The Dish

A secretary bird is pictured in his enclosure at the Tierpark Friedrichsfelde zoo in Berlin on June 15, 2010. The raptor birds are native to open landscapes of Africa. By Barbara Sax/AFP/Getty Images.

She worries Chait:

Angle did not quite advocate armed rebellion, but she did clearly egg it on it in a way that melds prediction with encouragement…The alarming thing is not so much what Angle said but how relatively little a ripple it has made. It's just one more gaffe, something that has not prevented her from being embraced by Senate Republicans. It is not even considered sufficiently outrageous to force her to disavow the clear implication of what she said. It really seems like a dangerous milestone is the darkening mood of the American right.

Yglesias examines Angle's ties to Scientology. National Review's encomium is here. She's got the Palin schtick down:

“At that point, I realized that the government had interfered with my family. It was kind of like a mother bear and her cubs: Don’t get between me and my cubs, or you’ve got trouble.”

You can't really appreciate the gulf between the Cameron Tories and the Palinite Republicans until you have read this document. What's striking is the lack of apology for an aggressive pro-gay agenda from the Tory Home Secretary, Theresa May:

“We’re working to make Britain a place where everyone is treated fairly and everyone has an equal chance in life, whatever their sexual orientation or gender identity. This ambitious programme of work is the first step on that journey.”

There was a reception at 10, Downing Street, for the gay community last Wednesday. This is what happens when real conservatives are in power – and not religious fanatics.

The Gaza deal is best described by Marc Lynch:

The Israeli government will significantly ease the blockade of Gaza in exchange for American support for a whitewash of the investigation of the flotilla incident.

So the Mavi Marmara achieved its goal substantially – at the expense of any justice for the attack itself. Steve Hynd adds:

By forcing this small retreat, future Israeli and U.S. retreats will come easier and faster. Thus, although it sticks in my craw to countenance a lack of legal accountability for the Flotilla assault, I'll reluctantly take the product, if that leads to a wall being tore down, instead.

Andrew Sprung sees more signs of gradual progress in this new era of American diplomacy.

More gruesome details from the Gulf:

The LA Times has more.

(Hat tip: BF)

The once-judicious, meticulous, balanced columnist and political analyst is now blathering about Obama as a "thug." And yes, he backs Joe Barton.

Kinsley takes aim:

Krugman himself looks at CBO projections of deficits declining from 10 percent of GDP now to four percent in 2014 before starting to rise again, and concedes that this is "not enough." Then he cavalierly says that all you need to solve the problem is (a) to bring health costs under control, and (b) a five-percent value added tax. Oh, is that all? I have no doubt that if Paul Krugman were economic dictator, we could impose these or other solutions. In the real world (or should I say "unreal world") of current American politics, either one of these partial solutions is unthinkable without a catastrophic crisis to force our hand.

How hard is that to understand?

That's how Samuel Jacobs explains Crist's swift rise in the polls.

"The queue waiting to see the end of the crisis", originally uploaded by el silencio, at Flickr.

Among the many truly horrifying aspects of John Paul II's favorite cleric and theocon idol, Marcial Maciel, was his rape and abuse of his own children. When Maciel was 60, he began a secret relationship with a 22 year-old Mexican woman, who already had one son and who had another with Maciel, the purportedly celibate upholder of traditional Catholic morality. Jason Berry has now interviewed the biological son, Raul, and coverage is scheduled tonight by ABC News' indefatigable Brian Ross (blotter story here). We knew all this before, but the details still hint at the evil harbored by John Paul II as Pope:

By Gonzalez's account, he was 10 when Maciel sexually abused him and Omar on a trip to Madrid, in 1989, and photographed them in the process. "My dad told me his uncle, this guy, used to masturbate him, and I have to masturbate him. … Why do you say that to a kid?"

He was nearing eleven when Maciel arranged for Gonzalez to live in Dublin with an Irish family, attend private school and learn English. When the call came to join his father for a weekend in London, he was homesick for his mother. "I started crying. And I said, 'I want to see you, you know.''"

In London, "I saw my dad, and he took me for a walk."

At this point in the interview he began sobbing.

"I knew this was going to happen," he said, of his emotions.

He described a stroll in London as Maciel bought magazines, took him back to the hotel and showed him "hard-core pornography" to arouse and then abuse him.