An amusing post at TNR from the notorious Jamie Kirchick. I suppose this is your typical TNRism, but I was sort of shocked by the way he cites WSJ editorials and Eli Lake in making his argument, especially in view of the goofy arguments made by both.

It seems that all is not well on the right-wing front. While the MSM and the blogger-sphere have been obsessing about Democratic unity, Republican unity has been falling apart.

Poor McCain is facing some challenges not only from his most charismatic democratic rival, but from the inner echelons of his party. All sorts of rumblings have been coming from his own colleagues on the hill, conservative intellectual symbols, bloggers and policy makers.

Follow me after the jump, and I will share the good news.

Yesterday I read a column by Jonathan Chait at the New Republic. I sometimes amble over that way, curious to know what the dunderheads are crowing about. Every once in a while there's an acorn.

And sometimes there's a real jewel. Yesterday was one of the beauties. Chait, in defining the difference between liberalism and conservatives, hit this one out of the park. I couldn't agree more with his opinion on liberalism. Except it's not a weakness, it's a strength.

More below the fold.

A Bizarro World article in The New Republic by Brad Plumer argues inexplicably that the netroots favor Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama. The article appears to have been written prior to Edwards' dropping out, even though it was just published last week. As such it is hopelessly out of date, even if it's central premise were true, which Plumer strains mightily to prove with quotes from various netroots chiefs like Stoller, Markos, Hamsher etc. It's true that Obama has been heavily critiqued by the left for pursuing an inclusive, post-partisan theme rather than a transformative,  hyper-partisan theme, but to conclude that there's some kind of rift from this is really letting the thesis drive the story.

Well, it made RedState happy, at least. Let them take whatever solace they can.

Last December, our building began to feed some homeless kittens and their mother.  All of them are more feral than tame;  only one has consented to a petting.  That kitten dared to enter the building, but after I closed the door he jumped a meter straight up hoping to escape through a window, so I let him back out.  

I'm starting to believe that feeding them was a mistake.  More below the fold.  

cross-posted at The Richardson Solution

writer's note: The Richardson Solution is an advocacy-oriented and policy-cataloging blog that promotes the presidential candidacy of Bill Richardson, former U.S. Congressperson, Ambassador to the UN, Secretary of Energy and current Governor of the great state of New Mexico.

Nothing like coming home from work and finding your blog got about a thousand hits.  Especially with this:

   Also, you'll want to let this pro-Richardson blogger know about the change in policy. He still has the old, pro-Feingold-Reid plan posted.

Richardson took some swings at major Senate Dems at the Take Back America conference and Lizza thought the Governor "scrubbed" the website to modify for his new stance on Reid-Feingold.

Trouble is - there is no new stance.  

Today, in the New Republic, Jonathan Chait authored  a long article

The Left's New Machine: How the Netroots became the most important mass movement in US Politics.

in which the Lieberman-loving, Iraq-war-supporting, house organ of the DLC condescendingly explains to its readers that maybe these netroots types can be useful in, you know, helping push the Democratic Message out to the media - even if we are uncouth and tend to swear a lot.

It's an interesting article, in that Mr. Chait never even mentions the primary bones of contention between the netroots and the TNR/DLC/Lieberman Axis of Evil.

This kind of diary should really be left in the more capable hands of Kos or Hunter or somebody - but since they haven't posted on it yet, I'll take a whack at it.

A piece by Benjamin Wittes in today's The New Republic Online (reg. required, bugmenot is your friend) does several startling things: it admits that there is a growing intellectual & legal support for reading the 2nd Amendment as supporting an 'individual right' to gun ownership; it says that we should stop trying to interpret the amendment in a way that comports with gun control advocates, since that was not what was intended by the Founders; and it calls for a repeal of the amendment.  The money quote:

It's time for gun-control supporters to come to grips with the fact that the amendment actually means something in contemporary society. For which reason, I hereby advance a modest proposal: Let's repeal the damned thing.

Much like a lot of people who opine for reasonably-sized audiences, Cass Sunstein deems Barack Obama and John McCain both more admirable than most US Senators.  His reason:

Politicians who show respect--Senator McCain is a good example--tend not to attack the competence, the motivations, or the defining commitments of those who disagree with him. Politicians who show charity as well as respect--Senator Obama is a rare example--tend to put opposing arguments in the best possible form, to praise the motivations of those who offer such arguments, and to seek proposals that specifically accept the defining commitments of all sides.

In other words, McCain shows respect by criticizing just the reasoning and not the character of his opponents; Obama shows the greater virtue of charity by affirming the character of his opponents and stating their arguments in the most generous terms possible.

They do?

As if we needed more evidence that The New Republic is a laughing stock, here's todays inadvertenly hilarious nonsense form John Chait, via Digby:

Or go back to the last war we fought with Iraq. Schell insisted that we could force Iraq to leave Kuwait with sanctions alone, rather than by using military force. But the years that followed that war made it clear just how impotent that tool was. Saddam Hussein endured more than a decade of sanctions rather than give up a weapons of mass destruction program that turned out to be nonexistent. If sanctions weren't enough to make him surrender his imaginary weapons, I think we can safely say they wouldn't have been enough to make him surrender a prized, oil-rich conquest.

I had to read that a few times to make sure Chat wasn't being sarcastic.

Surprising story from Rick Perlstein over at The New Republic Online-- surprising, that is, given its location (albeit only on TNR online, not in the magazine).

Here's the kicker: "in race after race, [the Democratic victory] actually represents the apotheosis of forces Emanuel has doubted all long: the netroots."

Here's the link:

http://www.tnr.com/...

The New Republic is a maddening publication.  Their top editorial staff are a bunch of radical center-left (well, at least formerly center-left) war hawks, under the leadership of Martin Peretz, former liberal, crazed anti-anything perceived not to be in Israel's best interest, wannabe academic, and general joke of a public intellectual.  That said, they have some very good writers, the best of whom, Spencer Ackerman, just jumped ship (I like John Judis, John Cohn, and John Chait talking policy and not politics; Ryan Lizza did yeoman's work on Gearge Allen's racist past).

I just canceled my subscription to The New Republic.  I hung in there with TNR a lot longer than many in the Kos Community.  Despite the fact that I disagreed with many its editorial positions, most prominently its full-throated support for the Iraq quagmire, I found the journalistic level of articles to be superb, I thoroughly enjoyed its arts, literature, and cinema coverage, and I can't get enough of Leon Wieseltier.

This just in from TNR:

An Apology to Our Readers

After an investigation, The New Republic has determined that the comments in our Talkback section defending Lee Siegel's articles and blog under the username "sprezzatura" were produced with Siegel's participation. We deeply regret misleading our readers. Lee Siegel's blog will no longer be published by TNR, and he has been suspended from writing for the magazine.

Franklin Foer
Editor, The New Republic

As you may remember, Mr. Siegel was not the blogosphere's best friend...

Even lapsed Irish Catholics feel the need to confess periodically. I confess. I indulged in a guilty pleasure. I have just finished reading the article about Duke Cunningham in the new online issue of TNR. Why the guilt? Why the pleasure?  Well, the article was written by, ahem. . . Kitty Kelley. But, it was so juicy! Oh, God! I'm on my way to hell even as I write.

Yes, it's sensational. And, yes, I take immense pleasure from the suffering of The Dukester and his missus (soon to be ex.)

Go here for the full story: http://www.tnr.com/...

We all knew this guy was a piece of work but the wife . . . what a whiny ass wimp.

More below the fold -

We should certainly forget the times when "The New Republic" was considered (quite widely) as a "liberal" counterpart to the conservative "National Review". Why else would a "liberal journal" would consider prospects of Repub hopefuls (such as McCain or Newt Gingrich) just as serious as the burning topics of today?

But this takes the top of the cake:

A defense of Ann Coulter
by Elspeth Reeve

Seriously?! Yeah!

Read it and laugh!

At first I thought I was reading satire. But no, Martin Peretz is serious. It is all Clinton's fault.

Folks, this is the guy Al Gore took political advise from in 2000!

What was Gore thinking, taking advise from this neocon moron? Just because Peretz has tons of cash (his wife's) doesn't mean he knows shit about politics.

http://www.tnr.com/...

"Worse can be said of Bill Clinton's stumping in Connecticut for Joe (and Hillary's endorsement, too.) When Clinton came into the state, Lieberman and Lamont were running dead even in the polls, more or less. Clinton's appearance began Lieberman's decline. Within two or three days, Lieberman was down by ten points."

So what is the `editor-in-chief' of TNR doing in the OpEd pages of the Wall Street Journal?  Why,  he is trashing Ned Lamont while extolling the virtues of his hero.  Normally, this would be just another piss into the wind from the TNR crowd, but this one ain't normal, not by a long shot.

It is really quite remarkable how someone like Ned Lamont, from the stock of Morgan partner Thomas Lamont and that high born American Stalinist Corliss Lamont still sends a chill of "having arrived" up the spines of his suburban supporters simply by asking them to support him.

Got that?  

Me neither.

But he is just getting warmed up.