I found that absolute agony to watch. I admit I literally never watch TV, except to see short pieces like this online, but I cannot imagine what anyone thinks is accomplished by this kind of "debate."

It's totally repulsive that Liz Cheney is even given a format to indulge her daddy complex under the pretense of being an intelligent observer. (Like father, like daughter -- liars both.) Her appearance is nothing but the pandering of freak show impresarios.

Like others here, I'm also mystified why Joan even bothers. As long as you're "debating" people with utterly no respect for the truth, there is no way to "win." It's obvious that the TV people are interested in drama and conflict, not finding the truth.

I think Joan's effort to find "common ground" with this moron is exemplary of the principal problem with the "progressive" media and political class. Can we just forget trying to find feel-good compromise when it means accommodating outright deceit? That is what we are watching Barack Obama do and in the process he has reversed himself on just about every important stand that got him elected. And, as always, apologists chalk it up to the reality of politics.

Liz Cheney does not care about America. That is just ludicrous.

How utterly depressing. It's absolutely remarkable that two NYT reporters, with several layers of editors, could publish this absurd spin without questioning it. Meanwhile, Barack Obama recites his "change" meme while heading us deeper into the past.

I find your argument here confusing.You write:

"Of all the American virtues, elasticity is perhaps the most important. In a process as natural as the blossoming of flowers in the spring, Americans are ready to reclaim their courage. And they expect and want their young president to lead them forward."

And then you proceed to outline how cowed Americans remain by their fear. So, in the same way we ask our pundits not to speak for all Americans, I'm wondering what convinces you that "Americans are ready to reclaim their courage." The simple election of Obama? What?

Sorry for the reference to Chris Crocker and Britney Spears, but, Jesus, people. This is Glenn's blog. It's not a newspaper. It's commentary and he sets the tone and picks the subjects. He's a Constitutional lawyer, so it would be natural for him to gravitate toward the Sotomayor controversy.

In any case, the brouhaha over Sotomayor is, as Glenn keeps noting, more than a debate over a particular nominee's qualifications. It's yet another example of the willingness of Republicans to create fictions (libels) whose passage into truth is abetted by the media. It would be astonishing how little these people have learned from their complicity during the previous 8 years, but it's now pretty obvious that the complicity is not due to neglect as much as overt intentionality.

It also seems to me that, as Sotomayor's record emerges, she is an unsurprising choice who, like Obama, is often more interested in legalistic maneuvering than the vaunted call for change that put him in the White House. You don't get a revolution, which is what America needs, by taking baby steps.

All that said, I'm very frustrated that Glenn hasn't commented on the drama around Proposition 8. :)

I've noticed a brazen increase in plagiarism everywhere during recent years. I posted a chapter of my doctoral dissertation and, incredibly, saw paragraphs lifted without attribution in an article by ONE OF MY OWN PROFESSORS.

I write for a living and a local writer in the same field plagiarizes me frequently. It is bizarre to me, since most reading the plagiarizer's stuff would also read me. It's so brazen that I thought I might be over-reacting until my own editor observed it to me. This is not obscure stuff; it's pop culture stuff in mainstream print media.

I keep wondering if there's been some shift about the ethics of this or if the Internet makes it much easier to spot.

A few years ago, when I was working as an editor, a woman turned in a story to me that turned out to be entirely plagiarized word for word from an obscure magazine on the opposite coast. When I confronted her, she said, "Well there aren't that many ways to say the same thing." The article was 3,000 (stolen) words!

I'm so sick of the argument that Obama is conducting some kind of paradoxical intervention by siding with the Bush administration's illegal behavior.

The argument goes, basically, that Obama is preserving political capital by appearing to take the side of right-wingers. But, supposedly, what he's REALLY doing is leaving controversial decisions to the courts, which he fully expects to agree that the pictures should be released, for example.

This is an absurdly conceived rationale to make Obama look like a bipartisan strategist. This too is parallel to the rationale of Bush's defenders.

Can't the obvious explanation be the accurate one? The man is putting politics above justice, just like his predecessor.