...is summarized in this article:

For around $470,000, recent listings show, you could buy a four-bedroom, four-bathroom traditional house in Dallas with granite kitchen countertops and vaulted living room ceilings. In Columbus, Ohio, you could buy a sprawling four-bedroom house with two fireplaces, a whirlpool and a ravine outside your front door.

Or you could buy a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan.

Mark Kleiman, in writing about two TNR individual endorsements of Wesley Clark, discovers a general principle:

I have noticed that, on this topic and others, essays that support the position I have already taken are consistently more cogently argued, and better supported by the facts, than essays opposing that position. What more evidence could one want that I was right in the first place?

You know, I was wondering the same thing...

Salon's King Kaufman seems like a nice guy, so I don't think he'll object to my reproducing his short item that perfectly encapsulates the appropriate attitude towards the NHL (viewing of a commercial required):

Excellent Sporting News hockey columnist Kara Yorio begins a midseason report, "Attention football fans and baseball hot stove enthusiasts: You've missed half an NHL season."

Thanks for the update, Kara. And we're about to miss another half. Wake us when the playoffs start and the games mean something.

I can discuss this rationally:

This one doesn't upset me nearly as much as the earlier edition. I never truly believed Clemens was retired in the first place; those who go out on a level as high as Clemens did rarely resist the temptation to come back. Had Pettite resigned with the Yankees, I'd have expected a Clemens return for at least part of the year.

And I have very little patience for my fellow Yankee fans who are accusing Clemens of "disloyalty" for taking a below-market contract to pitch in his hometown after giving the Yankees five good years and many memorable moments (including a 1.50 ERA in 36 innings in the World Series). And why shouldn't he pitch until he can't? I hope he can pitch for five more years.

The New Republic recently endorsed Joe Lieberman for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Many no doubt assumed the endorsement was dictated by very specific powers-that-be (who may be known by the initials M.P.), and those suspicions seem borne out - in a very enlightened way! - by an online debate between TNR staffers about the wisdom of the endorsement.

Many good arguments are made by all, but I was flabbergasted by the following statement by Christopher Orr. In arguing against the editorial decision to ascribe great weight to Lieberman's stances on the Iraq war and free trade, the unfortunate Mr. Orr asked:

How exactly is it that support for the Iraq war and free trade are now seen as TNR litmus tests but opposition to corporate malfeasance and irresponsible tax breaks for the rich aren't?

Let's try to explain this clearly:

A candidate's attitude towards the Iraq war* is (at least in the minds of many, many voters, and not without good reason) a good proxy for that candidate's attitude towards the war on terrorism and more generally towards matters of national security. And preventing Americans from being murdered in large numbers by murderous fanatics just might be - work with me on this! - more important than "opposition to corporate malfeasance and irresponsible tax breaks for the rich."

* (This is also the case regarding free trade, albeit to a much, much lesser extent - so I won't contest the point.)

Now, it is certainly debatable whether one's views on the Iraq war should truly be taken as a valid proxy for the war on terrorism, or even national security more generally. The TNR editorial in question understood that and argued in favor of that correlation (well, in my opinion - but more on that in another post). The point is that if you assume the correlation (or even any relationship between the two), Orr's question is as fatuous as I made it sound in the prior paragraph. And even if you don't agree that there is any relationship between the two positions (as Jonathan Chait argued earlier in the same debate), Orr's question is nonsensical on its face ("How exactly" did the Iraq war become a litmus test? Read the editorial - it tells you how!).
And finally, even if you opposed the Iraq war, shouldn't that be close to a litmus test in and of itself, per Howard Dean's fans - isn't an unnecessary war a very important thing to oppose? Or is Orr's attitude that Democrats should let bygones be bygones over a war, but supporting capital-gains tax cuts should be unforgiveable? What does that tell you about the priority of national security? (In this respect, Howard Dean takes national-security matters far more seriously than many of his rivals.)

In any event, Orr's question could barely be a more perfect illustration of the difficulties Democrats face in November. The biggest divide in American politics now isn't between Republicans and Democrats. It's between those who believe that the current environment forces matters of national security to the top of any list of priorities, and those who do not. And if you don't, that fact will come across.

And based on current polls, any Democratic candidate who does not agree with the primary position of national security will face a nearly insurmountable obstacle in November - which makes it all the more amusing that Orr would argue against TNR's selection of Lieberman based in part on concerns of electoral viability (and not just in the primary).

Jonathan Chait and Peter Beinart clearly understand all of this: perhaps they need to sit Mr. Orr down for an intervention.

Rarely have I ever read an interview as discomfiting as this Ha-aretz interview with Israeli historian Benny Morris. Morris, for the unfamiliar, was one of the pioneering "new historians" in Israel whose work was dedicated to exposing the flaws of the first generations of Zionists - most notably, arguing against the consensus of conventional Israeli history that the Palestinian refugee problem was solely the Palestinians' fault. Unlike many of his cohorts, Morris has also recognized the Palestinians' rejectionism, and how it belongs to both "history" and "current events."

In any event, this interview discusses the findings of his recent research into Israeli conduct during the 1948 War of Independence, and his conclusions.

Some things to discomfort Israeli partisans:

...What you are telling me here, as though by the way, is that in Operation Hiram there was a comprehensive and explicit expulsion order. Is that right?

"Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here."

And some things to disturb facile supporters of "peace processes:"

Besides being tough, you are also very gloomy. You weren't always like that, were you?

Aren't your harsh words an over-reaction to three hard years of terrorism?
"The bombing of the buses and restaurants really shook me. They made me understand the depth of the hatred for us. They made me understand that the Palestinian, Arab and Muslim hostility toward Jewish existence here is taking us to the brink of destruction. I don't see the suicide bombings as isolated acts. They express the deep will of the Palestinian people. That is what the majority of the Palestinians want. They want what happened to the bus to happen to all of us."

And these excerpts aren't even close to the most incendiary parts. It goes without saying: read the whole thing.