Author: Andrew Sullivan

For a very long time now, the Drudge Report has called Janet Napolitano "Big Sis." Fair enough, I guess, as a variant on Big Bro, but the lesbian inference is pretty clear. In case it isn't completely clear, here's how the site portrays a story that some police agencies in Florida had stored body scanning images at a court house:

 

The Drudge headline: "Big Sis Admits Storing Naked Body Scans".  The story, however, contains this quote:

TSA spokeswoman Sari Koshetz told CNET on Wednesday that the agency's scanners are delivered to airports with the image recording functions turned off. "We're not recording them," she said. "I'm reiterating that to the public. We are not ever activating those capabilities at the airport."

So this is an accusation that an allegedly lesbian head of DHS is secretly looking at naked women on stored body scanners, when there is zero evidence that this is in any way true in the story linked. But it was too good a lesbian joke to miss.

A fascinating conversation with Benjamin Kerstein over at Totten's that emphasizes the psychological forces at work in Israel that impede any reconciliation with the Palestinians. I disagree with the notion that the US should not and cannot demand a freeze of the illegal settlements on the West Bank – or that this is so utopian it cannot be taken seriously. But there's a lot of nuance in the discussion – and candor. Money quote:

MJT: What do you think will happen here if Iran gets nuclear weapons? I’m assuming here that Iran won’t actually nuke Tel Aviv, but will occasionally threaten to do it.

Benjamin Kerstein: I don’t know. Israelis have learned to put up with a lot. My guess is that our reaction would be to go public with our own nuclear program, if it exists. [Laughs.] We may end up in a state of uneasy deterrence, like with India and Pakistan.

MJT: India and Pakistan have come close to nuclear war a couple of times.

Benjamin Kerstein: That’s true. I think Israeli society will endure. We’ve faced existential threats in the past. People forget that. The military power the Arab states tried to bring to bear against Israel in the 1960s and 1970s would have been just as destructive as a nuclear bomb. Israel prevailed against them from a weaker position. Still, this is an outcome everyone should do everything possible to avoid.

And yet if Netanyahu were to order a strike on Iran, Kerstein would support him. As I said, the psychology is what's interesting.

Michelle Cottle perks up:

I’d written off young Bristol as too tiresome even for late-night tabloid reading, a throwaway quote from her lawyer in Wednesday’s WaPo made me reassess her whole relationship with Levi. Offering his armchair analysis of the love bird’s most recent troubles (beyond Johnston’s being a juicy slice of trailer trash, of course), attorney Rex Butler mused: “[Bristol] doesn’t want him in Hollywood. … She wants him to sort of be like Todd Palin in the background while she does the running around. Levi, on the other hand, is not ready to settle into that role.”

I ask you: How awesome is that? It seems Bristol Palin has been raised to assume that a man’s role is that of supportive helpmeet, that it is Dad who’s supposed to keep the home fires burning while Mom goes out and sets the world on fire. If that’s not a progressive perspective on gender roles, I don’t know what is. Way to fly that feminist flag, Sarah! And, oh yes, you too Todd.

Cottle isn't kidding. I doubt Todd Palin would agree either.

The star began as a Bat Mitzvah DJ. The hair, the hair:

Paul Rudd: Bat Mitzvah DJ from Jewish Forward on Vimeo.

Allahpundit, who supports marriage equality, doesn't like the Prop 8 decision:

If the goal of gay-rights activists is to make same-sex marriage palatable to the public, then embittering opponents by torpedoing a hard-fought democratic victory seems like … an odd way to go about it. The response to that will be that equality can’t wait, just as it couldn’t wait vis-a-vis school desegregation in the 1950s. Except that (a) no one, including gay-marriage supporters, seriously believes that the harm here is as egregious as the harm to blacks under Jim Crow, and (b) there was no assurance of a legislative solution to racial injustice in the 1950s the way there currently is for gay marriage. A strong majority already favors civil unions; as I noted earlier, opposition to same-sex marriage is in decline and down to 53 percent. When polled, young adults are invariably heavily in favor, guaranteeing that the legal posture on this issue will shift further over the next decade. The real effect of this decision, assuming it’s upheld on appeal, will be to let gay-marriage opponents claim that they were cheated in a debate that they were losing and bound to lose anyway.

I understand the point. At the same time, I am unaware of how to control this kind of thing. Olson and Boies were and are not part of the gay rights establishment; and anyone can bring a lawsuit. What we're seeing is a series of waves toward equality – in public opinion, legislatures, and courts. Each one has back-eddies. But I've been part of this for too long to believe this social change can be micro-managed, timed perfectly, or controlled by anyone. In my adult lifetime, this issue has gone from what was regarded as a strange obsession of a few (gee, thanks) to what we see today. I sure didn't expect that; but I am glad no one controls it.  Yglesias, for his part, isn't worried:

Whenever a favorable-to-progressives judicial ruling come down, the concern trolls come out of the woodwork to fret about the backlash. So in the wake of a win for the left on Proposition 8 in California, I wanted to go on record alongside Ryan as thinking such concerns are, when genuine, wildly overblown.

Jason Kuznicki is still amazed at "how extraordinarily weak the expert testimony for the defense was" in the Prop 8 case:

I asked myself — couldn’t they have gotten Maggie Gallagher to testify? She comes across as reasonable most of the time. She might have offered one of her frequent catch phrases, that societies that “lose the marriage idea” die out. As a sound bite, it’s frightening and often convincing. But at trial, she’d have been asked the obvious follow-up question — name just one such society — and a moment of hilarity would have ensued, because there aren’t any.

Douthat pushes back against Packer:

Liberal commentators often point out that this White House’s approval ratings — and, by extension, its legislative agenda — are hostages to the unemployment rate. That’s true, up to a point. But it’s also true that the Obama White House placed a bet, on the policy substance and politics alike, when it made the stimulus package the centerpiece of its response to the recession. And having lost that bet, they’ve arguably been fortunate that more of their legislative agenda hasn’t been derailed. Fair or unfair, that’s just how politics works: There was never a world where Congress was going to pass the stimulus bill and health care reform and financial regulation and cap and trade and immigration reform, all in the teeth of a persistent 9-to-10 percent unemployment rate. The procedures of the Senate have been the mechanism whereby particular pieces of liberal legislation stalled and died, but the real causes of those defeats run much deeper than the filibuster.

Creative Review attends an exhibition at South London's Red Gate Gallery. An explanation:

What makes the work special is that every single piece of art was sent through the postal system, exposed and on view as regular mail. We will be displaying the art at the exhibition in its delivered state, as handled by the postal workers during transit!

Many more images here.

It feels as if Americans have been having the same argument for the entire time I've lived here. Very broadly speaking, one side wants to cut taxes to reward work and starve the beast of government; the other is too afraid to raise taxes but won't cut spending either. The Bush era combined the worst instincts of both: Bush cut taxes and spent us into a debt that made climbing out of this recession close to fiscally impossible without serious risk of default. Somehow, Obama has managed to prevent the worst from happening – and is being blamed for it. And so we look ahead to the question of letting the Bush tax cuts – a huge contributor to the debt – expire. Should we? Howard Gleckman asks:

Would raising [taxes on the top tax bracket] be a job-killer? That is less clear. Some research suggests that higher tax rates actually encourage small business formation. Why?  Because these firms allow their owners to shelter lots of income, behavior that is more lucrative when rates are higher. Other research suggests that higher rates do retard investment and hiring by existing firms. Donald Bruce and Tami Gurley-Calvez, who study small business for the Hudson Institute, have written a nice review of all these issues. 

While we are not certain about what higher taxes will mean for small business, we know these firms will suffer if they are unable to access capital. And to the degree that ever-greater government borrowing makes it harder for these firms to raise money, they and their employees will pay a price. That is the other consequence of keeping taxes low for high earners, which will cost nearly $700 billion over the next decade.   

It seems to me that unless the GOP backs hefty cuts in Medicare and defense, they cannot possibly claim to be fiscally conservative while opposing the end of the tax cuts. Of course, that won't stop them. But how they can claim intellectually that supply side economics still works is beyond me. If this debt doesn't prove them wrong, what would? Increasingly, I believe that opposing this supply-side nonsense is critical to restoring a sane conservatism. You know: like in the UK.