The Dish

Josh Green notes what Heilemann's and Halperin's sketchy ethics have already done to Washington reporting.

A smash hit. Ailes' tactic is vindicated. And the media-political-industrial complex grinds forward.

Emily Bazelon brings us the latest on the Tiller trial:

[O]n Tuesday, the judge trying Scott Roeder, Tiller’s accused killer, left dangling the possibility that Roeder can show that he committed not murder but voluntary manslaughter. To show this, Roeder will be allowed to argue that he was justified in shooting Tiller because he was trying to “protect the unborn.”

She closes:

Scott Roeder will get to put on testimony about why he thought he was justified in killing Tiller. He will have a show trial in which he can present himself as a martyr to the cause of the unborn. Judge Wilbert has repeatedly insisted that he won’t let this trial become a trial about abortion. But that’s exactly where his ruling is taking us.

Larison wonders:

Tea Party activists in the Northeast are backing a viable candidate in Massachusetts to seize the opportunity of competing for an open Senate seat. This should make clear that the nature of the Tea Party agenda is going to depend on the region where the activists are operating, and it should also emphasize how relatively unimportant social conservative issues are to the Tea Party agenda, whose focus is heavily fiscal and economic. The willingness to acknowledge regional political differences is an encouraging sign that these activists could combine their anti-establishment populists instincts with attention to local political conditions and grievances. That shows the flexibility needed to rebuild a national political coalition.

Cheech and Chong discuss the former governor of Alaska's access to the best hash.

His Globe piece is presumably a good way to assess his platform. And it highlights all the bankruptcy of the current conservative establishment. Take a couple of issues. He starts by listing national problems:

Public debt has reached $12 trillion and counting, and Washington politicians want to borrow trillions more.

His solution?

My plan for the economy is simple: an across-the-board tax cut – in the tradition of John F. Kennedy – for families and businesses that will increase investment and lead to immediate new job growth. More tax increases will hurt our recovery. That’s why I have taken a no-new-tax pledge. My opponent will raise taxes.

Does anyone see the contradiction here? Without any tax increases, indeed with more tax cuts, the spending reductions required to reduce the debt will be fantastic: massive cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and defense. Where does he outline these spending measures? Nowhere. Fiscally, he's as fraudulent as Bush.

More absurdity here:

It’s time to admit that while the $787 billion stimulus had the best of intentions, it failed to create one new job.

Even if you believe that stimuli are wasteful or inefficient, I know of no sane economist who believes that $800 billion did not create one new job.

Then he's in favor of the Massachusetts universal health insurance reform, on which Obama's is based, but for some reason against the one for the country. Why?

But the healthcare bill under discussion in Washington is not good. It will raise taxes and increase spending. If you are a senior on Medicare, it will lead to a half trillion dollars in cuts to your care.

So Brown supports health care exchanges, a mandate, and universal care … but opposes healthcare exhcanges, a mandate and universal care. He is worried about the debt but actually opposes the proposed cuts in Medicare that can make universal insurance affordable – let alone the cuts necessary to bring us back from the fiscal abyss.

He is, in other words, a parody of the brainless bush Republican, mixed with Romney-like cynicism.

Blumenthal responds to an earlier Dish post:

Watching a clip of Glenn Beck interviewing Sarah Palin, Andrew Sullivan catches this comment from Beck: "I don't know yet if [Palin's] strong enough, if she's well-enough advised, or if she knows she can no longer trust anyone." Sullivan goes on to comment that "distrust of everything in politics, of every politician, of the 'system' that has been co-opted by mysterious and menacing elites, and a sense of total beleaguerment in the modern world" has become a familiar theme from "the far right."

For what it's worth, "distrust of everything" was also a prominent theme of a briefing I attended [yesterday] morning on the new Allstate/National Journal poll. As my colleague Ron Brownstein put it [yesterday] morning, in an economy where they are "more directly exposed to financial risk than earlier generations," Americans "don't have much confidence that any institution, government, business or the financial sector is doing much right now to help them" deal with that risk.

John Henke peers into his crystal ball:

The first Democratic freak out will be an internal Congressional fight in 2010 over whether to (1) move big and fast while they still have the votes, or (2) slow down and preserve as many seats as they can. The second Democratic freak out is going to occur in 2011 and beyond, when Democrats try to figure out what the lesson of the 2010 elections really is.

Paul Hogarth tries to understand why Edwin Egan was called to give testimony on the economic benefits of marriage equality:

Olson and Boies are probably bringing in all this evidence to cover their bases, because it’s harder to bring in evidence later.  If — and it’s a big if — the federal courts recognize gays as a “suspect class,” then it’s a whole new ballgame.  In that case, Prop 8 would only be constitutional if it’s justified by a compelling public interest, narrowly tailored through its least restrictive means.  All of a sudden, the economic downsides of repealing gay marriage are very on point — because now Prop 8 can be thrown out for not being “narrowly tailored.”

Today on the Dish we continued to keep tabs on Haiti. More heartbreaking images here, here, and here. A stirring firsthand account here. Brad Plumer explained why the all buildings collapsed and Tyler Cowen dreaded the looming anarchy. You can easily help out.

At last, Sarah Palin sat down with Glenn Beck. Andrew drilled into the interview's deeper and darker meaning here and here. Readers backed him up here and here, another tried to calm him down, and another called out Beck's ignorance. Frum saw it all as therapy and we got a glimpse of the show down the road.

On Prop 8, we collected tweets from the trial, Andrew homed in on a core issue, and DiA conveyed the importance of the courtroom. Up in Massachusetts, Blumenthal assessed the Senate race and Ambinder sensed some moderation from the tea-partiers. Andrew wrung his hands over Israel. More on Iran's ideological split here and the dangers of terrorists and traffic accidents here.

In meth coverage, we aired another visceral account of addiction, Andrew discussed its ties to religious fundamentalism, and a reader dialed him back a bit. We also recognized the role of magazines this decade and noticed the spread of the underblogger model.

— C.B.