Author: Andrew Sullivan

"Faith in reason is not only faith in our own reason but also — and even more — in that of others.

Thus a rationalist, even if he believes himself to be intellectually superior to others, will reject all claims to authority since he is aware that, if his intelligence is superior to that of others (which is hard for him to judge), it is so only in so far as he is capable of learning from criticism as well as from his own and other people's mistakes, and that one can learn in this sense only if one takes others and their arguments seriously.

Rationalism is therefore bound up with the idea that the other fellow has a right to be heard, and to defend his arguments," – Karl B. Popper.

(Photo: dusk at Herring Cove Beach, Province Lands National Sea Shore, last Friday.)

Douthat sizes up Huckabee. Larison leans on tradition to discount Palin's political future:

According to the pattern of the last thirty years, we all know that the Republican runner-up in one cycle is treated as the heir in the next open cycle. It doesn’t seem to matter how flawed or deeply disliked the runner-up is among conservative activists and journalists, and it doesn’t seem to matter how poor of a candidate he is.

McCain became the nominee in spite of all the conservatives who loathed him, and Dole won the nomination in ‘96 largely on the grounds that it was his turn. Democratic runners-up may try to come back, but they usually don’t succeed and just as often they don’t make the attempt. This is just one more reason why the conservative cult dedicated to Hillary Clinton is utterly misguided. If the pattern holds, and there is no reason to think that it won’t, the nomination will probably end up going to Romney or Huckabee, unless both of them appear so unelectable that a safe, viable third alternative becomes necessary. Then Mitch Daniels or someone else deemed suitable will emerge as the new frontrunner. Assuming that there will be a large, weak, divided field again, it is likely that the next Republican nominee will also win with barely a third of the early primary vote, so the bar is low enough for Romney or Huckabee to get over. It is probably still too high for Palin to cross.

Think Geek publishes "the best-ever cease and desist letter":

First, it's 12 pages long and very well-researched (except on one point); it even includes screengrabs of the offending item from our site. And we know they're not messing around because they invested in the best and brightest legal minds. But what makes this cease and desist so very, very special is that it's for a fake product we launched for April Fool's day. It wasn't the iCade, or the Dharma Initiative Clock, or even the Tribbles 'n' Bits Breakfast Cereal. No, it was the Canned Unicorn Meat.

The very special but also very real letter is from the National Pork Board, who claims we're infringing on the slogan "The Other White Meat," a slogan they're apparently thinking about phasing out anyways.

A great sentence:

We'd like to publicly apologize to the NPB for the confusion over unicorn and pork–and for their awkward extended pause on the phone after we had explained our unicorn meat doesn't actually exist.

Frum believes that the tea parties will lose the GOP winnable seats:

It's difficult for a political party to think strategically after a political defeat as severe as 2008's. But the Tea Party elevated the inability to think strategically into a fundamental conservative principle. Its militants denounce those Republicans who have resisted the movement as ideological traitors: "Republicans in name only" or even (charmingly) as "Vichy Republicans". In fact, the unthinking rejectionism of the Tea Party has strengthened Obama's political position. Now it threatens to deplete Republican strength in Congress, losing races that could have been won.

David Cameron's Conservatism responds to local British conditions. It's not an export product. But there is at least one big lesson that Americans could learn from him when the Tea Party finally ends: yes, a party must champion the values of the voters it already has. But it must also speak to the voters it still needs to win.

Steinglass artfully counters Thomas Messner et al:

Opponents of same-sex marriage may feel, subjectively, that something would be imposed on them by the state's decision to recognise same-sex marriages. But what is that something, exactly? It's much easier to show how the state is concretely imposing on gays by denying recognition for same-sex marriages. In a pluralistic society, you can't claim to have been harmed when the state declines to impose your religious norms on those who don't share them. And without some such claim to justify it, Proposition 8 is looking pretty constitutionally shaky right now.

Publisher's Weekly interviews Clay Shirky. He is asked when the book trade will suffer the same fate as the music industry:

I think someone will make the imprint that bypasses the traditional distribution networks. Right now the big bottleneck is the head buyer at Barnes & Noble. That’s the seawall holding back the flood in publishing. Someone’s going to say, “I can do a business book or a vampire book or a romance novel, whatever, that might sell 60% of the units it would sell if I had full distribution and a multimillion dollar marketing campaign—but I can do it for 1% percent of the cost.” It has already happened a couple of times with specialty books. The moment of tip happens when enough things get joined up to create their own feedback loop, and the feedback loop in publishing changes when someone at Barnes & Noble says: “We can’t afford not to stock this particular book or series from an independent publisher.” It could be on Lulu, or iUniverse, whatever. And, I feel pretty confident saying it’s going to happen in the next five years.

Here's hoping. It's time we destroyed the archaic, corrupt, bloated, celebrity-marketing industry now known as publishing.

And he's still in high school:

(Hat tip: HuffPo)

Yes, we've posted this inspired Tumblr collection before. But it was just made reality, with some cops in Maryland.

Ackerman leafs through the DOJ indictment of Faisal Shahza:

So for $12,000, the Pakistani Taliban thought it could demonstrate global reach. And it clearly found a contractor in Shahzad. It’s tempting to say, in the wake of the plot’s failure, that the TTP got what it paid for. But the failure is less important than the demonstration that attempts at terrorism plotted halfway around the world are extraordinarily inexpensive, while the tools of counterterrorists — war, surveillance, homeland security — are stunningly costly.