p m carpenter's commentary

The funniest thing you'll read this week

2013-06-18T13:53:55-05:00

Honest to God I thought Ezra Klein's piece about Bobby Jindal's concept of liberalism was a ruthless parody--hilarious, but still ruthless. Klein indented Jindal's bogeymen--which, again, I believed were imaginary--and indeed on my first reading I thought it rather untoward...

Rather unpolitico of them

2013-06-18T12:52:05-05:00

Politico's top brass, editor-in-chief John Harris and executive editor Jim VandeHei, really should know better than to prolong such a decided dispute, in such an uninformed way, in the public press. Here's Harris: I know why people found him interesting...

A deliberate lie is as good as a real scandal

2013-06-18T10:48:33-05:00

From a CNN/ORC International poll: Last month only 37% of the public thought that the IRS controversy led to the White House.... Now the number who say the White House directed that IRS program has increased 10 points, to 47%,...

Will he/won't he? Yes/no.

2013-06-18T09:51:42-05:00

Speaking of amateurish mistakes, mine could be that I take John Boehner at his word when he (implicitly) insists he won't risk his speakership for the more dignified fate of 11 million undocumented workers. Still, speculation remains little more than...

Something still wrong in the WH

2013-06-18T08:07:24-05:00

It has long been axiomatic that for a president to argue that he is, for instance, not a crook by directly asserting that he is not a crook is a surefire method of reinforcing suspicions, legitimate or not, that he...

The teetering party system

2013-06-17T14:44:19-05:00

To me, this is the Number One issue in--or rather for--America, as sketched by Ezra Klein: Sociologists like Juan Linz note that there are very few political systems like ours, because having competing parties installed in competing parts of government...

Looking safer

2013-06-17T11:37:06-05:00

This helps: "No way in hell," is how several [sources] described the chances of the speaker acting on [an immigration] proposal without a majority of his majority behind him. Hang tough, John. *** update: National Review isn't pleased with yonder...

Our not so great Gatsbys

2013-06-17T10:28:25-05:00

This morning E.J. Dionne invokes The Great Gatsby in a column about wealth inequality. I recently reread the book, after seeing the DiCaprio version (rather good, I thought, especially given the powerful scene in which Gatsby is perplexed at Nick's...

They keep getting lethally weirder

2013-06-17T08:45:51-05:00

The final chapter of the Republican Party is yet to be written, but so far its Five Year Plan of political implosion has entailed disorientation, bewilderment, anger, reaction, obstruction, and now just plain flakiness. Its mood swings are intensifying, its...

Text, taxt, tuxt

2013-06-16T19:57:39-05:00

I don't text. If, however, I did text, I could text now, and I might have tuxt yesterday, too, when I taxt whatever it was I wished at the time to text. Please, you texters, the proper conjugation when telling...

Bill Clinton, cleaving the party

2013-06-16T08:47:32-05:00

In offering his extraordinarily unsolicited advice on Syria, Bill Clinton has previewed one of the dumbest political strategies it has ever been my awe-struck pleasure to witness. These are the early stages of Hillary's final presidential push, and Bill, among...

Gruelpolitik

2013-06-15T08:13:15-05:00

Other than in something like "simply insane," one should refrain from using the modifier in relation to the insanely rococo Syrian crisis. Nonetheless, Dan Drezner goes there (although at least he didn't write "cakewalk"). This is simply the United States...

Baffling murkiness on Syria

2013-06-14T21:56:54-05:00

Zbigniew Brzezinski repeated on 'PBS Newshour' tonight what he earlier told the NT Times: [That] he was "baffled" by Mr. Obama’s decision to become more deeply involved. "What exactly is our objective?" he asked. It gets more baffling. From the...

Something is wrong at the White House

2013-06-14T19:35:51-05:00

Something's wrong. There's something wrong at the White House. I don't know if it's the chief of staff, or policy advisers, or political advisers, or new advisers, or the loss of first-term advisers, or the president himself, but something hasn't...

Ruth-less logic

2013-06-14T13:02:20-05:00

As a fan of understatement, I simply must pass along Ruth Marcus': To read Section 215 [of the Patriot Act] is not to understand it in the all-encompassing manner the administration does. Congress authorized intelligence officials to seek court orders...

Finally--from last month--a road map

2013-06-14T10:15:07-05:00

I guess today's USA Today story is but a perfectly understandable neurotic reminder: A Syrian rebel group's April pledge [my emphasis] of allegiance to al-Qaeda's replacement for Osama bin Laden suggests that the terrorist group's influence is not waning and...

A clarification

2013-06-14T09:49:48-05:00

Since I respect the opinions of nearly all commenters to this site, I think a re-clarification is called for, since some of those opinions might have been altered dyspeptically by a misunderstanding. Yesterday, in my targeted apology, I wrote "when...

Buck up, relief's on the way

2013-06-14T09:24:14-05:00

It's not all bad, or gloomy. Just above the New York Times story, "U.S. Is Said to Plan to Send Weapons to Syrian Rebels," is a banner ad--God knows what this cost--"ALLEN WEST IS LEADING THE FIGHT AGAINST THE RADICAL...

Yahoos

2013-06-14T07:28:31-05:00

In rejecting 0.023% of 8,591 FISA requests between 2008 and 2012, the American justice system has made clear to Internet firms--as a secret court decreed in a seminal ruling against Yahoo--that Fourth Amendment fussiness is "overblown," that the government's "efforts...

A catastrophe in real time

2013-06-13T19:08:04-05:00

I just heard Democratic Sen. Chris Coons say on "Hardball" that we need to intervene in Syria to protect "American values." And of course there's John McCain, eager as ever on the Senate floor, and there's this as well, just...

Oh, crap

2013-06-13T17:24:46-05:00

At this point, mere confusion would be an improvement. The latest, from the NY Times: Senior State Department officials have been pushing for an aggressive military response, including airstrikes to hit the primary landing strips in Syria.... But White House...

The biggest no-news story ever

2013-06-13T14:55:54-05:00

It's kinda cute that immigration reform still makes its way into the news. I suppose it's worth the longest possible shot by the White House, but does anyone believe the House Republican leadership is going to risk its internally shaky...

A shift in mood, knowledge, or just wording

2013-06-13T13:05:24-05:00

Since release of the WaPo-Pew poll that showed 56 percent of Americans favorably disposed to the NSA phone-record program, public opinion seems to have taken a turn. Or has it? A CBS News poll shows 38 percent find the program...

Wow

2013-06-13T10:23:37-05:00

None us is easily shocked anymore, not since Vietnam, the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Bush v. Gore and its ensuing eight years of lobotomized authoritarianism--or, as director Robert Redford would have it, not since the "Quiz Show" scandals. But this,...

True, but not always true

2013-06-13T08:53:56-05:00

Perhaps Nate Silver should have used "consistent," rather than "firm": [M]any Americans do not hold especially firm views on some issues and instead may adapt them depending on which party controls the executive branch. When it comes to domestic surveillance,...

The tragedy of ruffled tranquility

2013-06-12T20:24:43-05:00

About aid-morning the outside temperature creeped over 75 degrees, so naturally Mediacom's internet service went out. Extreme weather conditions, you know. It's still out, nearly 10 hours later. Anyway, what a waste. My deprivation was yours as well. At the...

The witching hour(s)

2013-06-12T10:54:52-05:00

The nuthatch has been opened, and it's open for some serious business. Rep. Peter King: I think something on this magnitude, there is an obligation, both moral but also legal, I believe, against a reporter disclosing something which would so...

How not to get the Clapper

2013-06-12T09:02:11-05:00

Even though the answer by James Clapper, director of national intelligence, to Sen. Ron Wyden's March question--"Does the N.S.A. collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"; "No, sir. Not wittingly"--was markedly contemptible...

A future diplomat?

2013-06-11T15:34:01-05:00

My daughter just told me that our messy bathroom towel pantry is "unsustainable." God I love fatherhood.

If only they'd thought to gang rush Snowden

2013-06-11T15:00:42-05:00

The Daily Beast's brilliantly strategic Megan McArdle--she of mass murderous interruptus through gang-rushing: "if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts...