The Dish

He wants the "uncommitted" to stay "uncommitted", denying Obama any delegates from Michigan because Obama played by the rules. No one ever said the Clintons believe in fairness.

Americana and environmentalism collide.

Lincoln, Nebraska, 10.10 am.

Brendan Loy’s two cents:

She appears to be racheting up her rhetoric to the point where, if the Rules & Bylaws Committee does anything other than seat the Florida and Michigan delegations with full voting rights and in complete accordance with the rogue primary results, she can declare that decision an anti-democratic outrage that must be remedied, irrespective of its significance to the nomination battle, and thus use it as an excuse to keep fighting all the way to the convention, even after Obama secures the nomination by any and all mathematical standards (whether the magic number is 2,025 or 2,210). In this scenario, Hillary would most likely "suspend" her campaign, but refrain from endorsing Obama or "releasing" her delegates, and then lie in wait for the next three months, hoping some political calamity befalls him in the mean time, at which point she can sweep in like a "white knight" and take the nomination away from him.

Kudlow:

One of the things we’ve learned during the Democratic primary battle is that Hillary’s victories are bullish for stocks and Obama’s wins are bearish.

The clearest example was Hillary’s massive West Virginia victory. Stocks opened strong the following day. But after Obama’s big North Carolina win, a night he nearly carried Indiana, stocks opened way down.

Even though Hillary clocked Obama in Kentucky, since Obama took Oregon convincingly, he really carried last night’s elections and now stands on the verge of gaining the Democratic nomination. Not surprisingly, stocks opened down 80 points this morning.

Markets don’t like Obama.

John O’Sullivan thinks Obama should pick Webb. My only worry with Webb is his very fraught past on women’s issues. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to beat a female candidate and pick a veep with this issue in his past:

On a related note, McCain is doing veep interviews this weekend. I’m not sure any of them are serious picks. Jindal is too young; Crist is too single; Romney is electoral poison.

Ezra Klein:

The conservative movement has plenty of ideas for a certain universe of problems: Overly high taxes, say, or the need to respond to bluntly assert American power in response to foreign aggression. They have solutions for combating a culture that’s spun out of control and rebalancing a welfare state that’s too generous to minorities. They have solutions for restoring order when the law no longer contains the crime.

What they’re lacking, right now, are the appropriate problems. Because they don’t have solutions for 47 million Americans without health insurance. They don’t have solutions for a failing invasion that’s exposed American power as significantly more constrained that the world imagined it to be. They don’t have solutions for high gas prices, or a credit and mortgage crisis, or a dawning recognition that we’re ruining the only planet we have.

I think this gets things the wrong way round. In fact, the argumnent is framed in such a way as to violate conservatism’s core insight – and that was also the case with Packer’s article (and a lot of what my friends, David Brooks, Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat said in it). Conservatism is not, to my mind, about solving problems, which is why it remains a very problematic governing philosophy for modern Americans.  It is about a modesty toward what problems government can ever solve. Its responses to emergent questions will not be an attempt to "solve" them, but to ameliorate them with a narrow set of tools. And the narrower the better.

To give one example: the gas and climate question. Conservatives will not deny the problem but nor will they impose an onerous or overly-ambitious solution. If the evidence emerges that our carbon dependence is both damaging our environment and empowering our enemies, then change is necessary. But an elaborate cap-and-trade government monitored and imposed scheme is not appealing; or a government-engineered switch to biofuels (unintended consequences). A clear, solid carbon tax that simply encourages individuals and companies to innovate and switch to renewable energy would be a conservative solution. Simple, transparent, and targeted correctly with a minimal growth in government power. If fiscal circumstances permit, you can balance such a tax hike by lowering income tax or providing safety-net subsidies to those most in need as a result. And a truly conservative president would not be afraid to say, in his or her best eat-your-vegetables tone, that this is the only workable solution and that the alternative is worse.

For conservatism to copy liberalism by always seeking "solutions" to problems and convincing "the right coalitions" of people to look to government for the satisfaction of their needs would be a mistake in my view. It may not be a mistake for Republicanism, an amorphous political entity that does what it wants in the pursuit of power. Maybe aiming for a "Sams Club" coalition or a Jewish-evangelical alliance or "durable majority" on Rove’s lines makes sense for a political party or movement trying out new policies for new clients. But conservatism as a pragmatic, minimalist sensibility toward governance, conservatism as a reflexive preference for freedom, conservatism as a school of thought defined by the view that solutions are often worse than the problems: not so much.

Tony Perrottet studies the Church’s ban on certain sexual positions during the middle ages. A guide to theocon heaven:

The handbooks listed recommended penance of bread, water, and abstinence for exotic congress. A consensus on the punishments included the following:

Dorsal sex (woman on top): three years
Lateral, seated, standing: 40 days
Coitus retro — rear entry: 40 days

Mutual masturbation: 30 days
Inter-femural sex — ejaculation between the legs: 40 days
Coitus in terga — anal sex: three years (with an adult); two years (with a boy); seven years (habitual); 10 years (with a cleric)

Theologians were divided on the punishment for coitus interruptus, the withdrawal method that frustrated procreation, arguing for a penance of between two and 10 years, while semenem in ore (semen in the mouth) could attract anywhere from three to 15 years.

""I think I understand him. There are enough similarities in our childhoods and things that I think I get what he is doing," former president Clinton on Obama. Uh oh.