Pundit Country

Right idea, wrong President.

Call me old fashioned, but I like it when smart people call out craven fools for incendiary rhetoric. Having said, that, I really wish he’d stop referring to the health care reform legislation in the past tense.

From this morning’s E.J. Dionne’s opinion piece about why Obama is still having some trouble getting ahead of the poor economic numbers and the nation’s increasingly dour attitude of those in Washington.

The president’s supporters comfort themselves that Obama’s numbers will improve as the economy gets better. This is a form of intellectual complacency. Ronald Reagan’s numbers went down during a slump, too. But even when he was in the doldrums, Reagan was laying the groundwork for a critique of liberalism that held sway in American politics long after he left office.

Progressives will never reach their own Morning in America unless they use the Gipper’s method to offer their own critique of the conservatism he helped make dominant. It is still more powerful in our politics, as we are learning in Massachusetts, than it ought to be.

If you hadn’t heard, the 2010 U.S. Census started earlier today. Reviled by Tea Party activists in the months leading up to it, forms are being sent out to citizens in an effort to accurately count the population which will greatly aid federal and state governments when it comes time to allocate resources and and people.

However, one of the biggest aspects of the Census is that the population number of each state will control who gains and who loses seats in the House of Representatives. One of the leading advocates for non-participation in the Census has been U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota (whose insane rantings I’ve chronicled here, here, here, and here) who has been on the airwaves telling people that President Obama’s administration is set to rig the results in yet another attempt to get people to enter relocation programs, house them in jails if they refuse liberal indoctrination, or whatever other inane thing enters her brain and out her mouth without the slightest bit of moderation.

It turns out that if Census forecasts play out the way some believe they will, Minnesota is set to lose a Congressional district in the new counting – hers. Wanna know who’s set to pick up one? The blue state heaven known as Washington.

Related articles

• Analysis: Washington may get 10th congressional seat (seattlepi.com)
• Kent Conrad Says That America is Run By The ‘Senate” Is the House Listening? (crooksandliars.com)
• Census ‘10 Puts States, Groups in Campaign Mode (abcnews.go.com)
• The Grayson/Bachmann Formula (politicalwire.com)
• Learning to Love the Census (talkingpointsmemo.com)
• Citizenship and the Census (themoderatevoice.com)

When choosing to use military force against another nation, the following principles seem to apply to the following men.

Barack Obama:  the principle of “just war“, first formally enumerated by St. Thomas Aquinas, which holds that a conflict can and ought to meet the criteria of philosophical, religious or political justice, provided it follows certain conditions before being engaged.

George W. Bush:  Just ’cause he had nothing better to do that day.

Related articles

• Obama, Afghanistan, and the ‘just war’ (crosscut.com)
• “Just War” Is Just Words (nader.org)
• A Last Word on the Just War Tradition (palamas.info)
• Liberals should beware the lazy cry of betrayal | Martin Kettle (guardian.co.uk)
• Obama Nobel Peace Prize speech (blogs.law.harvard.edu)