CONTINUED FROM YESTERDAY Shortly after my initial rants, I saw a news alert that Rand Paul had issued a more definitive (and coherent) comment on this matter. Unfortunatley, I could not find the time to immediately revisit the subject. Out of fairness, I will now. Finally, Mr. Paul is saying all the right things, and without equivocation. Of course, questions will persist: Does he really believes any of this? Or is he only speaking the words to salvage a newborn political career? I don’t...

Another one bites the dust, raising anew questions about whether or not measured voices can ever be turned into ratings winners.

Following up on my fascination with the Arkansas primary — perhaps the reddest blue state in America — I was pleased that Sen. Lincoln survived to fight another day. Her estimated 45 percent of the vote was not enough to win outright. But considering that the spoiler candidate in the race — D.C. Morrison — “ran to the ideological right of both [Lincoln] and Halter,” she has a decent chance of prevailing in the runoff against Halter, the progressives’ favorite....

The Specter-Sestak primary in Pennsylvania will probably grab most of the headlines over the next 48 hours. But the race I’m watching on Tuesday is the Lincoln-Halter primary in Arkansas. I have nothing against Mr. Halter, the state’s lieutenant governor. In fact, I don’t know enough about him to offer either praise or criticism. But I am a big fan of Sen. Lincoln’s, and have been ever since I heard her speak at a convention I attended several years ago. I’ll never...

David Brooks deems the new coalition government in Britian — and its prospects for resolving the nation’s fiscal issues — the result of “sheer good luck.” Is it that, or the unflappable wisdom of crowds … or perhaps a bit of both?

So David Cameron, it appears, is “the youngest Prime Minister in the 200 year history of British government.” I’m older. He was born in late 1966. I was born in early 1965. I think that’s a first for me, being older than a prominent, contemporary world leader. Granted, there have been child and teenage heads of state — eons ago. And maybe some tiny kingdom somewhere has been led by someone my junior in my lifetime. But I certainly don’t recall the front...

Since we launched our new comments forum on Saturday, we’ve received a number of recurring questions. Tyrone offers the following answers. —————— Every post on the blog appears in the “Community Boulevard” section of District TMV. In “Community Boulevard” — CB, for short — blog posts are typically NOT listed in chronological order. Instead, they are most-often ranked on the volume of dialogue (comments) about them,...

Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina voters pick candidates today for the general election. Chris Cillizza offers a summary of the contests.

The award is shared this week by Michelle Malkin and Scott Johnson. Both jumped on the following thought from the President, spoken Wednesday when he was in Quincy, Illinois: I think at some point you have made enough money. First, if Malkin and Johnson are going to put quotation marks around comments made by anyone, they should quote the actual words, which (according to Ed Morrissey and the audio recording on which he relied) were these: I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money. Does...

The first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, was not afraid to unleash the federal government on a bold project. And no, in this case, I’m not talking about keeping the union together. In his case, I’m referring to Lincoln’s decision to sign into law a bill to boost the construction of a transcontintental railroad. Of course, Lincoln shouldn’t get all the credit. Support for a transcontinental railroad was part of the Republican Party platform of 1860. David Brooks...

A colleague emailed me today. She had heard my radio commentary Monday re: the Coffee Party and thought I might be interested in this related article from the current edition of Newsweek. The article recounts an experience that Annabel Park, the C-Party’s founder, had with some of the people her movement attracted to a gathering at a D.C. venue. … from the moment folks in the crowd stood up to speak their minds, Park knew these people had not come to sip cappuccinos and set an example...

A March 1 article in The New York Times was my first introduction to the Coffee Party. Over the next six weeks, I spent multiple hours attempting to learn more about this movement, with a focus on its manifestation in my back yard. I summarized what I learned in my latest commentary for KWMU, St. Louis Public Radio, an NPR affiliate. Three-and-a-half minutes of air time … derived from about a dozen pages of handwritten notes and twice that many pages of related news reports. Net: There’s...

The NYT columnist restates the obvious. … things have not worked out for those of us in the broad middle. Politics is more polarized than ever. The two parties have drifted further to the extremes. The center is drained and depressed. He then asks the obvious question — “What happened?” — and answers it thus. History happened. The administration came into power at a time of economic crisis. This led it, in the first bloom of self-confidence, to attempt many big projects...

I received a couple notable reactions to my post from earlier today. First, “Mike Lee” wondered what exactly I meant by “refinement.” If you mean just removing the accidental provisions that slipped through, I wouldn’t expect or encourage any Republican to take you up on that. Although Republicans have made use of the “it’s so big you can’t possibly know what’s in it” argument, they have also pointed to several things that we know are in it that they...

Politically speaking, I don’t care if you’re left, right, or straight up the middle. Whoever and whatever you are, you simply have to cringe when you read this article. In a new report, the Congressional Research Service says the law may have significant unintended consequences for the “personal health insurance coverage” of senators, representatives and their staff members. For example, it says, the law may “remove members of Congress and Congressional staff” from their current...

Can you blame them, with all the reports of their employers’ demise? Here’s hoping media owners find a cure, soon, for what ails their enterprises. No matter how highly we volunteer bloggers rate our role, a million of us simply cannot replicate the quality and consistency of original reporting generated by professionals. ————— Do you have a reaction or related information to share? Send an email to abel.reply@gmail.com. Please write “TMV Comment”...

I received a couple reader reactions to my post yesterday re: David Brooks’ optimism column, and a follow-on reaction to a subject we raised last week (twice) — namely, warrantless surveillance. Both of the reader reactions to Brooks’ column were in the “bah humbug” or “optimism schmoptimism” category. From regular reader DLS … Just wait until later this decade or 2020 onward at most — fiscal crunches and even crises in Washington (never mind...

David Brooks wants us to stop our “on the wrong track” grumbling. According to recent polls, 60 percent of Americans think the country is heading in the wrong direction. The same percentage believe that the U.S. is in long-term decline. The political system is dysfunctional. A fiscal crisis looks unavoidable. There are plenty of reasons to be gloomy. But if you want to read about them, stop right here. This column is a great luscious orgy of optimism. Because the fact is, despite all...

The NYT examines Snopes and other Web fact-v-fraud checkers, including a look at the couple who founded Snopes, David and Barbara Mikkelson. The Mikkelson’s attitude toward the utility of their work is, in a word, discouraging. From the article’s conclusion: … even though Snopes pays the bills for the couple now, through advertising revenue, they doubt they are having much of an impact. “It’s not like, ‘Well, we have to get out there and defend the truth,’ ” Mrs. Mikkelson...

We’re a little slow this morning at TMV. (It probably has something to do with a holiday weekend for many.) As a result, this subject is almost old news by now: The U.S. economy added an estimated 162,000 jobs last month, while the unemployment rate stuck stubbornly to 9.7 percent. Such is life. Reactions galore at Memeorandum, and Andrew Sullivan summarizes a couple more. Incidentally, the trend chart that Sullivan posts is an excellent counterpoint to the RNC echo chamber: … the...

A story in today’s NYT focuses on the challenging position the Obama administration is now in, given Wednesday’s ruling by a federal judge on the warrantless surveillance issue. Challenging or not for the administration, reader “Jason Arvak” emailed yesterday, arguing that the judge’s ruling “smells like a political or emotional decision … not genuine compliance with the legal standard required.” He explains: The significance of Judge Walker’s...

John Avlon might be most recognizable from his “Wingnuts of the Week” segments on CNN’s “American Morning” show. He’s also a columnist for The Daily Beast, where he has published a list of whom he believes to be “The Top 25 Centrist Columnists and Commentators.” There are many recognizable names: Kathleen Parker, David Brooks, Andrew Sullivan. And a few whose presence might spark some debate. For instance: Jon Stewart and Peggy Noonan. For regular...

So writes Colleen Carroll Campbell on the op-ed page of today’s St. Louis PD. As a new mother gazing into the innocent eyes of my two babies, marveling at their wide-open smiles and implicit trust, I feel revolted by the thought that someone could violate that trust in such unspeakable ways. Looking at them, I don’t much care about caveats or context. I don’t want to hear apologies or complaints about media bias or comparisons to the equally abysmal records of other institutions....

The implications of this development strike me as rather … um … significant. A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the National Security Agency’s program of surveillance without warrants was illegal, rejecting the Obama administration’s effort to keep shrouded in secrecy one of the most disputed counterterrorism policies of former President George W. Bush. I’ve always been torn on this subject. Long ago, when I first embraced the conservative moniker, it was after reading...

We announced yesterday that, starting this evening, we will discontinue readers’ self-published comments on a three-month trial basis. Out of the 8,000-plus visits (and nearly 15,000 page views) registered at this blog yesterday, we received more than 130 comments on that decision. The verdict was … mixed: Some thought it was the end of TMV as we know it. Others expressed empathy, with a dash of remorse. And so on. Meanwhile, a number of TMV authors took time to add their perspectives,...