Author: Andrew Sullivan

by Patrick Appel

We have no reason to think so:

RAND at least tells the truth in the report about not knowing anything. Which is good. But given how the press loves fresh meat, it appears that they then had to go ahead and give projections that they knew were pulled out of their asses, and that they probably knew would be misused in the press.

by Patrick Appel

Dylan Matthews compares home sizes over time:

Interestingly, the Northeast was out ahead for a long period, ahead of Midwestern states that one might expect to have more space for big homes. With the crash, though, things are evening out as all regions' square footage tumbles.

by Patrick Appel

A couple months back, Texas In Africa asked Nick Kristof why his columns "about Africa almost always feature black Africans as victims, and white foreigners as their saviors." Kristof's candid answer:

I do take your point. That very often I do go to developing countries where local people are doing extraordinary work, and instead I tend to focus on some foreigner, often some American, who’s doing something there.

And let me tell you why I do that. The problem that I face — my challenge as a writer — in trying to get readers to care about something like Eastern Congo, is that frankly, the moment a reader sees that I'm writing about Central Africa, for an awful lot of them, that's the moment to turn the page. It's very hard to get people to care about distant crises like that. One way of getting people to read at least a few grafs in is to have some kind of a foreign protagonist, some American who they can identify with as a bridge character.  And so if this is a way I can get people to care about foreign countries, to read about them, ideally, to get a little bit more involved, then I plead guilty.

Texas In Africa is unsatisfied:

In the end, this answer is just another variant of the "good intentions are enough" mindset. It excuses stereotyping in the name of awareness, while assuming that Americans are too parochial to be able to recognize, relate to, and applaud the work of people whose names sound different from ours. It reveals much about Kristof's approach to the people he profiles; as we've discussed here many times before, they're more often characters than people.

Mr. Kristof, I think you can do better.

by Chris Bodenner

Some green shoots from the Tea Party movement:

The silence is by design, activists with the loosely affiliated movement said, because it is held together by an exclusive focus on fiscal matters and its avoidance of divisive social issues such as abortion and gay marriage. Privately, though, many said they back the decision because it emphasizes the legal philosophy of states' rights…

"I do think it's a state's right," said Phillip Dennis, Texas state coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots. The group does not take a position on social issues, he said, but personally, "I believe that if the people in Massachusetts want gay people to get married, then they should allow it, just as people in Utah do not support abortion. They should have the right to vote against that." Everett Wilkinson, state director for the Florida Tea Party Patriots, agreed: "On the issue [of gay marriage] itself, we have no stance, but any time a state's rights or powers are encouraged over the federal government, it is a good thing."

I can't believe I find myself praising the Tea Party over the NAACP today.

by Chris Bodenner

Hans Bader defends himself.

by Dave Weigel

Huma Khan writes up both sides of the made-for-slow-news-week controversy over the NAACP resolution condemning tea party "racism." One of her more hands-on quoted experts:

Dale Robertson, a Tea Party activist who runs TeaParty.org and has himself been at the center of a race-related controversy, said the NAACP is merely pandering to the Democratic party. "I find that the NAACP should be standing against the new Black Panther (sic) and their stance and yet instead of doing the right thing, they're doing the wrong thing by attacking people who feel government should be held accountable," Robertson said.

Errr, what? The "race-related controversy" Robertson was involved with was his decision to hold a sign calling taxpayers "niggars."

Now, at one level Robertson is demonstrating the silliness of the NAACP's move. His boneheaded activism led him to being basically shunned by local tea party groups, who had no interest in teaming up with someone who'd make such a sign. And to imply that stunts like his are such a pressing problem that they will be one of the few selected for action by the NAACP is to concede that there isn't much real racism to worry about. It's the sort of headline-hungry act that shadows the NAACP's other priorities — one example being Michelle Obama's admonition for African-Americans to "increase intensity," which is now being spun by Limbaugh et al as a call for more racial outrage, instead of what she meant, the call for community-building that basically every black politician issues at this conference.

by Patrick Appel

Scott Mandia clears up common misconceptions about water, lightning, wind, and egg balancing.

by Dave Weigel

Evan McMorris-Santoro finds great meaning in former Rand Paul campaign manager David Adams waving farewell to the Senate race:

Back in May, after the string of disastrous national press appearances that resulted in Paul's high-profile cancellation of an appearance on Meet The Press, campaign manager David Adams was shifted to the role of campaign chairman. Jesse Benton, a longtime Paul family ally and a veteran of Rep. Ron Paul's (R-TX) presidential campaigns (sic*), took the reins as Rand Paul's campaign manager.

Look: Rand Paul isn't running this campaign in order to make good copy for people like me. He, like many Americans who aren't named "Evan Bayh," wants to be a senator. But the reason his campaign was so exciting, and able to draw in hardline libertarians who were disgruntled about Paul's stances on war and drugs, was that he seemed to promise an ideological debate of the variety we don't really get in this country, if we ever did. He was going to challenge the premise of the Great Society! He was going to call for whole government agencies to be abolished! He had "a message from the tea party!"

Paul was surprised by the new, harsh reaction he got from liberals after winning the Kentucky primary, because they were no longer interested in seeking common ground with him, and newly interested in nailing him on whether his views would destroy America. You know what? Tough. Rand Paul should be out there, winning that argument, not just engaging in mutual head-nodding contests on Fox News. Nothing is more irritating about President Obama than his unwillingness to hold press conferences and spar with reporters. It's less impactful, but just as irritating, when the Voice of the Tea Party makes a run for the rose garden.

*Benton only worked for Paul's 2008 bid.

by Patrick Appel

Freddie DeBoer isn't blogging much these days, which is too bad because he's one of my favorite online writers despite his being to my left on any number of issues. When Freddie makes a point, he doesn't bother to dull the sharpness of his words – as any number of his statements in this interview make clear:

I do want to immediately recognize and admit that I have the extremist’s luxury; I don’t have to sully my beliefs with appeal to dirty partisan politics. But that cuts both ways. People say that politics is the art of the possible, but there’s so much insistence on a narrow range of possibility that they winnow away at what we can actually accomplish. Ultimately I have to admit that there are real constraints on political action, but I also have to insist that when you make practicality a chief concern in politics, you’ve effectively undermined democracy.

Freddie's disregard for authority reminds me of Andrew. I'm attracted to this quality precisely because I'm more like David Brooks myself, who admits that he isn't nearly as opinionated a writer as Andrew or Chait. For me, politics and policy is more like math and less like a bar brawl. I've as much capacity to make moral judgments as Chait, Andrew or Freddie, but I'm inclined to place my opinions in vast fields of gray rather than rush into a political controversy.

The trouble with my preferred method is picking a fight is often a faster and better way to flesh out an argument. This isn't always true, as Dave Weigel's excellent post on Trig Palin makes clear. But tediously researched and hedged statements can actually stifle debate with their apparent reasonableness. I'm convinced that humans are wired to respond to heated debate; listening to two people argue is ancient in comparison to reading white papers or editorial monologues.