I don't agree with this idea that the Right is going to be furious, heads exploding, etc. There is already a media consensus that this will be bad politically for Obama, that it feeds the perception that he's an inflated world leader, narcissistic, a world celebrity, beloved in Europe while he achieves nothing here, etc. etc. -- all those idiot themes of the day.

When did you start conceding the accuracy of the "media consensus" before, you know, testing it against the facts?

Peace is the presence of justice, not the absence of war. If we seek to avoid war by acquiescing to injustice, we cannot call ourselves peacemakers. Only just war creates true peace.

Is the sun or the Earth at the center of the solar system?

Galileo was a genius and a courageous soul, but it wasn't his standing up to the Pope that led to the triumph of the scientific model of the heavens over the Christian model.

It was the tide tables that did it. Sailors and merchants discovered that the tide tables computed using the scientific heliocentric model were more accurate than the tide tables computed by the Christian geocentric model.

The geocentric model wasn't 'Christian,' it was derived from the work of pagan Greeks. It's also worth noting here that Galileo ran into the legal problems he did largely because he failed to publish adequate mathematical proofs of the Copernican theory while indulging his own rather juvenile impulses in the way of personal insults directed at powerful men in a very public manner. His punishment was notably not all that severe (house arrest and recantation), and his troubles were only peripherally about the promotion of the Copernican theory, and centrally about the fact that Galileo was an uncouth douchebag.

Glenn, I think Dick Durbin is a politician, and I think he's willing to use any rhetorical leverage he thinks he can get away with if it means securing his agenda. I don't think it speaks to his personal beliefs any more than it speaks to the personal beliefs of many conservative leaders who have used coded appeals to racism to ram through their agendas.

The bottom line is that there's way too much history behind the paranoid fantasies about cabals of "Jewish bankers" and "financiers" who "own" politicians or the "media" for this kind of talk not to have resonance with anti-Semites, and folks like Durbin are clearly far too smart not to know that. The nice thing for them is that, like talk of "welfare queens" or "states' rights," it's easy enough just to throw up your hands and say, "Who me? Couldn't be."

Another interesting aspect of this blurring of the lines is the degree to which the hard Left has adopted the GOP strategy of "dog whistling" to bigots with the drumbeat of talk about "bankers" and "Wall Street" and "financiers" who "own" our "government and media." Is it a valid criticism? Certainly, in much the same way that right-wing criticism of the enervating effects of Great Society welfare state were valid. But that doesn't change the fact that such criticism is also deliberately crafted to appeal to the folks who see a hooked nose behind every nefarious plot.

Their hunt in the Ross Sea conforms to the restrictions they signed on to under the supervision of the IWC. Most of the other whaling countries (Russia, Norway, Iceland) haven't signed the anti-whaling treaty, and as such, are not legally bound by its strictures.

On the flip side, maritime law is pretty well understood, and ramming other ships, engaging in boarding activities, interfering with lawful commerce and research on the high seas are all out-and-fucking-out illegal. That the very risky actions undertaken by the SSCS over the years haven't resulted in serious injury or even death among their own number or among the crews of the Japanese whaling fleets is, frankly, pure luck and only luck.

Glenn, don't you think there's a qualitative difference between what Democrats have often done in the past - travel to the lands of our ENEMIES and provide said enemies with a propaganda coup - and what Huckabee did, which was make a mild criticism of a policy toward what remains our closest ally in the region while visiting that ally?

I'm no fan of the Zionist Entity, but this kind of thing isn't what Republicans complain about. They complain when Democrats go abroad and make speeches that seem to support our enemies...especially when they're made from enemy soil.

This hunt is entirely sustainable and no more cruel than any other form of predation. Stop being such pussies!

Pregnancy rates among white and black teens have fallen or remained steady, while pregnancy rates among recent Latino immigrant teens - by far the fastest growing demographic (especially among adolescents) - continue to be much, much higher than those of the general population. At some point, we were bound to reach a tipping point where the very high pregnancy rates among immigrant Latina adolescents was going to start noticeably impacting overall teen pregnancy rates.

While it's tempting to blame "abstinence-only" sex ed curricula, we need to be honest with ourselves here. This is mostly about changing demographics (specifically, the influx of Latinos) more than it is about education policy.