I'm a graduate student taking an evolution seminar right now. We were discussing phenotypic plasticity today and read an article from 1970 called, "The Effects of Sexual Activity on Beard Growth in Man" (PDF). I thought you and some of your readers would get a kick out of it. It was published in Nature, one of the most respected, if not the most respected, science journals out there. Money quote:

Perhaps the most interesting feature of these changes was the way the increase in beard growth anticipated the resumption of sexual relationships. The longer the period of abstinence, the more obvious was the anticipatory response (beard growth).

There are some great figures too.

Testosterone is the key of course.

Bernstein ignores the polls:

If you want to know about Barack Obama's chances in 2012, I recommend two things: pay attention to his approval ratings, and pay attention to the economic results and forecasts.  Really, you can completely, totally, absolutely ignore head-to-head polling matchups until Labor Day, 2012.

Agreed. But I remain of the view that the GOP nomination is Palin's to lose. She's running positive infomercials for herself right now on Dancing With The Stars, one of the most popular shows on TV and her TLC series, one of the most popular cable news shows as well. And when was the last time you saw any actual journalist challenge Palin on air?

She always believed a politician should be treated like a Beauty Queen. And she's engineered and run rings around the media so that she is.

Jacob Sullum offers a brief history:

First the government encouraged illicit production of methamphetamine by restricting access to legal speed. Then it encouraged pseudoephedrine-based production by banning or restricting other precursors. Appalled by all the scary, toxic, flammable meth labs that subsequently popped up around the country, it restricted access to cold and allergy remedies containing pseudoephedrine, forcing customers to ask pharmacists for them, sign a registry, and abide by quantity limits. Those restrictions, in turn, encouraged a shift to the "shake and bake" method for producing meth, which is less complicated and does not require as much pseudoephedrine but is in some ways more dangerous and more environmentally destructive. The next logical step, according to Lincoln County, Oregon, District Attorney Rob Bovett, is to require a prescription for products containing pseudoephedrine, thereby banning all over-the-counter sales. This time for sure!

…What Rob Bovett actually demands, then, is that people sacrifice cheap, safe, and effective medicine so he and like-minded authoritarians can look like they are fighting drug abuse. The proper response to this plea is a snot-filled sneeze of contempt.

Conor goes after Palin's cult base:

The most peculiar thing about the affinity of social conservatives for Sarah Palin is that they despise John McCain, distrusting him as much as any other Republican in the Senate… but are completely unbothered by the fact that he was championed by Palin not only on the campaign trail in 2008, but also in his 2010 bid to be re-elected to the Senate. Fellow mavericks! Ask a Palin supporter about this. They’ll usually reply that she was just being loyal to the man who helped establish her on the national scene. Put another way, Palin acted like a typical career politician by supporting someone not based on shared convictions, but because that person helped to advance her career. In other contexts, that sort of quid pro quo is held up as representing everything that is wrong with politics. 

Jonathan Chait reports on the latest doings of James O'Keefe:

This is one of the most stomach-churning things I've ever seen. Right-wing pseudo-journalist James O'Keefe decided to do an expose on the teachers unions. So he sent one of his flunkies to a bar after a teachers' conference to buy drinks for a special education teacher named Alissa Ploshnick, and prompt her to dish about incompetent colleagues while secretly recording her. One of Ploshnick's stories was that a colleague of hers called a student a "nigger" and was demoted but not fired. She was clearly outraged.

Guess what happened? O'Keefe released the recorded, and got Ploshnick suspended for using the n-word. Yes — the teacher who, in what she thought was a private setting, complained about a colleague using a slur is suspended.

William Saletan offers some advice to pro-lifers. Ramesh Ponnuru responds:

Saletan says that if pro-lifers "were to embrace contraception and give it moral sanction," it would reduce abortion more than any anti-abortion law. I'm highly skeptical. Are people really having sex without contraception because pro-lifers have refrained from proselytizing in favor of contraception?

The simple reason for this preference for more unwanted pregnancies by the pro-life movement is that the Protestant wing – which might gladly promote condoms – cannot offend the Catholic wing which does. Until the Vatican hierarchs come around, more abortions will take place – because they'd rather encourage what they regard as mass murder than reconsider their position on rubbers and pills.

Hugh Hewitt's plea for even tighter epistemic closure on the right:

Last week, Politico announced that Nancy Reagan was going to host the first Republican nominee debate at the Reagan Library in the spring of 2011, and that Politico and NBC would be asking the questions. I wrote a column that said that’s a terrible idea. Not only is it too early, but I don’t think that we should cede the right to select the Republican nominee, or at least ask those questions at the beginning, to MSM. It ought to be different kinds of journalists.

By "different kinds" he means a panel comprised of "Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Michael Medved"! It's like Stalin being grilled by the Politburo. Bill Kristol is in agreement and wants Hewitt asking the tough questions:

You live right near the Reagan Library. What are they getting, what, are they going to fly in some NBC guy and Politico guy? It’s really ridiculous.

Palin led the way by refusing any real scrutiny and any press conference as an unknown running for vice-president! In the next cycle, we'll see no GOP pols going on anything but Fox and Facebook.