Author: Andrew Sullivan

Benjamin Horner wrangles with the uproar over a Newsweek piece positing that gay actors can't convincingly play straight.

Newport, Oregon, 11.21 am

Sprung joins the debate:

In his contrast of marriage, sex and childbirth patterns in red  and blue states, Ross Douthat notes that more liberal states' lower rates of teen and out-of-wedlock birth depend in part on heavier recourse to abortion. 

 

How can blue states retain their more stable marriage and childbirth practices while reducing abortion? One partial answer is universal health care. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine this March finds that abortion rates declined significantly during the first two years that Massachusetts implemented its comprehensive health insurance plan.  In the same vein, T.R. Reid observed in a Washington Post op-ed that wealthy countries with universal health care all have far lower abortion rates than those prevalent in the U.S. 

We now find out that the horrifying oil spill in the Gulf may well have been due to the lax standards and poor oversight of government agencies. The BP disaster is not Obama's Katrina; it's Cheney's delayed Katrina. The clear push to explore for oil off-shore, regardless of scrutiny or proper permits or supervision is a function of a policy decision made at the very top. And there's one leading politician today who is still riding that particular theme. Check out this exquisitely timed Corner post from March 31, three weeks before the BP disaster:

"Many Americans fear that President Obama’s new energy proposal is once again “all talk and no real action,” this time in an effort to shore up fading support for the Democrats’ job-killing cap-and-trade (a.k.a. cap-and-tax) proposals. Behind the rhetoric lie new drilling bans and leasing delays; soon to follow are burdensome new environmental regulations. Instead of “drill, baby, drill,” the more you look into this the more you realize it’s “stall, baby, stall… Next week I’m headed to the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, where I look forward to discussing what “Drill, baby, drill” really means.”

Yes, this is the inane rhetoric of Sarah Palin, who – of course – has not adjusted her view one iota since the oil started spewing at a vast rate into the Gulf of Mexico. Check this quote out (it's at the 15 minute mark of the speech here):

"After inheriting a good pro-development GOP plan that opened up both coasts for drilling, the Obama administration halted development … and now we're gonna study, more study of the South Atlantic and parts of the Gulf of Mexico … my goodness, folks, these areas have been studied to death … I have seen so many, many studies! I say, let's send the White House this message: that, you know, we can save taxpayer time, save money and announce: there is oil and gas down there, and we can produce it safely and responsibly! We don't need more studies, we need more action! Because energy produced in America is security for America, and it is jobs for American workers, jobs that can't be outsourced. Let's drill baby, drill, not stall, baby, stall!"

Is there a clearer example of someone being wrong about something in public life – and refusing to acknowledge even a shred of reality? She really is the Bush-Cheney Republican party leader in so many ways.

Jack Balkin asserts:

I have said previously that Elena Kagan is not really a stealth nominee. Despite her lack of a paper trail in legal scholarship, it's not difficult to figure out that she will be a social liberal who will support Roe, the constitutionality of the health care bill, and executive power. We cannot predict where she will end up many years from now, but that is because we don't know what issues the Court will have to address then. In this respect, she is not very different from many other Justices….[It] is fairly easy to see that Kagan is likely to be a liberal Justice. She may not turn out to be as liberal as Thurgood Marshall, for whom she clerked, but it's important to recognize that the President who is nominating her, Barack Obama, is not the most liberal of presidents either. Moreover, he is continuing many of the policies of the Second George W. Bush Administration (2005-2009) on terrorism and related issues. As soon as you recognize this central fact about the Kagan appointment, the mystery is no mystery at all.

He also argues that "the demand for a paper trail is often not so much a demand for clarification of a nominee's views (which can often be guessed by other means), but a demand for evidence that can be used to undermine the nomination or put political pressure on the nominating Administration."

Iain Dale attacks it. As does Iain Martin:

[A]n enthusiastic supporter of the government had the best argument. The idea, he says, is that it diminishes the PM’s power to call a snap election, giving the Lib Dems a lock on such a decision because he would need their votes to get to 55% of the House. This, he says, is an erosion of executive power and A Good Thing. However, he claims (or presumes, because ministers have yet to decide or make it clear) that there seems to be nothing to stop the Lib Dems breaking the coalition at some point, and joining Labour and the other parties to vote down the Tories on an old-fashioned 50%-plus-one no-confidence vote. Not sure that’s the case, as combined the other parties seem to have about 53% of votes in the Commons.

Or is it being suggested that there will now be two types of no-confidence motion? One requiring 50% plus one if it’s the PM’s opponents are putting it down and another different kind requiring 55% if it’s the PM trying for a dissolution?

The beauty of the existing convention of 50% plus one in all eventualities is that it is simple, easily understood and was, until the coalition document, accepted by all sides.

A ComRes poll:

On whether the coalition is good or bad for Britain:

* 44% say good, 21% say bad and 28% say will make no difference

* Again it is last week's Labour voters who are the most negative – 45% of them say it'll be bad, 24% good compared to 65% of Tory voters and 58% of Lib Dems who say good and only 11% and 17% respectively who say bad.

I second every single point in David Brooks' column today. There is an alchemy in this moment that is more than the sum of its parts.

Marriage licenses are way up since marriage equality passed:

Based on the early numbers, the District is on target to issue four times as many marriage licenses this year as they did in 2009.

Oy, the awful impact of rising marriage rates in an urban center. What a dreadful influence on the urban poor. Adam Serwer highlights the obvious conservative contradiction. If this is "insidious and dangerous" as the Pope now insists (but obviously not as insidious and dangerous as employing and protecting child-rapists), I'm a heterosexual.

Spurred by Dish readers, Graeme shares his interactions with veiled women throughout the Middle East:

[E]very wearer of burqa and niqab I have asked has viewed the garment as a blessing: a liberation not so much from the stares of men as from the stares of anyone at all. It freed them from caring about their appearance. They didn't have to do their hair. (Of course, since fashion abhors a vacuum, and when women's clothes are made forcibly subdued, they find ways to mark style by decorating the fringes of their abayas, say, or by paying heavy attention to eye make-up.) They could count money in public. They didn't get covered with filth, as I did, standing around waiting for the bus, and they could check me out and stare at me without risking the awkwardness of my staring back. No doubt there are women whose burqas are compulsory, but I have not met them.

The whole post is worth a look.