Back in 1998, Chris Bull published a very good book, Perfect Enemies: The Religious Right, the Gay Movement, and the Politics of the 1990s, about how social conservatives opposing gay rights and gay activists were made for each other.  Every time Rick Santorum opens his mouth and says something silly and gay activists, clutching their pearls and reaching for their smelling salts, respond (in the highest of dudgeon) behaving as if the former Senator has just demanded his legions go out and convert gay people — or threaten them with the hell-fire — it seems such folk were made for each other.

A silly statement is not (necessarily) a hateful one.  Nor does it amount to bullying, but it is often revealing.  ”Even in the most private, apolitical moment of the day,” Jennifer Rubin reports,

Santorum couldn’t suppress the urge to judge.” This year it was publicly chastising a boy for using a pink bowling ball. Seriously. The world according to Rick must be preached to all of us.

I couldn’t find video of this, and maybe (as the person who alerted me to the story speculates) the former Senator “was being playful in a pseudo-macho way”, but Rick Santorum is not known for his jocular gestures.  More than anything, this comment betrays a certain insecurity — and a failure of discipline.  What does it accomplish for a man who knows he’s being followed by a gaggle of press to say such a thing?

Even though press reports provide no evidence that Santorum linked the pink ball to gay men, the folks at HRC found the former Senator contending the former Senator’s comments could harm gay people.  Really.

Almost out of breath, HRC Vice President of Communications Fred Sainz said, “This is another example of Rick Santorum intentionally making ignorant statements that have a real impact on LGBT people“.  Give a break.  Most gay people who hear of this will laugh at the former Senator’s strangeness.  Only those who have this need to be perpetually aggrieved will feel threatened by his quip. (more…)

Commenting this morning on “this analysis from Fortune editor and columnist Geoff Colvin that”, as he puts, “hits both Obama and Romney for offering agendas that are, he [i.e., Colvin] contends ultimately irrelevant to the problems generating anxiety and disappointment for America’s middle class”, Jim Geraghty concludes:

If we really can’t face the notion that we, and not the government, are principally responsible for the quality of our lives . . . are we even really Americans anymore?

Read the whole thing.

Obama apologists were so quick to trash outgoing Senator Olympia Snowe for reporting that the president didn’t talk to the liberal Republican on a regular basis, worried as they were that if this story got legs, it would further undermine the Democrat’s 2008 campaign rhetoric about his post-partisan potential.

But, these folks are going to have to do a lot of spinning to prevent people from seeing the reality of this most partisan president.  Commenting today on a Republican National Committee video highlighting Obama’s latest bipartisan achievement, getting “every single member of the House of Representatives” to vote “against the president’s $3.6 trillion budget”, Tina Korbe asks:

What meaningful bipartisan achievements does Obama have to his name? Adoring documentarian Davis Guggenheim might fault Republicans for Obama’s inability to arrive at bipartisan solutions to the pressing problems that face the country, but, in the end, it’s the president’s job to lead.

Indeed.  And as to that blame game, maybe the president should have taken advice from the politician who was “trying to break is a pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame.“

In his monologue yesterday, Rush Limbaugh reflected on a theme which John Podhoretz considered in his column on the Supreme Court arguments over Obamacare and, as I put it yesterday, “the failure of all too many in the chattering classes to appreciate the merits of conservative arguments“.

On the astonished reaction of liberals to the poor arguments the administration made before the Supreme Court in defense of the president’s signature initiative, the talker explained:

It’s eye-opening.  I really want to be serious about this.  They’re a bunch of overhyped know-nothings who do not have an expansive view of the world.  They’re in a prison that’s created by their own conceit.  They’re in a prison that’s the result of their own arrogance and they live in a place where there is no reality.

. . . .

Now, let me go through some of Hayward’s piece here to try to be illustrative of what I’m talking about.  “The Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Month for the Left.”[*]  I’m not gonna read the whole thing.  I’m gonna take excerpts here.  “It is typical for politically engaged people to note the weaknesses and defects of their own side…” No, that’s what’s remarkable; they don’t.  There are no weaknesses. There are no defects, until they’re confronted with them.  They do not conceive them. (Continuing reading excerpt) “…while overestimating the strength and prowess of their opponents.”  That’s us.  That’s what we have always done, and hopefully no more.  There’s no reason to ever feel inferior to these people.  There’s no reason to grant them superior or elite status in any way.

Via Powerline picks.  And Rush invites the question:  why do some on the left refuse to acknowledge the weaknesses in their own arguments?  Or the merits of their opponents’?

* (more…)

Taking the laurel this week among the Council submissions was Joshuapundit‘s The Supreme Court Begins Hearing Arguments On ObamaCare.  Meanwhile, among non-Council submissions Sultan Knish’s It Doesn’t Matter If You’re Black or White carried off the gold.

The remaining Council finishers were as follows: (more…)

All too often, our friends in the legacy media sensationalize the actions of rogue soldiers in the U.S. military who act against express orders or in a manner at odds with their training.  More often than not, our service members perform their duties bravely — and with honor.

And sometimes, they go beyond the call of duty and do something truly heroic.  One man who did just that was Sgt. Dennis Weichel who “died in Afghanistan last week as he lifted an Afghan girl who was in the path of a large military vehicle barreling down a road“:

Weichel, a Rhode Island National Guardsman, was riding along in a convoy in Laghman Province in eastern Afghanistan when some children were spotted on the road ahead.

The children were picking up shell casings lying on the road. The casings are recycled for money in Afghanistan.  Weichel and other soldiers in the convoy got out of their vehicles to get them out of the way of  the heavy trucks in the convoy.

The children were moved out of the way, but an Afghan girl darted back onto the road to pick up some more casings that lay underneath a passing MRAP, or Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle.  The huge armored trucks can weigh as much as 16 tons and are designed to protect the troops they carry from roadside bombs.

Weichel spotted the girl and quickly moved toward her to get her out of the way.  He  succeeded, but not before he was run over by the heavily armored truck.  The girl was safe, but Weichel later died of his injuries.

Dennis Weichel helps define the greatness of this nation.  He risked — and gave — his life to save a young girl in harm’s way.

Our hearts go out to his children.  His example inspires us all.