Moore Award Nominee, Ctd

A reader writes:

As a pro-choice woman who has read you for many years, I have found that I can respect your anti-abortion views as they are based on your beliefs and your conscience. In fact, it is because of your clear, reasoned voice on the topic that I have found any understanding for the sanctimonious nerve of the pro-life movement.

That said, I find your choice of Moore Award Nominee for Katha Pollitt's words to be deeply hypocritical. When the Catholic church was holding DC humanitarian efforts hostage over gay marriage you were incandescent with rage — not just because you believe that the right to marry is fundamental but because using it as a political tool to jeopardize care and aid to those in need offends you, as well it should.

Despite your pro-life stance, you must certainly understand that the right to have single and final say in what happens to one's body feels as basic and fundamental to a woman like myself as marriage feels to you. Holding HCR hostage over this issue appears just as offensive and disgusting to me as what happened in DC.

Had HCR not passed, millions would have suffered and people would have died, and that is not Moore-esque rhetoric nor exaggeration, but simply the frightening state of affairs that makes HCR necessary. That pro-life political forces were willing to let that status-quo continue if they didn't get their way is also simply now a footnote in an important moment in history. There was a compromise and it was at the cost of rights for pro-choice women like myself. If a similar compromise had to be made over gay marriage you'd be making the same point as Pollitt and I'd wager you'd use language just as passionate.

That you disagree with Pollitt's view of the situation, I can understand as an extension of your existing belief system. That you dismiss her anger which speaks for many women like myself over what had to be sacrificed for HCR, however, and liken it to Michael Moore buffoonery should be beneath you.

Calling abortion opponents "big evil babies" isn't buffoonery?

Malkin Award Nominee

"What House Minority Leader John A. Boehner  has called the Battle of Capitol Hill is over. I expect that the Battle of the Electorate is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of a nonsocialist America. Upon it depends our own American way of life and the long continuity of our institutions and our history. The whole fury and might of the media and the Democratic party must very soon be trained on the electorate. If they can stand up to the coming propaganda, America may be free, and the life of the wider free world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands," – Tony Blankley, NRO.

(Hat tip: Chait) Yes, that last metaphor was a Churchill rip-off.

Meta Platforms

Josh Marshall:

[T]he Republicans can't run on how bad Reform is going to be for the Dems politically. That's very meta, to put it mildly. You can't be so transparently cynical with your riffs that they don't even make sense on their own terms. They need to run on repeal. So, enough. The terms of the 2010 election are set. Stop puffing and threatening, shut up and bring it on.

Meep, meep.

What Do So Many College Football Stars Have In Common?

 Weeed1

They smoke pot:

SI.com interviewed four NFL head coaches, four general managers and two other high-level club personnel executives for this story. Due to the sensitivity of the topic, all requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about the issue.

According to one veteran club personnel man, 10 or 11 players who carry first-round draft grades on their board this year have been red-flagged for marijuana use in college, an estimate echoed by two clubs' head coaches. Another NFL head coach estimated that "one-third'' of the players on his club's draft board had some sort of history with marijuana use and would thus require an extra level of evaluation as part of the pre-draft scouting process…

One NFL head coach told me this week that in this era of some states decriminalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes, he has interviewed potential draft picks who didn't even seem to recognize their marijuana smoking constituted drug use in the eyes of the NFL.

"It's pretty significant as a trend,'' the head coach said. "But if you knocked everyone off your board who has experimented with weed, you'd lose about 20 percent of your board, not to mention disqualify a few recent presidents. A third sounds a little high to me, but it's not a rare occurrence to have a player with some pot use in his background. You have to make a judgment on each individual guy.''

And how many have drunk alcohol? And why isn't that on the list? These pot-smokers already 'carry first-round draft grades on their board". It sure hasn't hurt them, has it?

Netanyahu Ups The Ante Again, Ctd

Netanyahu has approved twenty new homes for Jews in an Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem. It's hard to be more eloquent than this:

"Netanyahu decided to spit into Obama's eye, this time from up close. He and his pyromaniac ministers insist on setting the Middle East ablaze."

That's a lawmaker from a political party within Netanyahu's coalition.

Some Advice For Republicans II

"What if 15 Republicans had agreed to support this bill, if tort reforms and reforms of medical incentives were included? Could a better package have been created??

The blame for a weak bill rests not on the Democrats for confronting this issue, but on the Republican caucus, which forfeited a golden opportunity to guide this policy to a more effective conclusion, choosing instead to gamble on Obama's total failure. I support health reforms that Republicans favor, and am disgusted that they wasted such a real opportunity to get something out of this, which would have made the whole reform package better. When one party has to carry the other around like dead weight, don't expect legislative miracles. Step up and compromise Republicans.

Small government doesn't mean absence of governing," – commenter Nathan Brown at the NYT.