The Dish

DiA finds that drug reformers are in good spirits:

What's changed. There have been a few movements at the federal level, such as the administration's decision not to target federal dispensaries. As the drug-policy reformers generally get less attention or even lip service than the other groups mentioned above, they may be happier with smaller gains. There have also been several victories in the states, and there is a growing belief here that, because of congressional and presidential shirking of the issue, any national reform will be driven by momentum from the states.

Some of the advocates here seem to find that a bit chicken. Aaron Houston, the director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project, said that he's been trying to convince congresspeople (even among the Republicans and the Blue Dogs) that if they just come out in favour of reform they will tap a great silent source of votes: "You've got a large nexus between people who love their guns and people who love their pot! It really is a sleeper issue." That might be a slightly ambitious sell. But it is not surprising that the reformers are feeling more optimistic.

Here's a strange comment by Winfrey in the tiny clip we've been offered of the looming book interview. It was referring to the Katie Couric interview:

"You talk about it in the book so I assume everything in there is fair game."

One wonders: did Winfrey agree in advance that the only valid questions were about the contents of the book? Is Palin once again setting parameters for interviewers, and what they can and cannot ask? Are we going to endure that farce all over again?

The sealing of Palin off from substantive, real questions is a real issue. Now she's a celebrity and not even posing as a politician, it's less outrageous than the MSM's cowardice and weakness in the campaign. But she has not ruled out a political office in future and she sure is a political figure. We learn again that the media in this country are not actually interested in truth; they are interested in ratings and entertainment. 

Larison battles with Ambers over the meaning of the adjective:

[T]here is something that makes Romney less trustworthy than most, and this is the earnestness with which he embraces his new positions, as if he thinks he has outsmarted his audience and made us forget that he believed the opposite just five seconds before. Romney is probably the only politician who could make me have respect for Rudy Giuliani by comparison. Giuliani at least believes what he believes and isn’t interested in changing that for a few votes.

Modeled Behavior doesn't understand why we don't just sign longer leases:

I suspect that people want the collateral value of the home. That is, they want a large piece of property that they can readily borrow against. When people say owning a home provides security, what they really mean is “the ability to take out a second mortgage when things get rough” provides security…I am not sure what the implication for this are but it seems to me that it represents some type of dysfunction in financial markets or human discounting. Why is it better to accumulate a security through home equity rather than savings?

After reading an excerpt from Palin's book, Althouse concludes:

It seems that Sarah Palin wasn't able or didn't want to bother to analyze whether she was ready to debut on the big media stage, and she wasn't large-minded enough to think beyond herself to what it would mean for the whole campaign. That is, she was dumb. She was too dumb to handle campaign responsibilities properly, so she was clearly too dumb to step into the role of President of the United States.

Could she build up her political intelligence? Might she have it now or by 2012? If these 2 pages of  "Going Rogue" are any evidence, she is displaying her weaknesses all over again, and she is still too dumb to be President. And, most scarily, she doesn't know how dumb she still is.

Ambers take on giving US trials to KSM and other terrorists:

If this is politics, it's really dumb politics. And that's why it's probably not politics. Occam's razor applies. Obama and Holder are sincerely — perhaps naively, but that's something we won't know for a while — attempting to change the way the American people and the world think about counterterrorism.

They want to change the narrative from a "strength/weakness" metaphor to an "example/rule of law" metaphor. This sounds a little PoMo, but it's the mark of a president who, on this issue in particular, does not believe that the old ways of thinking make America any safer. Certainly, they don't contribute to a national security politics of consensus.

This will be a hard sell. The chief GOP arguments — that terrorists don't deserve the same rights as Americans — even common criminals — and that the 9/11 terrorists are inherently of a different and more nefarious breed of species than people who break the law — are generally supported by Americans.

Jeffrey Rosen finds it unlikely that the Supreme Court would interfere with the Stupak amendment, should it pass:

[A]bortion is one area where the common ground Obama seeks may not exist. In that case, the president may conclude, like Nancy Pelosi, that it’s not worth sacrificing health care reform over an important but ultimately peripheral battle in the culture wars. If giving millions of uninsured women access to life-saving procedures like dialysis and chemotherapy requires making it harder for a much smaller number of self-insured women to get abortion coverage, the pragmatic calculation is understandable. But that doesn’t make it any less frustrating.

Ezra Klein is more worried about the possible long-term consequences.

Land mass and population by country.

A Sudanese rapper has to start somewhere: