The Dish

Wife In The North goes all O'Reilly on us:

I've got another blog rule for my Standards of Blog Conduct. Rule 2: Use a camcorder at all times.

Weigel, at his WaPo digs, explains why Bill Kristol called Elena Kagan a "a very respectable choice":

…Justice Antonin Scalia has beamed about how smart she is. Fairly or unfairly, conservatives don't think that Justice Sonia Sotomayor has the pull with her colleagues to break the 5-4 conservative majority on important cases. They do think that Kagan could do this. There's a second reason you'll hear conservatives praise Kagan, and Glenn Greenwald captured it well — many believe she is more deferential to executive power than Justice John Paul Stevens turned out to be. So I think there's a combination of respect and bargaining at work here.

Dave Gilson maps the "celebrity recolonization of Africa" (click the link for an interactive version of the above). Wronging Rights wryly counters:

Gilson may see an Africa half-full, well on its way to the full celebrity recolonization that the Dark Continent has always dreamed of, but (eternal pessimists that we are) we can't help but see an Africa half-empty of desperately needed celebrity resources.

Andrew Bacevich's view of terrorist networks:

Osama bin Laden is not Adolf Hitler. Al-Qaeda is not Nazi Germany. Al-Qaeda poses a threat. It does not pose an existential threat. We should view Al-Qaeda as the equivalent of an international criminal conspiracy. Sort of a mafia that in some way or another draws its energy or legitimacy from a distorted understanding of a particular religious tradition.

And as with any other international criminal conspiracy, the proper response is a police effort. I mean, a ruthless, sustained, international police effort to identify the thugs, root out the networks and destroy it. Something that would take a long period of time and would no more succeed fully in eliminating the threat than the NYPD is able to fully eliminate criminality in New York City.

(Hat tip: Balloon Juice)

Larison has Romney's number:

One advantage that Romney’s perpetual position-switching used to give him was that it created the impression that Romney was very pliable and would not persist stubbornly in a position out of deep-seated conviction or arrogance. The argument went something like this: however untrustworthy Romney seemed, and no matter how much he would pander to every audience to win votes, he would never be as willfully blind to reality as Bush was. Since the beginning of the health care debate, Romney has started to combine the worst traits of his previous presidential campaign and that stubborn obliviousness that defined Bush: he cannot let go of the Massachusetts health care bill, he cannot really acknowledge the mistakes that he helped to make, and yet he wants to make himself the standard-bearer of the opposition to the very same kind of thing he supported just a few years ago and still will not repudiate.

Today on the Dish we collected fallout over the pontiff's latest scandal. Andrew confronted the laicization canard and tweaked Ross over his semi-defense of Benedict. Richard Dawkins clarified his calling for the pope's arrest in the UK and Dietrich Bonhoeffer contemplated the Church's decline. More cases were bubbling beneath the surface in Canada, church authorities tried to block reform in Connecticut, the deputy pope blamed the gays, and the Internet kept up its mockery of the priesthood.

In election coverage, Gordon Brown presented his party's manifesto and put out a handful of ads. A British blogger in the north reported on the BNP. In Palin coverage, Exum wonders why she <3 Karzai, Scott Brown seemed to want nothing to do with her, and Tina Fey reprised her role. Sara Rubin tackled Bristol's new abstinence ad.

Lawrence Wilkerson drilled into the deepest and darkest corruption of Cheney. Greenwald eulogized the nomination of Dawn Johnsen, Kinsley talked conservatism and the Court, Bernstein discussed the politics of debt, and Lisa Hymas pushed birth control to curb global warming. Commentary on the economy here and here. Readers from Quebec sounded off on the veil controversy. Huckabee garnered a Malkin and Ron Paul got an Yglesias. 

— C.B.

Michael Kinsley asks:

Since they don't control Congress or the White House, conservatives are avoiding the term "conservative" as they gird for battle over a replacement for Justice Stevens. Instead they say "mainstream" or "centrist." But this resolves none of the contradictions in their general position on Supreme Court nominees. Do they want someone who respects precedent, or someone who will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade? Do they want an "originalist," or do they want to poison President Obama's health care victory? Do they really believe in "judicial restraint," or do they want "activism" in their own favor?

The published manifesto harks right back to the 1923 version: a Chip Kidd orgasm will now take place.