The Dish

They’re our best hope, according to Bernard Lewis. (Hat tip: Ron.)

Hugh Hewitt explains it all for you.

Many of you have challenged me to explain and defend my use of the term "Christianist" to define those who want to conflate religion and politics. Well, you asked for it. My Time essay on the question is now posted. My Times of London column on the closet tolerants, Bush and Cheney, is also posted.

(Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP.)

Now, that’s a counter-intuitive idea. What we now know is that there is no relationship between cutting taxes and reducing spending – at least according to Bill Niskanen. Niskanen worked in the Reagan White House and now chairs the Cato Institute. Sebastian Mallaby explains:

Niskanen has crunched the numbers between 1981 and 2005, testing for a relationship between tax cuts and government spending, and controlling for levels of unemployment, since these affect spending and taxes independently. Niskanen’s result punctures his own party’s dogma. Tax cuts are associated with increases in government spending. The best strategy for forcing cuts in government is actually to raise taxes.

How can this be? Mallaby suggests an answer:

Maybe cutting taxes before cutting spending makes government feel cheap: People are still getting all the services they want, but they are paying less for them. Maybe this illusory cheapening has a perverse effect: Now that government feels like a bargain, people want more of it.

And conservatives then provide rationales for giving it to them. Welcome to Big Insolvent Government Conservatism, the nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue.

How low can Bush fall in the polls? Will he sink as far as Nixon? And without even an impeachment?

The next CIA resignation is forthcoming.

Mary Cheney’s new book makes it clear where she stands on the attempt to write anti-gay discrimination into the federal constitution. Money quotes from the GMA interview:

"My father has made it very clear … That freedom means freedom for everyone. He’s stated … his opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment, which I think is a very big deal … Today, same-sex couples can get married in Massachusetts and Canada and Great Britain. Can anyone honestly say 10 years ago they thought we’d be having this debate today?"

Well, over ten years ago, some of us helped kick-start the debate and I’m delighted to have had Mary as an ally in the past and present. I agree with Elizabeth Birch and Hillary Rosen in the WaPo this morning. Mary’s relationship with her spouse, Heather, is testimony to the endurance and dignity of gay relationships – and their presence in Republican families as well as Democratic ones. Here’s a thought: maybe Mary can build on her opposition to the "Marriage Protection Amendment" by agreeing to testify against it when the Senate holds hearings next month. We need you, Mary. Help reclaim the Republican party as the party of freedom, not intolerance. You could make a real difference in humanizing this issue for your own party.

In the past, legal immigration to the United States was not exactly a tough process. In fact, almost anyone who showed up across the border or on a boat were welcome. Money quote:

Peggy Noonan, a former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, wrote about her Irish forebears in a Wall Street Journal column: "They waited in line. They passed the tests. They had to get permission to come … They had to get through Ellis Island … get questioned and eyeballed by a bureaucrat with a badge."
But these accounts are flawed, historians say. Until 1918, the United States did not require passports; the term "illegal immigrant" had no meaning. New arrivals were required only to prove their identity and find a relative or friend who could vouch for them.
Customs agents kept an eye out for lunatics and the infirm (and after 1905, for anarchists). Ninety-eight percent of the immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island were admitted to the United States, and 78 percent spent less than eight hours on the island. (The Mexico-United States border then was unguarded and freely crossed in either direction.)

I think Lou Dobbs needs to read a little history, don’t you?

A new study suggests that the hotter and easier professors are, the better their student ratings. You don’t say. (Hat tip: Tax Prof.)

It grows. The NYT says today that Rove’s strategy will be to emphasize the horror of Speaker Pelosi as a reason for Republicans to show up in November. We’ll get the usual gay-baiting, nicely timed to be rolled out in the Senate on 6/6/6. So what else? Greg Djerejian is not going to fall for the national security line one more time:

Look, I was talking to a partner at a leading private equity firm a few days back about the state of play in DC. He leans strongly Republican. The ‘Decider’ line came up. He said: "I mean, what the eff is this, a banana republic"? Indeed. We’ve had it. The government appears increasingly cretinized and dysfunctional. At this point, despite the bubble-headed idiocy of the Pelosi-wing, I can’t help feeling thinking Republicans should be rooting for the Democrats to take control of the House in November, subpoena power and all. I mean, what are the arguments for Republicans keeping control? $100 oil rebates and other Fristian crapola? Or something else? Seriously, let’s discuss the pros and cons of having the Democrats take the House in November. But let’s do better than the war on terruh will be imperiled, OK?

Amen. I fear the real message will be along the lines of one of the commenters at Balloon Juice:

1) The Mexicans are responsible for you having a lousy job.
2) Democrats hate Jesus and Christians.
3) The Gay agenda is being aggressively sold to your children in public schools.
4) If you don’t support the president’s war on terror you are a Saddam lover.
5) Hillary Clinton is evil personified. (Check out the lunacy on PJ Media lately?)

Persuaded? Me neither.

(Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP.)