The US Court of Appeals, in the process of telling a bunch of insecure atheists* why they should sit down and shut up about the 9-11 Cross:
In short, neutrality is not so rigid and absolute a principle as to command “a brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular.”
Continue reading Quote of the day, “a brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular” edition.
Now we have Senators saying this. Folks, I give you Senator Ted Cruz:
You cannot win a battle against radical Islamic terrorism if you’re unwilling to utter the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’
Likewise, you cannot hope to fight it out in the court of public opinion if you have nobody who is there to state yours. Anybody here think that former Senator Hutchinson – and I don’t particularly wish to pile on her over this – would have made the case as well? Or possibly even at all?
Elections have consequences.
Glenn Reynolds notes that Barack Obama isn’t just losing the game; he’s losing the spread.
If he were a Republican, the press would be screaming for impeachment. And he’s acting badly enough that, even though he’s a black Democrat, they’re beginning to take some small notice.
Mind you, in 2015 the White House is going to look back at these days and feel a little bit of nostalgia. It’s going to seem so idyllic in comparison…
John Sexton, noting why he thinks that Ezra Klein’s new Vox… thingy… may not live up to the hype:
Whatever the case, technology is not capable of adding to or subtracting from the list of things that interest human beings.
It’s a relevant quote because, as near as I can tell, the entire concept of Vox orbits around the idea that producing a service (Big Wonkery, essentially) will generate a demand for it. In this particular case, I kind of doubt it …no, not because Jeff Bezos passed on it. Klein asking for at least ten million guarantees it. No, the reason that I kind of doubt it is because Bezos didn’t turn around and do the idea himself for about one million.
Because if he did, it’d be honestly more likely to work.
Moe Lane
And very likely sooner than we would hope, think, and/or certainly want. Jim Geraghty:
We want the world to solve its own problems for a while. The problem is that all this — invasions, wholesale slaughter, ethnic cleansing, missile tests, naval provocations, and raw brutality — is how the world beyond our borders solves its own problems.
‘This’ being, among other things, this (content warning after the fold): Continue reading Quote of the Day, This WILL Become Our Problem Again edition.
Speak for yourself, Chris Cillizza…
While most people focus on the 63-seat Republican gain that brought the GOP control of the House, what often gets lost is the remarkable turnover in governorships and state legislatures.
…my readers were properly informed. And then there’s this chart, which shows that the only times in the last century or so that the President’s party gained state legislature seats in a midterm were in 1934 (first flush of the New Deal) and 2002 (first flush of the GWOT). Those are grim odds for the Other Side’s political partisans.
Moe Lane
PS: Remember: state legislature seats. Even in 1998 we apparently picked up seats at that level.
PPS: There is no such thing as an unimportant election.
When asked about being President, Senator Mike Lee of Utah was refreshingly forthright:
“The Senate has enough people running for president, and I’m not,” he said. Asked why he would not run, Lee rejected the premise of the question. “The question of running for president isn’t really a ‘why not?’ thing; it’s more of a ‘why?’ thing.”
Why, indeed. To quote one of Harry Turtledove’s characters (a Byzantine-analogue Emperor in full exasperation mode towards a Gallic Wars-era actual Roman tribune*): “I begin to see why your people have no kings. Who would WANT the job?” Inexplicably and unfortunately, we have a lot of people who do seem to want the job, these days – but they’re still kind of crazy, them.
Moe Lane
*It’s complicated.
John Sununu – who lost a Senate election in 2008, as he freely admits later in the article – may have just a touch of the ol’ schadenfreude showing in this article:
The giddy electoral success of 2008 has been tempered by the harsh political reality of 2014. Implementing Obamacare, the president’s signature legislative achievement, has been a logistical nightmare; millions of families have lost their insurance coverage; and Obama’s approval ratings have fallen below 40 percent. “Dance with the one that brought you,” the saying goes, but when you are a Senate Democrat stuck with the wrong prom date, there’s only one thing to do: hide in the bathroom.
Note that I do not disapprove. One of the few pleasures of the Obamacare debacle is that we have rarely seen such a lopsided assignment of responsibility as we have here. Republicans up and down the line adamantly told people that this was going to be a disaster, and the Democrats took it as an opportunity to go all-in. If Obamacare had turned out to be a brilliant success the Republican party might not have survived the experience; as it stands, the Democrats will be smarting from the negative reinforcement for the rest of the decade.
I suppose that Peter Grier writes for a different audience than I do:
…some new ratings are out that we find pretty interesting. They’re from the “Crystal Ball” newsletter of the always quotable Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. He chops the Republican field into layers, and in his top tier Dr. Sabato puts New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (No. 3, and falling); Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky (No. 2, and rising); and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin (No. 1, and “huh”?).
…because I can safely assume that my audience knew all of this already. Admittedly, we’ve been preparing them to consider the possibility for some time.
Via Hot Air Headlines. Continue reading Quote of the Day, This Is Only Surprising To Some edition.
John Podhoretz, summing up why Obamacare supporters have been having some terrible, awful, no-good days trying to explain away that CBO report from Hell:
…this report may mark the moment [Obamacare’s] doom was sealed—because it’s springing leaks in places no one ever thought he was going to have to patch, even as Obama and his people continue to try to plug the holes that everyone already knows about.
As a wise man once said, it’s the unknown unknowns that will give you trouble.
Moe Lane
