Desert Medleys: "A Day In The Life" (1967) and "Give Peace A Chance" (1969)

Sir Paul McCartney performing at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival, yesterday; my elder daughter Valerie is there!

Health Reform is Ailing

A New York Times analysis frets that President Obama's pragmatism may delay the boldest and costliest of his domestic initiatives:

Facing Democratic opposition in Congress, the White House seems prepared to give up on several tax proposals, including a limit on deductions that the wealthiest taxpayers can claim for charitable donations and state and local taxes, which was supposed to help pay for health care legislation — raising doubts about how the president will finance it.

A Scrape Over Drapes

More trouble in the Episcopal Church.

Great Guitars: "Bad Luck" (1992)

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band with Social Distortion's Mike Ness, who wrote the song, performing on April 16 in Los Angeles

Achy Songs: "Unbreakable Heart" (1993)

Carlene Carter. Song by Benmont Tench of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

A Second Look At The Southern Strategy

Reviewing Steven P. Miller's Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South, Ross Douthat says there are two ways of looking at RN's success in turning Deep South blue to red:

In one story, Sun Belt Republicanism was a coalition forged in cynicism and denial: it perpetuated real injustices while denying they existed and relied on the votes of bigots to achieve political dominance. In another telling, though, the majority that Nixon built managed to achieve something that seemed impossible at mid­century — using the rhetoric of Christianity and colorblindness to reconcile the white South to a legal and social revolution, and confining the once-ubiquitous support for segregation to a lunatic fringe.

The Econixonian

The Nixon Library's Museum Store, in honor of the creator of the EPA, goes green.

We Need The Whole Story On Torture

I'm against torture (who isn't?) in any but the most exigent situations, namely everyone's favorite hypothetical, the highly unlikely scenario of having someone in custody who otherwise won't say where the ticking nuclear device threatening hundreds of thousands of lives is hidden. But as the Obama administration releases the Bush-era memos providing legal justification for severe interrogation techniques, I just don't share the passion of Andrew Sullivan and others who favor prosecution of top officials.

To be more precise, I share their concerns but not their anger. After all, the Bush administration calculated that the U.S. faced an existential threat after Sept. 11. They promised the American people that they'd do anything in their power to protect us, and by and large, we were happy to hear it. Allegations that in the process of keeping the promise, the government put itself in the same moral position as Nazis, or even that our democracy was measurably eroded, seem discredited by the results of the 2008 election.

Had there been another attack on the scale of 2001's, we would not be looking at these memos, and we would probably have a different President. Did George W. Bush overestimate and lawlessly overreact to the threat? Or did he meet it so successfully that we now feel safe enough to scapegoat him for his tactics?

There's no question that the memos sound weasel wordy and opportunistic. This image of waterboarding from a museum detailing the crimes of the genocidal Khmer Rouge is especially ironic.

Still, if the Bush policies have been rolled back by his freely elected successor, what exactly is the purpose of a legal witch hunt? Instead, I'd favor a blue-ribbon panel of some kind, given the charge of guiding future administrations. But its members, and to the extent possible the public, should see evidence of all the plots that were thwarted or didn't succeed for some other reason. Ideally, we should know everything Bush knew before we decide he went too far while protecting us. We have a responsibility to make sure we know what was done in our name, legally or not. We also have the right to know why.

Tea Party? Third Party.

Writing for the "American Conservative," Daniel McCarthy:

I agree with Ross Douthat about one thing: the tea parties resemble the antiwar protests of 2002-2003. But that’s not a good thing. Douthat correctly points out that the antiwar marches were probably counterproductive, boosting support for Republican hawks in the 2002 midterms and 2004 presidential election. (The American people don’t like prolonged wars, as polling figures for the Korean, Vietnam, and Iraq conflicts demonstrate. But as the ghost of Richard Nixon could tell you, one thing Americans like less than open-ended wars is disruption in the streets.) The tea parties risk ghettoizing anti-tax sentiment.

Ghettoizing? Or Perot-izing? Republicans ought to worry that the anti-tax movement will be captured by an independent candidate in '12 who would persuasively argue that neither party had exhibited fiscal sanity while in power. Ross Perot's populist movement elected Bill Clinton in '92. Anything resembling it would surely help President Obama far more than his GOP challenger.

I Thought I Was The Only One Who Did This

Here's an interesting exercise: Subtract your age from your date of birth and imagine how much history you would've experienced if you'd been born in that year. Whoa.