Sonny predicted she would win, calling it a “kind of lifetime achievement award”. Yet looking over Bullock’s filmography, I find it somewhat hard to identify the achievements. That said, Bullock was actually quite good as Leigh Ann Tuohy (TOO-ee) in The Blind Side, the role for which she won the Oscar. But it was an easy, feel-good role. Tuohy is a sassy steel magnolia who, out of the goodness of her heart, gives a home to an inner-city teenager — who later becomes a...

I mean that literally, unlike Phil Collins’ song about the plight of the homeless. I spent the past few days in Anse Marcel (photo above) on the Caribbean island of St. Martin. The title of Collins’ song is a reminder of how hard it is to enjoy good fortune without reflecting on those who don’t have it. I admit, I didn’t spend all that much time in St. Martin thinking about the suffering of others (although like many Caribbean islands, St. Martin is a collage of first-world...

Don’t tell anyone I’m saying nice things about the MSM. But here goes. Kevin Drum says he can’t recall the media ever giving “any kind of serious treatment” to the question of whether patients should be allowed to be health insurance across state lines (which Republicans think is a good thing and Kevin thinks is a very bad thing). Kevin quotes Bob Somerby, who says the media have “never” examined this issue. Well, I was pretty sure I saw a good discussion...

US and Pakistani agents captured the Taliban #2 in the southern port of Karachi, far from the Afghan border. We know that much, but we don’t know the real story. The NY Times reports that Baradar’s capture was an accident. The WaPo reports that it was the result of growing cooperation between US and Pakistani intelligence. Huh? In fact, those competing story lines may not add up to an blatant contradiction. How so? Just like sports, when you train hard, you start getting more...

Yes, folks, it’s that time again. Another fundraising letter arrived in the mail and I’m going to quote some of its hyper-partisan excess for the purpose of general amusement. Since the previous installment in this series was about Bill Clinton, this time we turn to Steve Forbes, writing on behalf of the Heritage Foundation. Dear Fellow American, The left has been outrageous for many years. But now that they control both the White House and both houses of Congress, they are acting...

The NY Times reports on the aggressive measures American forces are taking to show their concern for civilian casualties during the battle for Marja: MARJA, Afghanistan — Twelve bodies — five children, five women and two men — were wrapped head to toe in woolen blankets, lying in a neat row on the floor of the only room remaining in a house that had been blasted to mud-brick rubble by at least one and possibly two 675-pound rockets. A United States Marine Corps battalion commander, Lt. Col....

Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy, writes, Now that the White House has announced that President Obama will receive the Dalai Lama, it is important that he be welcomed not only as a moral and religious leader respected throughout the world but also as a fellow democrat who shares America’s deepest values. This is not an aspect of the Dalai Lama that is well understood, especially by those who see him as the spiritual leader of a traditional people. Yet he is...

Dan Twining, who studied Pakistan closely during his time at the State Department, takes a closer look at why Pakistan might have cooperated in the capture of Taliban #2, Mullah Baradar. The optimistic interpretation is that Pakistani intelligence has finally recognized that the Taliban are as much of a threat to Pakistan as they are to Afghanistan. Alternately, In return for Pakistani cooperation over the next 18 months…one could imagine a private U.S. understanding with Pakistani armed...

In a recent front-page story, the NY Times exposed how corporations have worked around campaign finance laws to send tens of millions of dollars to influential Democrats on the Hill: WASHINGTON — When the Congressional Black Caucus wanted to pay off the mortgage on its foundation’s stately 1930s redbrick headquarters on Embassy Row, it turned to a familiar roster of friends: corporate backers like Wal-Mart, AT&T, General Motors, Coca-Cola and Altria, the nation’s largest tobacco company. Soon...

When I was a kid, my mom bought me a placemat with little portraits of all forty American presidents (which is how many there were back then). After all while, I knew all of their names and when they held office. Mostly by accident, I spent some time this afternoon consulting Wikipedia’s list of America’s 47 vice presidents. Half of them were total strangers to me. For all I know, they’re just made up names that some practical joker put on Wikipedia. If you want to prove you’re...

Mullah Baradar, the Taliban’s top military commander, was captured in Karachi as part of a joint operation by US and Pakistani intelligence. Baradar was captured late last week, but the US government asked journalists to hold the information until today. In the Times, ex-CIA man and Obama adviser Bruce Riedel says Baradar’s capture reflected a “sea change in Pakistani behavior.” I hope he’s right. There’s no question that ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service, has...

Pete and Patrick have already posted on Evan Bayh’s retirement from the Senate. Yet the responsibility falls on me to employ one of the most obvious and predictable puns of the season: Bayh-Bayh, Evan. Furthermore, I predict that this pun will become painfully common over the next 24 to 48 hours. I may be the first to use it here because of my awful sense of humor, but I am confident that the blogosphere as a whole will stoop my level. Speaking of confidence, Sen. Bayh had the chutzpah to...

Warning: This post describes the intramural wars of current and former staffers at The New Republic. It should not be read by anyone who thinks pundits spend too much time analyzing themselves. That said… It all started on Monday when Leon Wieseltier published a long essay in TNR suggesting that Andrew Sullivan has begun to sink into the poisonous mire of anti-Semitism. Alternately, you might say it all started more than 15 years ago, when Sullivan was editor of TNR, where he clashed repeatedly...

William linked earlier to a Gorbachev op-ed, available in translation from worldmeets.us. Based on the lessons of the Soviet experience, Gorbachev recommends a political settlement and withdrawal of troops. And this requires a strategy of national reconciliation. But what exactly was the Soviet experience and its lessons? First, instead of an invasion of a sovereign country, Gorbachev recounts, In 1979, the Soviet leadership decided to introduce troops into Afghanistan, justifying this step not...

We’re snowed in here in Washington DC. The government will shut down tomorrow for a second consecutive day. Tomorrow night, we’re expecting another storm. One of the nice things about being shut in is the chance to read, and I’ve finally started on Dreams From My Father. In a word, it’s superb. It would be a great book if Barack Obama were still just a lawyer in Chicago. Of course, it’s really not unusual for a Republican to praise the book. Three years ago, at...

Not completely evil. I dialed in to a two-hour conference call from home, which meant I could visit the refrigerator at lunchtime instead of waiting until the call ended to go down the cafeteria. But according to Matt Yglesias, it costs the taxpayers $100 million when the federal government has to shut down because of snowfall. (I’ve heard it costs the taxpayers $200 million when the federal government stays open.) Seriously, why doesn’t the federal government help DC get ready for...

In an old-fashioned war, you don’t tell the enemy where and when you’re going to attack. Counterinsurgency is different. The WaPo reports: For the upcoming Battle of Marja, the element of surprise has already gone by the wayside. NATO ministers and commanders, gathering Thursday and Friday in Istanbul, could barely contain themselves about a major military offensive set to launch 2,000 miles away in southern Afghanistan. Ignoring the usual dictums about keeping battle preparations...

That’s the question in big, bold letters on the cover the new New Republic. What TNR’s editors mean by that is what a lot of liberal writers have been saying since the morning after Scott Brown became the 41st Republican in the Senate. Does Barack Obama have the guts to get health care passed, or is he just another Democrat who gets scared and runs to the center when the GOP scores an occasional victory? What’s unusual about the editorial in TNR is that it’s thoroughly contradicted...

Nate Silver reviews the nuts and bolts of how Question Time for the President might actually work. If you think it makes sense (I do) then go sign the petition. Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

In a great follow on to President Obama’s engagement with the House GOP, a coalition of writers who span the political spectrum are calling for Question Time with the President to become an American institution. Politico reports: A politically diverse group of bloggers, commentators, techies and politicos on Wednesday will launch an online campaign, Demand Question Time, urging President Barack Obama and GOP congressional leaders to hold regular, televised conversations like the extraordinary...

The Daily Kos has made a splash with its poll of 2003 self-identified Republicans. A fifth think the 2008 election was rigged. A third refuse to believe Barack Obama was born in the United States. Sixty percent think he’s a socialist. Naturally, this is a good moment for certain liberals to heap scorn upon us Republicans. Either we’re pathetically ignorant or just easily misled. Kevin Drum writes, I used to talk about the Texification of the Republican Party, but that’s now...

There is a thread I’d like to pick up on in the commentary on President Obama’s civil debate with the House GOP last Friday. You can see it in the round-ups from both Joe and Kathy. Like a British Prime Minister, Obama took questions directly from the opposition, which is unheard of in American politics. Obama’s Q&A session was all the more remarkable because it was voluntary, which question time certainly isn’t for the British Prime Minister. Descriptions of the British...

Game Change, by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, stole the spotlight by informing us that Harry Reid thought of Barack Obama as a “light-skinned”, um, “Negro”. That quote was quite accurate, since the source was none other than Harry Reid. Yet the more people look at the book, on both the left and right, the more it emerges as the worst possible example of unverifiable gossip journalism, which gives anonymous sources the opportunity to claim whatever they want without any...

Dan Drezner notes that Libya’s weirdo-in-chief is not happy about being deposed as head of the African Union. I just have to ask, what kind of continent chooses Muammar Qaddafi as its spokesman anyhow? Probably a continent with so many problems that are so much worse it doesn’t care if Qaddafi is its nominal representative. If Hugo Chavez is ever chosen as Supreme Guru of the Western Hemisphere, it will only be because things are already so awful we just stopped caring. (Btw, Dan, you...

In the current issue of the New Yorker, my old classmate Ben McGrath goes inside the Tea Party movement. Ben is determined not to write-off the Tea Partiers as right-wing kooks. Still, try as he might, I think he edges clearly in that direction by the end of his profile. Still, he warns of the danger of underestimating the Tea Party phenomenon: The involvement of people like Dick Armey in the Tea Party movement led many Democrats, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, to dismiss the significance...