Author: Andrew Sullivan

A meditation on the blue-bells of the English woodlands, copses and valleys where I was lucky enough to grow up:

But there is another quality that makes the bluebell magical: it is in a hurry. The flowers have to beat the closing over of the tree canopy and their rush to become themselves is what makes them taut and glossy, with so much damp in them that you can't rub one bluebell leaf past another. The mineral green leaves cling to each other, like wet flesh to wet flesh. It doesn't last. As soon as they are perfect, they are over. Within a couple of weeks, the entire population will be drowned as if a flood has run through the wood. Now is the moment: it's when spring turns into summer.

(Photo: Dan Kitwood/Getty.)

"Nobody is winning," – Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Commander of US Forces in Afghanistan.

Kinsley confronts the movement:

Some people think that what unites the Tea Party Patriots is simple racism. I doubt that. But the Tea Party movement is not the solution to what ails America. It is an illustration of what ails America. Not because it is right-wing or because it is sometimes susceptible to crazed conspiracy theories, and not because of racism, but because of the movement’s self-indulgent premise that none of our challenges and difficulties are our own fault.

“Personal responsibility” has been a great conservative theme in recent decades, in response to the growth of the welfare state. It is a common theme among TPPs—even in response to health-care reform, as if losing your job and then getting cancer is something you shouldn’t have allowed to happen to yourself. But these days, conservatives far outdo liberals in excusing citizens from personal responsibility. To the TPPs, all of our problems are the fault of the government, and the government is a great “other,” a hideous monster over which we have no control. It spends our money and runs up vast deficits for mysterious reasons all its own. At bottom, this is a suspicion not of government but of democracy. After all, who elected this monster?

Brooks' take on Kagan in a nutshell:

My own view of Kagan is that she’ll probably be a very good justice, and is almost certainly the sort of open-minded pragmatist I would like to see on the court. What’s sad is that she has to repress the normal expression of opinion, which is the God-given right of every New Yorker, in order to get the job.

A 76-year-old woman is hospitalized with a heart attack after cops and the DEA swarm the wrong house with guns drawn. Money quote:

"She was traumatized. Even the doctor said this is what happens when something traumatic happens. He said it's usually like a death in the family or something like that just absolutely scares them half to death, and that is what has happened," said [daughter Machelle] Holl.

A reader makes an interesting point:

Reading the story that Laura Bush admits to secretly supporting both gay marriage and abortion rights, it occurs to me that she has now become persona non grata from every Catholic institution in the United States. Not just Michelle or Hillary or Nancy or Rosalynn or, especially, Betty Ford, but Laura Bush! There is now no First Lady of the United States who would be welcome to speak before an institutional Catholic audience in this country. That's something to think about.

An interesting assessment, polled April 30, of how the public judges a nominee for SCOTUS, and the relevant public questions they can consider.

A reader writes:

You frame Kagan as an empty vessel with no documented policy positions. But because of her now-public policy memos; significant scholarship on yes, executive power, but also hate speech and porn law (the latter is a fascinating area of law with very few voices: it's basically her and a former professor of mine, Amy Adler); and her admittedly unsurprising defense of gay law students, we're confronted with a Supreme Court nominee with one of the most full and interesting public records in recent memory. 

These scant writings are almost scrupulously opaque, and that last sentence is simply ridiculous. Another writes:

What is it that you're not "being permitted to know" about Kagan?  Have the Senate hearings been canceled?  No?  Then you'll get your answers then.  Good grief.

Not if they are conducted the way Kagan once criticized. Another:

I know that the confirmation process is deeply flawed and has become essentially a form of theater. But that is not Kagan's fault. Or Obama's. The system has been set up so that Supreme Court nominees, after getting the approval of the executive, have to convince the legislature they are up for the job. And this process works sometimes — it got rid of Miers.

And then there's Roberts, a total stealth radical, posing as an umpire. Another:

I understand your concern about the Kagan blank slate.  What I simply cannot see is how any nominee, right or left, can say anything of substance in our current political climate.  Do you really think that Kagan could say that she supports gay marriage and a women's right to chose without setting off a political maelstrom?  The right tried desperately to take down Sotomayor over her fairly innocuous "wise latina" comment. Obama is simply doing what needs be done to get a nominee through at this time.

Look: my position on her nomination remains what it has long been. The president gets the benefit of the doubt. But this nomination does seem an almost absurd logical conclusion of the Bork lesson. Maybe the hearings will help turn that tide. Here's hoping they will …

Glenn Greenwald was made for this moment.