The Dish

Edwards exploits the blonde bigot for funds. In this clip, she’s hoping Edwards will be killed by terrorists.  Defend that, Mickey. She’s your friend, isn’t she?

"If faith tends to infect even secular politics, then what separates Hitchens from his religious enemies?

The absence of ideology, he would doubtless claim, and the commitment to skepticism and humanism, "free thought" and above all Science. But Science is not a moral teacher, and Hitchens is nothing if not a moralist, passionately invested in such notions as universal human rights, the wastefulness of violence, the particular inviolability of children, and so forth. Where he finds these principles, I am uncertain, but then he seems to be perplexed as well…" – Ross Douthat on "God Is Not Great."

There’s some bitterness brewing:

"If [the immigration bill] is jammed through before, ironically, Independence Day, I think we will have been witnesses … to the end of the old conservative coalition," Laura Ingraham said on Monday. "I truly believe that it is over if this happens, and it’s time to rebuild and restart."

Finally, the tiger Rove has been riding develops an appetite.

In the way only government can, the Department of Transportation solves the traffic problem:

Tired Of Traffic? A New DOT Report Urges Drivers: ‘Honk’

I should have mentioned Rich Lowry in my link to Johann Hari’s hilarious account of the nutters and neocons on a recent National Review Cruise. Here’s a very brief moment of reality for the NR crowd:

Then, with a judder, the panel runs momentarily aground. Rich Lowry, the preppy, handsome 38-year-old editor of National Review, announces, "The American public isn’t concluding we’re losing in Iraq for any irrational reason. They’re looking at the cold, hard facts." The Vista Lounge is, as one, perplexed. Lowry continues, "I wish it was true that, because we’re a superpower, we can’t lose. But it’s not."

No one argues with him. They just look away, in the same manner that people avoid glancing at a crazy person yelling at a bus stop. Then they return to hyperbole and accusations of treachery against people like their editor. The aging historian Bernard Lewis declares, "The election in the U.S. is being seen by [the bin Ladenists] as a victory on a par with the collapse of the Soviet Union. We should be prepared for whatever comes next." This is why the guests paid up to $6,000. This is what they came for. They give him a wheezing, stooping ovation and break for coffee.

Wolcott laments NR’s abandonment of Buckley conservatism here.

Post-circumcision diapers! To prevent infection and blood stains.

A reader writes:

Thanks for your comments on the NHS. They apply equally to the Canadian system. We actually have an organization which attempts to determine "standard maximum waiting times which correspond to patient urgency". Can you imagine a standard maximum waiting time for treatment that you would be satisfied with if you had, say, cancer?

Another comments:

I moved back to Canada together with my (same-sex) spouse last year after living in NY (state and city) for the last 19 years. While in NY, I have enjoyed my company-paid health insurance for much of that time, sometimes paying a few hundred dollars a month, sometimes nothing at all. During that time, I visited the emergency rooms in NYC several times, and I never have to wait. The care has been excellent both by my doctors or from the hospitals. Moving back to Canada, I visited the ER once with a profusely bleeding hand, and though the nurse immediately stopped the bleeding, the doctor didn’t arrive for a proper stitching till 2 or 3 hours later.

Based on these experiences, you would expect me to lavish praise on the American system, no? Wrong. One reason I moved back to Canada is that I wanted to start my own business, and I can’t afford to pay health insurance in the US for myself and my employees. The lack of free universal health care in the US is bad for entrepreneurship and bad for business, as Detroit and other big businesses have finally figured out. Please stop rooting for a broken system.

Portability or a Romney-style reform could help a lot. But we really shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Hilzoy:

There is simply no way in which Dick Cheney could have operated as he did in an organization that was not utterly dysfunctional.

Er: this is the Bush administration. Kleiman cannot wrap his head around Condi’s passivity.

"You know, I’ve heard all the rhetoric – you’ve heard it, too – about how this is amnesty. Amnesty means that you’ve got to pay a price for having been here illegally, and this bill does that," – president Bush, today. Mock him all you want, he’s pushing this bill forward. You can read the conniptions on the right here.

(Photo: David McNew/Getty.)

He smears those defending the constitution and habeas corpus as making "efforts on behalf of enemy fighters." Er: we’re trying to ensure that there’s some fair basis for their being named as "enemy fighters." He threatens that if we do not junk habeas and enforce torture, the public will one day demand even worse. I think that’s called mob rule. I’ll take my chances with the constititution, thank you. Brendan has a long archive of noting Taranto’s far right excesses. Enjoy.