A thrill went up Chris Matthew's other leg.

"Josh Marshall, I'm falling in love with you."

Josh Marshall: "A year ago, no one took seriously the idea that a federal health care mandate was unconstitutional."

I love this notion that if people stop taking something seriously, it ceases to exist.

One of the most famous books about constitutional law is called "Taking Rights Seriously," and I wish I had $20 for every scholarly law review article that's titled "Taking [something in the Constitution] Seriously." I think "Taking X Seriously" is the biggest cliché in the history of law review articles. And what that means, Josh, is ... Hey, I love the way whose name means joke wants the test of the truth to be whether or not people laugh.

But I'm not joshing, Josh. The reason there are so many law articles called "Taking X Seriously" is that we don't rule out a proposition of constitutional law simply because no one seems to taking it seriously right now. We work through the analysis, and maybe we discover that it should be taken seriously. I mean, think, Josh, think. There was a time when people laughed at the idea of gay rights. There was a time when people laughed at the idea of women's rights.

I started out today chiding a righty who was — unwittingly — saying something that belonged in the mouth of a lefty. And now here comes a lefty, talking like a righty. This is what happens when politicos talk about law. They're super-consistent at the level of outcomes, and they don't notice all the inconsistencies they spout at the level of legal reasoning.

Josh continues:

And the idea that buying health care coverage does not amount to "economic activity" seems preposterous on its face. 

See? Resorting to the laugh test. But, Josh, it's not "the idea that buying health care coverage does not amount to 'economic activity,'" it's the idea that not buying health care coverage does not amount to "economic activity." That's quite a bit less hilarious.

ADDED: Nancy Pelosi worked the "seriously" test back in October 2009:

"[I]t is absurd for any government to prevent people from growing a naturally-occurring plant that requires no processing to provide humans with pleasure."

"It's pretty basic, actually. This is a core freedom for human beings and requires an insane apparatus of state control and police power to prevent it from occurring. All you have to do is burn a plant and inhale the smoke. If humans are not free to do this in the natural world in which they were born, what on earth are they free to do?"

Andrew Sullivan, pushing back Josh Marshall, who writes:

... I just don't know if I think marijuana should be legalized at all. Maybe it's that I'm getting into my 40s. And maybe I'm a hypocrite.... But [my Dad] had this very contradictory and hard to rationalize position which was that he was fine with people smoking pot but keeping it at least nominally illegal kept public usage in some check. Again, how to rationalize that in traditional civic terms? Not really sure. But frankly, I think I kind of agree.

So, for Marshall, it all comes down to who's skittish or formal about law? This is a pleasure that is open to everyone except those who adhere to the law. Everyone else can go ahead, but — perhaps as a sop to the rule-followers — they'll have to feel uneasy about it.

"... Williams can come out of the closet as a full-on wingnut cartoon character."

"No more living a lie as a one-time journalist playing a fake liberal on Fox News."

Sayeth Josh Marshall.

Witch! Whore!... Nazi!

A (Republican) Senate candidate has been called a witch. A (Republican) gubernatorial candidate has been called a whore. And now... a — guess which party? — House candidate is tarred with Nazi.

"Why is This GOP House Candidate Dressed as a Nazi?" You may click to see Rich Iott — posing and smiling in 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking uniform with 3 of his closest Nazi friends... I mean... with 3 of his fellow WW2 reenacters.  "It's purely historical interest in World War II." Hmm. Yeah. The high-profile article — by Joshua Green in The Atlantic — goes on, stoking your suspicion that a guy who dresses up and plays the part of Nazi has got to feel some affinity for Nazis. Sample:

Iott participated in the group under his own name, and also under the alias "Reinhard Pferdmann," which has also been removed, and which Iott described as being his German alter ego. "Part of the reenactor's [experience]," Iott said, "is the living-history part, of really trying to get into the persona of the time period. In many, not just in our unit, but in many units what individuals do is create this person largely based on a Germanized version of their name, and a history kind of based around your own real experiences. 'Reinhard' of course is 'Richard' in German. And 'Pferdmann,' 'pferd' is a horse. So it's literally 'horse man.'"

I was very far into the position of thinking man, this guy should not have been the candidate, what a screw-up for the Republicans when I got to this information — buried at the end of the 13th paragraph of the 15-paragraph article:

[Iott] added that he has participated in re-enactments as a Civil War Union infantryman, a World War I dough boy and World War II American infantryman and paratrooper.

What?! Green should be ashamed of himself for minimizing this. The 13th paragraph is about follow-up email with Iott. Did Green have the whole damning article written when he encountered this crucial piece of information? And then he decided — what? — to stick it where it's least likely to be read? A decent journalist would have ascertained how many war reenactments Iott has done and which roles Iott played in them. What is the proportion of Nazi roles he assumed compared to the number of times he played WW2 American infantrymen or paratroopers? Who decides, when war reenactments are done, which side somebody plays? Give me a realistic picture of what participation in war reenactments is really like so I can assess what Iott did.

Instead, Green's article is filled out with the well-known information that the Nazis were bad and that Jews and others are offended by signs that a person is sympathetic to Nazis. It's pretty obvious that Green is hot to smear Iott and help the Democrat in the race. And, unsurprisingly, the Democratic blogosphere welcomes Green's hearty slab of biased reporting.

TPM's Josh Marshall types up "Marcy Kaptur's Good Night's Sleep" ("whatever worry she may have had about reelection, I think that's over now that her opponent Rich Iott has been revealed as an avid Nazi reenactor"). Also at TPM ,Evan McMorris-Santoro has a long piece that looks like a rewrite of Green's piece, except that it leaves out the crucial information about other reenactments altogether. How incredibly slimy!

Look! Over there! Nazis! They're eeeevil! Sorry, but I'm looking over here, at journalists who should be ashamed of their shoddy political hackery.

"So is Rand Paul, on a personal level, just a deeply unlikeable guy?"

Asks Josh Marshall, and I'm trying to understand what his problem is:

One of the weird things about his acceptance speech last night was that he held it at the local country club -- to what looked uncannily like a members only crowd.

So Josh's uncanniness-sensors were activated. That is weird.

More to the point, news came out overnight that Paul allegedly refused to take Trey Grayson's concession phone call last night.

But he goes on to admit that the "news" wasn't too reliable and hedges "So who knows?"

But I am getting the impression that Paul -- aside from just being very unlikeable in personal terms...

Getting the impression... Josh's sensors are a-tingling.

... may be a much more divisive figure than one might from any Tea Party candidate who snatches away a nomination from an establishment party figure. 

Than one might... what? I assume Josh is hoping for divisiveness.

... But a poll out yesterday showed that Grayson supporters in Kentucky simply hate Rand Paul in a way that goes way beyond the normal aftermath of a contested primary. From PPP's write-up of their poll ...

53% of likely Grayson voters for today have an unfavorable opinion of Paul to only 23% with a positive opinion of him. More importantly though just 40% of Grayson voters say they'll support Paul in the general election if he wins the Republican nomination with 43% explicitly saying they will not.

I get the sense there's a whole issue of personality (and messianism) that's going to be in play in that race beyond quite apart from ideology narrowly construed.

Well, I guess I'll have to start paying attention to Paul, because I have no idea what Josh Marshall is talking about.  My sensors are saying Marshall is terrified of Paul and hot to bring him down. If so, he'll need more substance. That was really an inanely empty post.

Barney Frank: "Our respect for democratic procedures must rule out any effort to pass a health care bill as if the Massachusetts election had not happened."

"Going forward, I hope there will be a serious effort to change the Senate rule which means that 59 votes are not enough to pass major legislation, but those are the rules by which the health care bill was considered, and it would be wrong to change them in the middle of the process."

ADDED: Josh Marshall is perplexed:

So I was genuinely surprised, really shocked to see this statement [Barney Frank] put out tonight that is just an embodiment of fecklessness, resignation, defeatism and just plan folly. The gist of his point is that that's it for health care reform. If a few Republican senators will come across the aisle and help maybe it will happen. But if not, that's it. Amazing. Just amazing.

Barney Frank is a politician, a smart one. Work it out from there.

Snowe or Joe, that is the question.

"It's starting to seem like it may just be better for Dems to try to make a deal with Olympia Snowe, kick Joe Lieberman out of the party and be done with it. The leadership in the senate thought that Lieberman was on board with the latest compromise. But in an appearance on Face the Nation and later in a sit-down with Sen. Reid, Lieberman said he'd join the Republican filibuster if the Medicare buy-in remained in the bill. What's most telling about Lieberman isn't his positions, which are not that much different from Sen. Nelson's and perhaps Sen. Lincoln's. It's more that he seems to keep upping the ante just when the rest of the caucus thinks they've got a deal."


Josh Marshall. Who thinks Lieberman "just doesn't seem to be negotiating in good faith."

"Why Do You Believe What You Do? Do our beliefs form the basis of our partisan and ideological affiliations?"

Here is Josh Marshall asking what, for me, have always been the most interesting questions about politics. I've taken a lot of flak for it too. I've found it really annoys people to take a political or philosophical discussion in this direction. But Josh Marshall isn't really going where I hoped he would with this. He's going where I'd expect Josh Marshall to go, toward showing why Republicans are bad:

There's been a lot of recent evidence not only that Republicans disproportionately disbelieve the evidence for man-made global warming but that their skepticism is growing.

Yeah, but isn't there skepticism growing because there is a whole load of new evidence that the scientists were not being too scientific? Is that "disbeliev[ing] the evidence" or paying attention to evidence?

I think that trend is fairly classed under the general heading of Republican/conservative hostility to science.

Aw, come on now! Why do you, Josh Marshall, believe what you do? Why do you believe that skepticism is hostility to science as opposed to the methodology of science? Why do you believe that the evidence for man-made global warming is real evidence and the evidence of misbehavior by scientists is not real? Is it because you are committed to the policy choices that of your partisan and ideological affiliations?

Marshall makes absolutely no attempt to look into the structure of his own mind. He's a politico using interesting questions not because he's curious about the truth but because he seems to think they work well to attack the people he already wants to attack.

There's more to Marshall's post, and it may get a little better, but it's also vague and meandering. Please read it and let me know if you think I'm being unfair to Marshall, but I think he wanted to take a shot at those bad anti-science Republicans and the rest is vague gesturing at the fact that he went to college and could write a coherent essay on the theme he wanted to take the trouble to do it.

"But I still find the greyness (which is mainly the non-backlitness) of the Kindle inferior to my iPhone."

Josh Marshall and I are on the same page about this:

It's designed that way in part because it allows the battery on a Kindle to last an insanely long period of time but also because it's supposed to be easier on the eyes. Maybe I just spend so much time in front of a monitor that my eyes are trashed and I don't know the difference. But for me, on the iPhone, it just looks more crisp and readable.

Can we just have an iPhone with a big screen? Or is this all about the batteries?

Marshall, unlike me, quickly settles into reading on the Kindle, then mulls over the prospect of a future without actual paper books and newspapers:

There's a lot I miss about print newspapers, particularly the serendipitous magic of finding stories adjacent to the one you're reading, articles you're deeply interested in but never would have known you were if it weren't plopped down in front of you to pull you in through your peripheral vision.

I miss that too, but I canceled my NYT subscription a while back because I was leaving the folded paper on the table as I read what I wanted, free-form, on the computer screen. As Josh says:

... I regret not reading [newspapers]. But I just don't. I vote with my eyes.

Yes, I've done that, and now my eyes — and my brain — have changed. It's hard now to read an unlit page.

There's an awful lot of instinctive revulsion toward Bobby Jindal.

Expressed by Josh Marshall ("absolutely cringeworthy"), Andrew Sullivan ("Jindal's entrance reminded one of Mr Burns gamboling toward a table of ointments"), and others.

Why are all these people so confident that they are not manifesting racism? There's just something about this man that doesn't seem right, that you don't care to examine exactly what it is, but you know it deep down in your gut somehow. Seriously. How do you know this is not racism?

ADDED: Andrew Sullivan proffers an answer to my question: "Maybe because there is not a trace of evidence of any kind that we are. Unless comparing Jindal to Kenneth the Page or Mr Burns taps unknown wells of racist hate in my heart. I mean, seriously." I think deeper reflection is needed. Why the urge to paint him as a white white man? Where did that come from? Of course, there are unknown wells inside us all. When you have an instinctive response to a person of another race, why not seek knowledge?