Author: Andrew Sullivan

Josh Green thinks the lack of a solid local press did him no favors; Josh Marshall blames the increasingly cocooned and extremist GOP base.

David Bernstein pushes back on Bruce Bartlett.

Yglesias joins the fray in defense of Greenwald's and my position:

This strikes me as part of a broader set of questions where I tend to see older straight liberals seeing things one way and gays and younger straight liberals seeing it differently.

When you think about it, the whole reason these “it’s none of your business” situations arise is precisely because facts about your sexual orientation aren’t considered on a par with questions about one’s sex life. Straight people don’t normally discuss our sex lives with casual acquaintances or unknown readers, but we’re expected to over time bring dates to events or make passing reference to current or former partners. It’s when someone doesn’t do that stuff that people begin to wonder if the person is gay. Failing to mention one’s past experience or lack thereof with threesomes doesn’t lead anyone to inferences of any kind, it’s just normal social behavior.

I think it's also generationally true of conservatives as well, with many of the younger types finding the whole thing a non-issue. But I'll tell you someone who gets it more than anyone I know in the Obama administration: good old right-winger Ted Olson. Noah Millman, who argued earlier that I should ask Kagan about her sexuality in person, also weighs in:

If Andrew had said, “you know, lots of people I know are gossiping about whether so-and-so is gay, but I have no evidence she is, and she’s never said she is, so if she is then she’s a closet case – and all I want to say is that I don’t want a closet case on the Court; in fact, in this day and age, I think it should be an automatic disqualifier” – if he’d said that, and left it at that, he’d have been making a clear, direct point, and one that could be debated as a matter of principle by, well, even by the nominee herself, without forcing anyone to give the lie direct.

Much virtue in if.

Well I really don't think I've strayed far from that, except for wanting some clarity on the empirical question in the first hours after her confirmation when the issue could and should have been laid to rest from the get-go. As to Noah's suggestion that I should ask her myself, I'd love to but somehow doubt the Obama administration would be willing to provide access.

And, yes, Noah, it can be rude in a private – and some public – context. But the reason I'd happily ask her to her face is because this case is not a private context. It's about as public a context as you can imagine.

If you agree to be a SCOTUS nominee, you enter a public zone. You don't have to agree to that. But if you do, deal with something this obvious simply and quickly. And no one is going through her old porn tapes and coke cans, ok?

The Pakistani government blocked Facebook because of the "Everybody Draw Muhammad" page on the social networking site. Touchy much? Global voices has a round-up of opinion from within Pakistan. Adil Najam at Pakistaniat understands the consequences, to some degree:

I am offended by the idea that page purports and the goals it seeks to achieve. So, why should I dignify it by a visit? Why should I publicize it? Why should I give it the attention it was created to seek. Yet, all of us (now me included, which is why writing this is uncomfortable) are doing exactly that. And that is what pains me.

They simply could not have done this without us. The only people who have turned this from nothingness into a huge issue is us. I am sure that those who set up the page are jumping up and down and thanking us for making their page such a huge success! And that is what pains me.

Xeni Jardin:

Judging from tweets I'm reading, and reports like this, the vibe among a relatively wide swath of Pakistani digerati seems to be: all the ambient anti-Muslim sentiment is annoying, but the state censorship is really bad news.

(Image: Activists of Pakistani coalition of Islamic groups, including Jamaat-ud Dawa, torch a US national flag during a protest in Lahore on May 21, 2010, against the published caricatures of Prophet Mohammed on Facebook. Pakistani protesters shouted 'Death to Facebook', 'Death to America' and burnt US flags, venting growing anger over 'sacrilegious' caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed on the Internet. A Facebook user organised an 'Everyone Draw Mohammed Day' competition to promote 'freedom of expression', inspired by an American woman cartoonist, but sparked a major backlash in the conservative Muslim country of 170 million. By Asif Hassan/AFP/Getty Images.)

Participants in an annual Wave-Gothic festival pose on May 21, 2010 in Leipzig, eastern Germany, where more than 20 000 people are expected to attend the festival attracting the friends of gothic romanticism. The festival offers a very special spectacle with a range of concerts, historical markets, theatre and cinema, gothic scene performances, exhibitions, readings and parties. By Sebastian Willnow/AFP/Getty Images.

Goldblog and Beinart go another round. Peter defends HRW:

I recognize that Human Rights Watch may make mistakes. But it has done reports on Palestinian human rights abuses and lots of them (many more than on Israel) on human rights issues in the Arab world. Groups like AIPAC, which ONLY criticize Israel's neighbors and never criticize Israel, are in a particularly bad position to charge one-sidedness, it seems to me. And the argument that Human Rights Watch should not investigate Israel because it is a democracy doesn't make sense. I have no problem with them investigating torture in the United States–I'm glad they did. What's more, and this is so obvious that it's often ignored, Israel is NOT a democracy in the West Bank, which is where a lot of the abuses occur.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, while not perfect, are the most reputable human rights organizations in the world precisely because they piss off so many governments of all ideological stripes. They're in that business. People who try to discredit them in what they believe is Israel's interest do two very damaging things. First, they undermine the other work they do. If Human Rights Watch gives an exception to Israel, it will be much more likely to fold on say, Kashmir, another territory occupied by a democracy where there are big human rights problems. Second, as I said in the piece, if you convince Human Rights Watch to stop criticizing Israel you dramatically undermine Israeli human rights organizations that often do parallel work, which, of course, is exactly what Netanyahu wants. His vice-prime minister is on record, after all, as calling Peace Now a "virus."

Will Ferrell (Abe Lincoln), Don Cheadle (Frederick Douglass), and Zooey Deschanel (Mary Todd Lincoln) lip dub a history lesson by someone pretty shitfaced:

Earlier episode here. When do we get our first talk show in which everyone is stoned? What else is the Internet for?

A reader writes:

You wrote, "What I like about Paul – his artless honesty – is unlikely to survive the media churn."  Forgive me for invoking Orwell, but I think you are failing to see what is in front of your nose. What is going unseen by many is that the Maddow interview and Paul's desperate lurches since have exposed him as an evasive, dishonest prevaricator who either doesn't have a coherent philosophy, or wants to obscure the philosophy because he knows articulating and defending that philosophy would make his path to office more difficult. He's "artless" only in the sense of being unprepared and inarticulate, neither of which are virtues.

Crisis, the saying goes, doesn't build character; it reveals it. This revealed a lot about Rand Paul.

Another writes:

Artless honesty?!? That's a great euphemism for ignorance. Or maybe for zealotry. Two things you deplore in Sarah Palin. But you accept them in any American political figure with the last name of Paul.

To compare Paul's clumsy intellectual libertarianism with Palin's proud ignorance seems unfair. Another:

I understand and respect why, at least in theory, you support Rand Paul's candidacy. But despite his libertarian rhetoric and intellectual intrigue, he's still very much at home within the Republican Party. So I have to ask you: Will you condemn Paul the way you condemn others like Sarah Palin who call the president "un-American?"  Because that's precisely what he did, saying, "What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP.' I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business."

If you want to champion his economic platform, that's fine. But please don't let him get away with the same kind of shit for which you criticize Palin just because Paul is more of an intellectual. He still succumbs to the same kind of rhetoric that is damning the majority of the Republican Party.

Agreed. And I will. I just felt the pile-on was already pretty thick. And look: all I hope is that no one among those now tarring and feathering Paul at some point expresses disappointment with the way all politicians follow talking points, we never have nuanced or interesting political conversations on cable, we need to elevate the discourse, etc. etc. However flawed, Paul has strayed outside the media and political comfort zone into sincerely held, if complicated and controversial, beliefs. And he has now been pummeled for it.

You get what you ask for in the end.