Author: Andrew Sullivan

by Dave Weigel

The invaluable Reid Wilson sees the National Republican Senatorial Committee starting to dig into the records of Gov. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.). When the governor entered the race for the late Robert Byrd's Senate seat, some wags wrote the race off. But the NRSC went after Manchin for a waffling answer (on Fox News) on whether he supported the administration's challenge to Arizona's immigration law, and now it's attacking on this:

The NRSC has requested a series of documents from Manchin's office under WV Freedom of Information laws. In a letter to Manchin's office, NRSC chief counsel Sean Cairncross asked for correspondence between Manchin's office and the Justice Department and any information relating to Manchin family members who may be employed with the state. What's more, the NRSC wants to know whether Manchin spoke with anyone at the WH about Byrd's seat. Correspondence between the WH and Senate candidates in CO, PA and IL has proven embarrassing for Pres. Obama's admin, and GOPers are hoping to continue that story line.

This is gruel so thin Oliver wouldn't even ask for more of it. But it says something about Republicans that they're even spending the time on this. In any other year, Manchin would be a slam dunk candidate, the way popular Gov. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) is in North Dakota. If he has weaknesses or lackluster campaign skills they haven't been seen in two statewide races where he ran miles ahead of his party's presidential ticket. No one wants to run against him. But as the NRSC bats in 10 other states, it's trying to create the impression that Manchin is beatable by one of the GOP's preferred candidates, and to drag one of them in. (It tried the same, unsuccessfully, in 2005, when Byrd was gearing up for his final term.)

You can already see Democrats opting to triage on some Senate races they talked about making this year, like South Carolina. Republicans aren't even giving up on the Byrd seat. It's in situations like these that Scott Brown's victory did more for his party's confidence than the passage of health care did for Democrats.

by Patrick Appel

This starts a little slow but finishes well.

by Chris Bodenner

Not who you think.

by Patrick Appel

Dan Ariely explains behavioral economics:

I always found the appeal to the market gods a bit odd. Why would the market fix mistakes instead of aggravating them?  When the Chicago economists sometimes (reluctantly) admits that people make mistakes, they claim that people make different types of mistakes that will eventually cancel each other out in the market. Behavioral economics argues that, instead, people will often make the same mistake, and the individual mistakes can aggregate in the market.  Let’s take the subprime mortgage crisis, which I think is a great example (but a very sad reality) of the market working to make the aggregation of mistakes worse.  It is not as if some people made one kind of mistake and others made another kind.  It was the fact that so many people made the same mistakes, and the market for these mistakes is what got us to where we are now.

by Chris Bodenner

Greenwald keeps the controversy fresh:

[J]ust to underscore how mild and mainstream were Nasr's firing comments, consider this 2002 column from ultimate establishment centrist David Ignatius, expressing "sincere respect for Fadlallah's intellect and passion; he is one of the few Muslim clerics who recognize that there is an urgent need for Islam to find a better accommodation with the West"; this Economist editorial on Fadlallah's moderating and progressive influence in the Middle East; and even this lament from David Schenker, a senior fellow at the neoconservative Washington Institute for Near Policy, who praised Fadlallah as "the most credible moral, political, and theological alternative to Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite militia," arguing that the U.S. will regret his passing.

by Chris Bodenner

Michelle Cottle considers Palin a "p.r. genius":

[U]nlike other categories of the rich and famous, political celebs (especially populist firebrands) cannot risk being seen as remote or out of touch. But here’s where Palin’s embrace of new media saves the day. Her perky, quirky tweets and chatty Facebook items make her fans feel as though they have a direct line to her—despite the oft-voiced assumption that Palin (like so many pols) does not write most (if any) of her own Facebook posts. Such is the beauty of social networking: It allows a public figure to avoid direct interaction with the public while promoting the illusion of personal connection and involvement.

This model makes perfect sense for Palin if she plans to continue as a media personality. It’s unlikely she’d change her m.o., however, even if she decided to run for office again one day. It suits her core strengths—passion, pithiness, and a mind-boggling magnetism—and, let’s face it, it’s so much easier than the conventional model. Already, even as Palin eagerly collects scalps in the midterm races (a key step toward running for future office), she is skipping much of the messier, schmoozier work of building relationships with other campaigns (traditionally also a key step), opting instead to bless many from the safe, antiseptic distance of Facebook.

Somewhere Hillary is seething.

by Dave Weigel

Like I said in my first post, I guest-blogged for the Daily Dish back in 2006. I don't remember anyone, at the time, challenging the decision. So I was unprepared for the rat-a-tat of criticism I got for signing up this week. To quote Baseball Crank, who kept up a drumbeat about this on Twitter, "David Frum and David Weigel are free to associate with Andrew Sullivan, but how can they now call anyone else on associating with crackpots?"

There are two levels of criticism, both of starting with the assumption that by agreeing to blog in this space I am tacitly endorsing everything that usually appears in this space. One is that Andrew Sullivan is wrong and spreading misinformation about the birth of Trig Palin in 2008. The other is that Sullivan is wrong about Israel. I'm in Alaska and the subject of the Palins comes up frequently enough here, so let me just deal with the first criticism. Trig Palin is Sarah Palin's son and it's irresponsible to suggest otherwise.

I've spent way too much time in the trenches of Birtherism, so I both 1) think "Trig Trutherism" is hard to compare one-to-one to that and 2) know that it exists in the same logical wormhole. It's less important because Birtherism first started making news as a way for activists to raise doubts about whether Barack Obama could be on the ballot, then whether he could become president. The first article I wrote about birtherism was on the petitions to the Supreme Court demanding he be denied the office because he hadn't sufficiently proven his citizenship. Once Obama was inaugurated, birtherism became a way for kooks to raise money off of the gullible, a reason for military officers to sue their president, and — most importantly — an issue for congressmen to sign onto and pander to constituents on. The polls are all over the place, but suggest that a sizable number of Republicans and conservatives believe in this nonsense.

"Trig Trutherism" is less serious. Were Sarah Palin to become president and everything the Trig Truthers believed to be proven right, it wouldn't matter at all. But they won't be proven right. All of the evidence indicates that Trig Palin is Sarah's son, and none of it suggests otherwise. I paid close enough attention to this in 2008, and realized pretty quickly that the countervailing theories made no sense. Too many people watched Palin announce the pregnancy and saw her come along until she went into labor, prematurely, while attending a National Governors Association event in Texas. Here in Alaska, people tell me that Palin fans (who at one point made up 85-90% of Alaskans) held "baby showers" for her, and she'd drop in to thank them.

The other Trig theories seem to be based on vapor — that she wasn't "showing" much in some photos, that her campaign was less than 1000% forthcoming when asked about it. I don't generally trust politicians, but I know the difference between a "dodge" and an answer given to ward off annoying tabloid stories. The answers on Trig were in that latter category. (Watch Robert Gibbs when he answers "birther" questions, then watch how WorldNetDaily dissembles them for "proof" that his choices of verbs show he's hiding something.)

From my e-mail I gather Sullivan critics are angry about the other Palin stories he's posted. I don't see a huge difference between how he's covered the odder Palin rumors this and how the rest of the media has covered them. I do see a difference on Trig, and I do think that he's made a huge mistake by indulging this. Politicians suffer when they're called out on things they've done. They thrive when they're called out for things they haven't done, for stories they can call "conspiracy theories," and for stories they can file under "politics of personal destruction." Obsessing over Trig, as much as it annoys the Palins — and I see why it does — is one of the best ways of propping her up. It gives her fan base proof that its hero is constantly battling unfair personal attacks that the media won't debunk. It convinces them that critics focus on this nonsense because they've got nothing else to criticize Palin about. She has taken advantage of this impression.

The Trig obsession has also, I'm sad to say, damaged Andrew Sullivan's reputation. I'm stunned by the anger he's generating not just among random Tweeters but among people who've been online for years, part of the rough-and-tumble of blogging. They know that 99% of what Sullivan writes is challenging, smart, and addictive, and that he's very capable of honing in on bigger political and philosophical debates. People want him to take a deep breath and stop obsessing over this conspiracy theory. Count me among those people.

by Chris Bodenner

Christopher Ryan emails:

Not sure if my $0.02 is welcome in this conversation, but your reader's recent comment contains the essence of what we're trying to get at in our book. He or she writes:

In my eventual marriage, I will insist on monogamy. I don't think I could be that free, sexually, with someone if, in the back of my mind, the possibility existed that they were thinking of someone else.

That's just it. The possibility will ALWAYS exist that they may envision someone else, no matter how much they love you and cherish the marriage you share. This definition of "monogamy" that extends even to thought-crimes is inherently dysfunctional and psychologically naive. To insist on controlling even the fantasies of your partner is to invite bitter disappointment and divorce. If the Catholic sex-abuse scandal teaches us nothing else, we should at least see that insisting people deny (even in their private thoughts) their evolved sexuality can result only in disaster.

Several readers have requested a collection of all the posts from this popular thread. Find them, in chronological order, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

by Dave Weigel

Adam Serwer dials back the claim he made yesterday about the timing of the case against the New Black Panther Party — the claim I linked, a bit too hastily.