Messing around on the web and came upon this. Pretty much on board with all of the choices, but the editorial we disagrees with the choice of the Subaru SVX.  A former girlfriend had one, and we liked to tear around in it despite the funky windows and the absence of a manual transmission (they were auto only).

Read more »

Peggy Noonan, in the course of explaining how a multinational oil company’s inability to safely drill a mile below the sea compares to a U.S. agency’s inability to safely construct levees around a major American city, slipped in a modern masterpiece of genteel racism Friday:

The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen…

And now we have a videotape metaphor for all the public’s fears: that clip we see every day, on every news show, of the well gushing black oil into the Gulf of Mexico and toward our shore. You actually don’t get deadlier as a metaphor for the moment than that, the monster that lives deep beneath the sea.

And you actually don’t write something like that by accident, not when you’re celebrated for your political craftsmanship. It’s too bad we’re so distracted by crude racism these days that we can’t take a moment to appreciate the refined racism of a real pro at work.

He Was Supposed to Be Competent [WSJ]

From 1991, a taste of things to come. We’re not familiar with Australia’s Clarke and Dawe, a sorry situation we plan to rectify immediately.

[via PourMeCoffee]

“Wha’ choo talkin’ about, Willis?”

[SF Chronicle]

And the Fourteenth Amendment be damned…

Paul recently suggested to a Russian TV station that the U.S. should abandon its policy of granting citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants — even if they’re born on U.S. soil…

“We’re the only country that I know that allows people to come in illegally, have a baby, and then that baby becomes a citizen. And I think that should stop also.”

Although Randy doesn’t apparently use the term, might as well start getting used to “anchor baby”, which Arizona’s Russell Pearce is using to pitch a sequel to the state’s new anti-immigrant law. Because “Born Free” only applies to lions, y’know.

Rand Paul Suggests Children Of Illegal Immigrants Should Not Be U.S. Citizens [TPM]

Honestly, we should be saving this for Monday…

[Gus] Lepping, a technician with 1st Explosive Ordnance Disposal Company out of Camp Pendleton, Calif., said he got the tattoo last June while on a routine assignment in Alaska. He and a few colleagues were sent there to clear ordnance from Air Force bombing ranges, and apparently had quite a bit of fun enjoying the nightlife after work each night.

“On the way back, I decided I wanted to get a tattoo that reminded me of Alaska, because we really had a good time,” said Lepping, currently attached to India Company, 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines. “I decided, ‘What could be better than getting a tattoo of the hottest cougar in the Republican Party?’”

We hope you enjoy our cute fuzzy bunnies, and thank us for not depicting Sgt. Lepping’s tattoo on the homepage.

Read more »

Joshua Green, a senior editor for The Atlantic since 2003 and named one of ten young writers on the rise by the Columbia Journalism Review, last Friday, ignoring that the Louisville Courier-Journal originally broke the Rand Paul civil-rights story he’s writing about:

The second point, which gets directly to why Rand Paul is suddenly flailing, is that the local Kentucky media — in particular the newspapers, and especially the flagship Louisville Courier-Journal — has been decimated by job cuts, as has happened across the country. This came up several times in discussions with Kentucky politicos and local journalists. The reason it matters is that because there is no longer a healthy, aggressive press corps — and no David Yepsen-type dean of political journalists — candidates don’t run the same kind of gauntlet they once did. They’re not challenged by journalists.

Read more »