The Dish

Even though the secular party of Allawi narrowly won the most votes, the Shiite parties have now done a deal to form a government without him. The Kurds seem eager to go along. And so, the Sunnis seem marginalized again:

The willingness of Sunnis to accept a limited role in a Shiite-dominated government could determine Iraq’s political stability in the coming years.

“No doubt this could lead to a resurgence in violence and provide a fodder for extremism,” said Sheik Abdul-Rahman Munshid al-Assi, who leads a Sunni political council in the disputed region of Kirkuk. “There must be participation in the government by any means. Otherwise we will return to square one.”

Thiessen is furious:

The only reason to read Shahzad his Miranda rights would be to preserve what he says as evidence in his criminal trial. But our first priority should not be preserving evidence for his trial—it should be getting intelligence from him.

Friedersdorf scratches his head:

Isn’t it strange that Mr. Thiessen writes as if it’s impossible to read someone their Miranda rights and subsequently gather intelligence from him? I certainly agree that an interrogation is optimal here, but so is preserving the ability to convict and jail the perpetrator of this plot. Perhaps the suspect was totally willing to talk until he heard the familiar words, “You have the right to remain silent,” but it seems far more likely that the boilerplate phrases wouldn’t in fact be the determining factor in his willingness to cooperate.

Thiessen is euphemizing here. He wants to torture the guy. Bainbridge, meanwhile, defends Miranda. As does Joyner. Drum sighs. It appears that the newly revamped Obama interrogation team has indeed got the suspect to talk. And at some point, because of Miranda, he and others may actually get convicted of their crimes – something Thiessen's thugs never quite managed very often.

A board member of the National Association Of Research And Therapy of Homosexuality – the Bill Kristol-backed group that claims to "cure gays" – and fellow founder of the Family Research Council with James Dobson … returns from vacation with a close friend found on rentboy.com.

Weigel, a typically impartial reporter, gets blowback from readers after calling those who oppose marriage equality "bigots." He regrets the word choice, but adds:

[W]hy was I willing to be so disrespectful to one group of activists? Unlike with most activists, I don't really see the direct impact on their lives, or on the lives of the people who agree with them, of the cause they oppose. Antitax protesters are threatened by higher taxes. Anti-health-care-bill protesters fear their coverage will get worse. Anti-meat-eating protesters believe animals are being murdered and the environment is being made worse. Even the birther movement has always made a kind of sense — oust Obama from office, and you get a chance to reverse what damage you think he's done to your country.

But who's threatened by legal same-sex marriage?

(Image via Alex Ogle)

Nick Gillespie tackles GM:

Joyner has more.

A reader writes:

What that Rubik's cube map shows is that pretty much any part of the UK that did the heavy lifting of the industrial revolution – and which has paid the price for de-industrialization – still thinks on aggregate that the Tories don't have anything to offer them. Neither party seems to have come up with much beyond various ham-fisted attempts to subsidize local manufacturing, instead of just admitting that the old days of well-paid semi-skilled jobs aren't coming back. And neither party seems to willing to ask any serious questions about what it means that Eastern Europeans seem to be able to come to the UK and find work.

(This is where my long-departed, west-of-Scotland-working-class-Tory grandfather would have asked if it might be because they weren't a load of bloody useless work-shy idlers, but this is why he wasn't in politics, and why he didn't balk at Pakistani immigrants back in the day.)

It seems to me that if the Tories get a working majority in the coming election, it's not an epochal shift as such, because they're capitalizing on the +/- 15 years that the UK electorate is willing to give a party to become completely ossified and unelectable. There's nothing about the platform that I've noticed that says they're trying anything seriously different than tweaking their side of the political divide in policy terms.

If the Tories wanted an epochal shift, their response to work in Britain wouldn't be superficially pragmatic with nativist dog-whistles (limit immigration), it would surely involve a serious rethink about how to encourage either the creation and relocation of jobs – or of workers – in the UK. If they want to gain electoral success in the long term by means other than gerrymandering, addressing work and basic affluence would surely be a good way to go.

Until then, it's just the same old back and forth with slightly better packaging this time around. And look at Tony Blair – what could go wrong with a media-friendly centrist papering over internal party divisions?

Another writes:

Could you please explain something to me?  You've been banging away for weeks now about the British election, the new Cameron strain of Tory, then the rise of Clegg at the debates, etc.  But after noting the contrast between Lib-Dems' massive surge in popularity and the actual seats they stand to gain, you turn around and argue against election reform?

"I like clear, strong governments with clear mandates," you explain.  Is that how you would describe British politics over the past decade?  How about American politics during the 1990s?  And even after a landslide, is the incoming party's mandate really so clear?  If they owe their victory more to widespread discontent with the incumbent rather than the popularity of their own policies, what exactly can they hope to transform?  Further, citizen engagement is crucial to the survival of any participatory democracy; what could be more effective at depressing voter turnout than a two party monopoly on power?

More to the point, while the vision of a "clear, strong government with a clear mandate" may resonate emotionally, countries with PV such as Germany and Australia don't seem to be the worse off for using that instead of first past the post.  People love to point to Italy as an example of the perils of coalition politics, but is that really the fault of coalitions as a concept or simply other, uniquely Italian factors in Italian politics?

I also find your enthusiasm for seeing the Lib Dems permanently supplant Labour and ensure that "Britain can oscillate between a Whiggish Toryish and a Tory Whiggism" as a bit naive, unless you're for PV.  FPP actually makes it harder for this transformation of the political playing field to occur.  It also puts a great deal of perverse pressure on the Lib Dems once they've replaced Labour.  All of the constituencies (interest groups, not boroughs) that Labour fought for will have to look to the Lib Dems instead, and they'll expect a quid pro quo from Clegg. 

I suppose in the long run I could possibly see the sort of transformation you're looking for, but again, I think PV could give it a real boost, free up people who want just that sort of "Whiggish Toryish and Tory Whiggism" to vote their preferences rather than their fears (anything but Labour!  anything but Tory!).

A reader writes:

The "Who Killed Bambi?" quotes are a little disturbing, but let's not forget that Ebert also wrote the screenplay to the 1970 comic masterpiece "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls," which is a really great film, if you like cult movies. The Village Voice apparently does, because they named it as #87 on their list of the hundred greatest films of the twentieth century.

Another writes:

Have you SEEN "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls"? That satire is why I trust Roger Ebert TO critique. It is glorious.

A behind-the-scenes trailer above. This quintessential scene is probably NSFW. Yes, I have seen it. Many times – under duress. I think of it as Advanced Gay. I never got it for years, having an uncertain grasp on gay camp. Then I went to indoctrination camp (via a good friend and my husband) and graduated from Intermediate Gay, and was allowed to watch it alongside Grey Gardens.

I still can't stand musical theater, though, and Mary Tyler Moore leaves me cold. Still, with appropriate levels of consciousness alteration, BTVOTD has its moments, though never reaching the true aesthetic heights of "Can't Stop The Music." I guess I will never be a True Gay. Just look at what I wear.

"My old man works in the postal service, my mum in a hospital and my brother in a factory. They're my family and when I play rugby I'm representing them. But coming out was different. More than anyone, I feared for my father. I used to be a postman myself and so I know that working environment. It's a macho world and I was worried about him going into work and hearing bad things about me. But I think he's 10 times prouder of me now than six months ago," – Gareth Thomas, now openly gay rugby player, and former captain of the Welsh team.