Sunday Clips

Clips on a Lazy Sunday

The chronicWHATcles of the late week:

Nate the Great at FiveThirtyEight notes that Arlen Specter's votes improved after his party switch, but REALLY really improved now that he's got a primary challenge. The same principle likely explains Leonard Boswell's behavior of late; thanks, Ed.

Bill Maher has the best quote about health care. "How about this for a New Rule: Not everything in America has to make a profit." Same goes for prisons and news.

There are of course no profits in news these days, and there's a blame the bloggers mindset in the old media. But Michael Massing at the New York Review of Books has a good defense of original journalism in the blogosphere, and locally Steve Buttry of the Gazette says the revived proposals of pay walls (which his paper used to have) are like Kevin Costner repeatedly taking a bad golf shot. I would have gone with Caddyshack: the print papers are Carl Spackler and the bloggers are the gopher.

At the New York Times, Stanley Fish links the Birthers and Henry Louis Gates: "The problem is again the legitimacy of a black man living in a big house, especially when it’s the White House."

But at long last the Birthers have their proof; say hello to President Robert Gates.