Here are two interesting aspects surrounding the departure of Green Jobs "Czar" Van Jones* from the White House this weekend.

First, for many readers of the New York Times and the Washington Post, the reaction to the news Sunday morning was likely... Van who?

As Mickey Kaus observes: "I've been waiting for the day when a prominent pol resigns and for print MSM readers it appears to be out-of-the-blue, though everyone on the Web knows the whole story. But for WaPo's Franke-Ruta and Kornblut, this would be that case."

Here is a clear instance of the Washington Post and the New York Times getting caught flatfooted because the newsroom high-brows didn't want to give that wacky Glenn Beck and the righty blogs the satisfaction. (I like Jonah Goldberg's quip at the Corner: "The New York Times mentions Van Jones. It's a good method. You can save a lot of money covering news stories only at the end.")

To read the rest of this post, please click "Read more" below.

In key respects, the late Edward Kennedy's political legacy stands in stark contrast to the legacy of Ronald Reagan. But historians and eulogists won't speak of a "Kennedy Revolution" when they assess the Massuchusetts senator's life and career. The Reagan Revolution, however, remains very much at the forefront of people's minds at the beginning of the Age of Obama.

Steve Hayward, whose second volume of his two-volume Age of Reagan landed in stores yesterday, writes at National Review Online today:

What was the Reagan revolution anyway? How revolutionary was it? And what should those who wish to emulate Reagan today learn and apply from Reagan’s story? To answer these questions it is necessary, first, to understand the unity of Reagan’s statecraft, and second, to appreciate the way Reagan perceived his statecraft in constitutional terms.

Understanding the unity of Reagan’s domestic and foreign statecraft is not easy, partly because the domestic side is much more complicated; it lacks the personal drama of the Cold War against the Evil Empire. Reagan never stood in front of the Federal Trade Commission or the Environmental Protection Agency and said, “Mr. Regulator — tear down this rule!” But he figuratively had this attitude. One revealing diary entry from 1986 reads: “The villain in the case is the Fed. Drug Administration [he meant the Food and Drug Administration], and they are a villain.”

Reagan’s statecraft, at home and abroad, should be seen as a unity for one crucial reason: He saw it as a unity. Lincoln once wrote that all nations have a central idea from which all its minor thoughts radiate. The same can be said of leading statesmen. Reagan’s central idea can be summarized as the view that unlimited government is inimical to liberty, both in its vicious forms, such as Communism or socialism, and in its supposedly benign forms, such as bureaucracy.
...

The point is: The same principles that animated Reagan’s Cold War statecraft also directed his domestic-policy vision.

Hayward goes on to explore how Reagan exercised his particular brand of statecraft, with special attention to where the 40th president fell short.

"If I seem to emphasize the negative aspects of the Reagan years," Hayward writes, "it is only because I grow tired and impatient with the most common form of Reagan nostalgia today, which is more reminiscent of his 'morning in America' campaign of 1984 than of his much sharper and purposeful campaign of 1980. Reagan deserves better than that."

It's a long piece, but well worth reading as an introduction to the book's central arguments.

The second volume of Steven Hayward's magnum opus, The Age of Reagan, hits bookstore shelves today. I ordered my copy several weeks ago from Amazon, but won't be receiving it until the end of September. Why? Because I happened to order it along with John Derbyshire's forthcoming tome on right-wing pessimism, We Are Doomed. The pair somehow seems fitting.

Reagan wouldn't have been so gloomy, although his sunny disposition has been greatly exaggerated -- as Hayward's work demonstrates. The Age of Reagan, though long, deserves a good, close reading. Admittedly, Hayward is writing intellectual revisionist history from a politically conservative point of view. But The Age of Reagan should not be mistaken for hagiography. Hayward is interested in learning from Reagan's successes and his failures. As the author explains at Powerline today:

Although Reagan made some important changes to the shape of American politics, Reagan didn't succeed at some his highest objectives such as reducing the size and reach of the federal government, and government has resumed growing at a fast rate and is set potentially to explode under President Obama. Reagan foresaw this and warned about it; too many of the conservatives who claim to be Reaganites today do so in a superficial way.

Conservatives who want to carry on or extend his legacy should ponder more deeply the lessons of Reagan's failures, the limitations of democratic politics, and relearn the art of constitutional argument, which Reagan did better, though still imperfectly, than any Republican since Calvin Coolidge.

Volume one of The Age of Reagan appeared when I was managing editor of the Claremont Review of Books. We made a big deal about it -- in part because the book deserved the attention, but also because we were still new and trying to draw some attention to ourselves. Charles Kesler's review essay, to which Powerline also links, offers an incisive take on Hayward's book and Reagan's legacy. I would recommend reading that review in tandem with Kesler's essay on the future of the conservative movement in the Summer 2009 issue of the CRB, which just landed in my mailbox yesterday.

Many conservatives who long to restore the Reagan Revolution no longer seem to understand what it was and what it wasn't. Hayward (and Kesler) offer a much-needed and sobering corrective.

Charles Krauthammer's column in the Washington Post on Friday is about as sensible a take as I've read on the controversy over end-of-life decision making in the health care debate. He writes:

Except for the demented orphan, the living will is quite beside the point. The one time it really is essential is if you think your fractious family will be only too happy to hasten your demise to get your money. That's what the law is good at -- protecting you from murder and theft. But that is a far cry from assuring a peaceful and willed death, which is what most people imagine living wills are about.

So why get Medicare to pay the doctor to do the counseling? Because we know that if this white-coated authority whose chosen vocation is curing and healing is the one opening your mind to hospice and palliative care, we've nudged you ever so slightly toward letting go.

It's not an outrage. It's surely not a death panel. But it is subtle pressure applied by society through your doctor. And when you include it in a health-care reform whose major objective is to bend the cost curve downward, you have to be a fool or a knave to deny that it's intended to gently point the patient in a certain direction, toward the corner of the sickroom where stands a ghostly figure, scythe in hand, offering release.

I think Krauthammer underestimates the long-term effects a "public-option" dominated health care system will have on those decisions -- not a death panel, perhaps, but pressure surely not at all subtle. I tried to make a similar point, albeit less artfully, at Joel's blog the other day (it's the sixth comment):

If one of the goals of health care reform is to reduce costs and if end-of-life care is a huge cost driver, then what is the public policy solution other than to mandate restrictions? Families are forced to make these pull-the-plug decisions every day without the added pressure of weighing whether their decisions advance or undermine the public good.

President Obama recognizes it’s an issue and had done everything in his power to talk around it. Again, Obama said in his interview with the New York Times: “And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance.” Not determinative, but operating with the goal of reducing a huge chunk of health care spending. Suddenly, we’re not really talking about counseling people to get living wills anymore, are we? No way that could go wrong…

"Mandate restrictions" sounds harsh, doesn't it? Well, it isn't difficult to foresee a time when "hospice" and "palliative" care become the routine treatments based on some actual table produced by the sort of independent commission Obama has discussed in the past. The point isn't that Obama or some federal bureaucrat is going to "pull the plug on grandma." The point is that we are going to create a system of incentives and disincentives that make pulling the plug a decision of first resort.

Incidentally, Krauthammer writes at the top of his column:

Let's see if we can have a reasoned discussion about end-of-life counseling.

We might start by asking Sarah Palin to leave the room. I've got nothing against her. She's a remarkable political talent. But there are no "death panels" in the Democratic health-care bills, and to say that there are is to debase the debate.

That, of course, elicited a predictable response from these fanatics. I harbor no particular ill-will for Palin. I've written nice things about her and I've written skeptical things about her. I most likely wouldn't vote for her in the next presidential primary, but think she gets a bad rap from her critics. Too bad her supporters aren't much better.

Before Barack Obama, there was... Jimmy Carter?!?

It is now something of a cliché within certain circles that whenever Barack Obama begins a sentence with the words "Let me be clear..." or "As I have said before..." you can be sure he either hasn't said it before, or he's trying to obscure the truth.

Well, as clichés go, if the shoe fits...

Still, you cannot help but admire (almost) the audacity with which Obama contradicts his previous statements. Take this whopper from the president's interview Thursday morning at the White House with talk show host Michael Smerconish:

As far as health care goes, I've consistently said I would love the private marketplace to be handling this without any government intervention. The problem is it's not working. ...

So all we've said is let's keep the private system intact, but let's make sure that people who right now can't get health insurance -- about 46 million -- that they're able to buy into the market.

Of course, that is most certainly not what Obama has "consistently said." Prior to his election, he "consistently said" the exact opposite. Here, for the 1,344,287th time, is Obama's statement on the subject from 2003, which he repeated off and on until late 2007:

I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14% of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that's what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that's what I'd like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.

Now, it would be one thing if Obama simply said, "I changed my mind," or "Ideally, I would prefer a single-payer system, but the political reality is the American people don't want it." At least he would be honest.

Instead, like Delbert Grady flattering Jack Torrance into doing his dirty work, Obama insists that he's always been in favor of the private health care market and opposed to single-payer. It's crazy, and demonstrably false. But Obama keeps saying it and about half of the country keeps believing him.

The San Diego Union-Tribune, which like most newspapers is struggling to survive and retool in a hostile economic climate, announced 112 newsroom layoffs on Wednesday. Ho-hum, things are tough all over, right? Well, yes, if you say so. But what's notable about the story are some of the names appearing on the axe-list, including Editorial Page Editor Bob Kittle and Opinion Editor Bernie Jones.

Now, I know next to nothing about the internal dynamics at the Union-Tribune, other than what I've read. The private equity firm that owns the paper has been cutting relentlessly since it purchased the Union-Tribune in May. I can say that I've worked with Jones a couple of times when I've had an op-ed appear in the U-T. Good guy. He has the distinction of being the only editor in my career to ever ask me to lengthen an op-ed piece. I don't know Kittle at all, except by reputation. Not surprisingly, Kittle's departure is being greeted with plenty of glee in some quarters.

That's fine. But I do "question the timing."

Recall my item from May about the president of Los Angeles police union demanding the firing of the Union-Tribune's editorial staff:

The Los Angeles Police Protective League -- the police union -- wants the editorial board of the San Diego Union-Tribune summarily dismissed. Well, that's nice. Why would the union bosses make such a demand? On what basis could they make such a demand?

As it turns out, the San Diego Union-Tribune was purchased recently (from the Copley family) by a private-equity firm called Platinum Equity. According to the Times story, "Platinum relies on a $30-million investment from the pension fund of Los Angeles police officers and fire fighters, along with large sums from other public-employee pension systems around the state, to help fund its acquisitions of companies."

So the L.A. police union is, in a way, part owner of the San Diego Union-Tribune. And because the Union-Tribune's editorial line is critical of the rapacious behaviors of public-employee unions, the police union wants the editorial line to change.

"Since the very public employees they continually criticize are now their owners, we strongly believe that those who currently run the editorial pages should be replaced," wrote League President Paul M. Weber wrote in a March 26 letter to Platinum CEO Tom Gores.

Platinum sounds disinclined toward ousting the editorial writers, but who knows? Platinum is in the newspaper business for the money, not the honor of running San Diego's outpost of a foundering medium.

(San Diego City Beat's Last Blog on Earth reported on the controversy here. And here is an item from the U-T's own news blog.)

It could be that Kittle and Jones made sense to cut from a purely bloodless, cost-savings perspective: They'd both been there a long time and undoubtedly pulled down nice six-figure salaries with commensurate benefits. But in addition to cutting payroll, Platinum now has an opportunity to reshape the tone and content of a solidly conservative editorial page and thereby placate a powerful group of investors.

I haven't seen any reporting on whether the Police Protective League's demands played any role in management's decision to sack Kittle and Jones, but it would be nice if somebody at one of San Diego's enterprising alt news outlets would ask.

Let there be no doubt where this MSNBC host stands. These demonstrators don't really care about deficits or taxes or constitutionally suspect government overreach. It's all about a black man in the White House.

And they say conservatives hold simplistic views about the world. Enjoy!

I didn't watch Sarah Palin's farewell address the other day, and, beyond a few reports about her parting shots at the media, read little about it. I didn't realize until I watched Conan O'Brien on Monday night that Palin wove a bit of poetry into her speech.

Reasonable people will disagree whether Palin has a future in national politics, but there can be no doubt that poetry jamming is best left to the professionals.

California's government has been hopelessly dysfunctional for years, but only within the past year or so has anyone spoken seriously about doing something about it -- namely, chucking the state constitution and starting over.

The idea of a state constitutional convention scares a lot of Californians, who worry that any new governing charter would open the door to all manner of shenanigans, from unlimited property taxes to gay marriage. (And Lord knows what else.)

The Claremont Institute's Tom Karako channels America's Founders in a tantalizing op-ed in Sunday's Los Angeles Times, which offers six essential (if slightly heretical) reforms for a new state constitution. They are:

1) Create a part-time Legislature: Just because Texas does it, doesn't mean it's bad. They would still be professionals, but they would necessarily spend more time in their districts. Besides, Karako notes, "A part-time Legislature does not mean a part-time government. The execution of laws is constant, but the making of those laws can be done in advance."

2) Reinstate a hard spending cap: The Gann Limit was a good thing undone by ballot-box budgeting (about which, more below). We should do it again.

3) Set up a two-year budgeting cycle: "The Legislature should be restricted to figuring out a budget one year, and only in the second year could it consider other legislation," Karako writes. Tough to disagree.

4) Eliminate the two-thirds supermajority requirement for budgets: Uh, oh. For conservatives who would cling to California's two-thirds requirement for passing a budget or raising taxes, these are fighting words. I've seen about 1,000 variations on the same comment: Without the two-thirds rule, California's high taxes would go even higher. Would they? Voters would have no recourse whatsoever? Elected officials could act their nefarious agendas unopposed and unchecked? Really?

You can look at the two-thirds problem in two ways. First, the minority party has a disproportionate (Nay! Unjust!) influence on the essential business of the Legislature. Second -- and this is key -- the two-thirds rule gives the majority party an excuse for acting irresponsibly and a scapegoat for failure. Eliminate the two-thirds rule and the Democrats have no excuses. They would bear the burden and the blame.

Or, as Karako puts it: "If voters want to give a clear majority of their representation to one party, let the majority prevail -- and let the people judge the consequences."

5) Unify the executive branch: "It is dysfunctional to have executive officers separately elected and in competition with one another, as are many executive officers in California," Karako writes. Californians elect a governor, a lieutenant governor, a treasurer, a controller, an attorney general -- but they're all wannabe chief executives. We shouldn't be electing people to the executive branch who work at cross purposes.

6) Repeal ballot-box budgeting: Which is a somewhat euphemistic way of saying, get rid of the initiative process. The initiative let Californians enact Prop. 13, which saved untold thousands of people from losing their homes to the taxman. But the initiative also enabled unions to push such abominations as Prop. 98, which helped put state spending on auto-pilot. The recent special election was a prime example of ballot-box budgeting, which voters rejected soundly.

The remedy: "Hand the task of budgets back to our elected representatives," Karako writes, "the ones we hired to make these hard decisions."

Many Californians, I suspect, would greet a constitutional convention with a great deal of pessimism, if not outright cynicism. Who, after all, would rewrite the state's charter if not many of the same scoundrels -- or their nameless, faceless, unaccountable staff and attendants -- who put the state into the ditch in the first place?

Maybe. Probably. But something's got to give. The reality is, any new constitution would be a compromise document. (So was the Constitution of 1787.) There would be winners and losers. Some special interests would angle for advantage, and would likely prevail in certain instances. It's possible, even likely, that a new constitution would include some bad stuff, such as a "right" to health care, abortion on demand, or "world-class" education. (Actually, that one's already in there.)

Well, that's politics, isn't it? You take the good, you take the bad. What we have now is almost all bad. It's unsustainable, and it's ruining the Golden State.

Update: Peter Schramm at No Left Turns observes: "(Karako's) major point is this: 'To the extent that California is ungovernable today, it is partly because its legislative and executive branches are too weak and dysfunctional to resist entrenched special interests and non-elected bureaucracies.' So you can’t fix the fiscal mess unless you re-write the constitution to make it more Madisonian."

Time to re-read The Federalist, comrades. Stay tuned for a podcast on that very subject.

James Lileks, writing in Sunday's New York Post, urges Americans to refrain from criticizing Vice President Joe Biden. "(A)pplaud his palaver, and hope for more. Biden's 'gaffes' are anything but -- they're simply what the administration is really thinking."

Wow! Why didn't anyone think of this, oh, 30 years ago?

A former UCLA chancellor asked the California Supreme Court today to declare that the state constitution's requirement of two-thirds legislative votes to raise taxes is invalid.

The suit was filed by Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP on behalf of Charles Young, former chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles, and director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. The suit described Young as "a citizen, taxpayer, and voter of the State of California, interested in seeing that the California government carries out its public duty consistent with constitutional mandates..."

The legal theory of the suit, which names the Legislature's chief clerks as the technical defendants, is that when voters passed Proposition 13 in 1978, cutting property taxes and requiring a two-thirds vote for tax increases, it was a "revision" of the state constitution rather than an "amendment."

For years, pols and pundits have complained how the state constitution's two-thirds requirement stymies the Legislature and leads to the sort of political deadlocks we've seen in Sacramento for the past few years. Oh, if only we could get rid of that two-thirds rule, they lament. Then all would be well. (A variation on this is: We would have gotten away with unlimited spending, too, if it hadn't been for that meddling Prop. 13!)

Well, it's a testiment to the lack of imagination and guts among the political classes in the state capitol that nobody thought of suing.

Oh, sure, there have been many, many lawsuits challenging Prop. 13. The state supreme court validated the 1978 ballot initiative shortly after it passed, and the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed it in 1992. But, hey, that was 30 years ago and people have probably forgotten what the courts said, anyway. Not like those rulings are published in books or anything.

Charles Young is some kind of amazing genius. I can't wait to see how this lawsuit plays out.

John Mellencamp is all about speaking truth to power when a mean old economic royalist occupies the White House. But as Pam Meister at Big Hollywood observes, put his guy in charge and all of a sudden he turns into a Herbert Marcuse acolyte.

Here's Mellencamp in an interview with Country Music Television on the First Amendment-as-collective right:

"I don’t think people fought and gave their lives so that some guy can sit in his bedroom and be mean. I don’t think that’s what freedom of speech is,” he continued. “Freedom of speech is really about assembly — for us to collectively have an idea. We want to get our point of view out so we can assemble and I can appoint you to be the spokesman. That’s freedom of speech — to be able to collectively speak for a sector of people. But somehow it’s turned into ‘I can be an a****** whenever I feel like, say whatever I like, be disrespectful to people and not be courteous.’ It’s not good for our society. Not being courteous is not really freedom of speech. . . .

There is a lot of discourteous speech out there, no question about it. (As an aside, but sort of on point: As much as I love the reader comments on newspaper sites, I wonder if the Wall Street Journal's recent decision to open its Web pages to reader comments will hurt the brand in some way over the long term. Look upon the comments to Peggy Noonan's column and despair.)

John Mellencamp is, of course, is free to say the stupidest things about what freedom of speech should or should not be. What I find funny is the presumptuousness of it all. Mellencamp clearly considers himself one of those appointed spokesmen. Oh, I suppose he speaks for a certain segment of the population with a certain point of view. But, like Professor Marcuse, he seems to have little or no regard for people speaking for what he would consider the repressive "status quo."

(In the Salon story I linked to above, he says: " most people who are Republicans, they're not rich enough to be Republicans! I don't get it." No, he doesn't.)

Freedom is simply too messy... too inequitable. For Mellencamp, in a perverse way it's pink houses for me but not for thee. Well, he can keep his pink house and his goofy, collective ideal of freedom. That ain't my America.

Update: Julie Ponzi at NoLeftTurns expounds cleverly on my comments. Key paragraph:

In Mellencamp’s America, the "home of the free" with its little pink houses would be for a freedom of speech that is more a kind of General Will voiced by the anointed tongues of a select group of American royalty. Jack and Diane needn’t trouble their little heads with worrying about the big questions. They can busy themselves with Diane’s Bobbie Brooks slacks till it "hurts so good," make a public spectacle of themselves while they’re at it, call THAT freedom of speech, and content themselves with their imagined moral courage. But if they dare to voice vigorous opposition to something like Cap and Trade and, in the course of that expression, utter an ungracious opinion about the anointed--an opinion that according to Mellencamp qualifies Jack and Diane as "a-holes" THAT will be too much because, "[n]ot being courteous is not really freedom of speech" according to the scholars at the Mellencamp School of the First Amendment.

Julie also makes some thoughtful points about civility in the public discourse. Please read the whole thing.

Political Cheesecake: Sarah Palin, looking about as good as a 45-year-old mother of five can look.I was quite upset when I heard the news that the press wouldn't have Sarah Palin to kick around anymore — raging, essentially, that "the bastards finally did it." They drove a good person out of politics. Joel can attest to the heat of my anger, as we had a passionate back and forth about it on Facebook.

I've since cooled considerably, especially after hearing Palin's rather limp and contradictory exit presser on the Friday of Independence Day weekend. Though Palin rightly listed her many accomplishments in just two years as governor of Alaska, she said "serving her people is the greatest honor I could imagine," yet quits before her term is up. After rightly noting that a lot of her energy has been spent fighting off entirely frivolous "ethics" lawsuits — not to mention the half-million dollars she has to raise to pay off legal bills after going a perfect 15 for 15 in the ethics complaints — Palin said:

Life is too short to compromise time and resources... it may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: "Sit down and shut up", but that's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out.

I can understand that one may believe that life is too short, especially when raising a family, to fight off the fleas trying to bite you to death with a thousand bites. And I applaud her defiance in saying that she will not "sit down and shut up." But when one is quitting the governorship of Alaska ... that's not the best time to talk about "a quitter's way out."

And here was the most troubling and puzzling of passages — and the hardest for this Palin supporter to defend:

And so as I thought about this announcement that I wouldn't run for re-election and what it means for Alaska, I thought about how much fun some governors have as lame ducks... travel around the state, to the Lower 48 (maybe), overseas on international trade - as so many politicians do. And then I thought - that's what's wrong - many just accept that lame duck status, hit the road, draw the paycheck, and "milk it". I'm not putting Alaska through that - I promised efficiencies and effectiveness! ? That's not how I am wired. I am not wired to operate under the same old "politics as usual." I promised that four years ago - and I meant it.

It's not what is best for Alaska.

Here's a thought. Assuming Palin would have won a re-election bid in 2010, what's to stop her from choosing to pass up the "fun" of trips to the Lower 48 and overseas junkets dressed up as promoting international trade for Alaska? Palin speaks as if was she re-elected, she'd have no choice but to "milk it." That's absurd. It reveals that Palin's speech was not crafted by a professional political hack, but was a first-and-only draft — written by her with a lot of ad-libs, including the lame rhetorical crutch of "politics as usual."

But, she is kind of right on that last point. "Politics as usual" in today's America would mean Palin toughing it out — doing whatever it takes to cling to power. Palin left a lot of mystery as to what her future plans are. Run against Lisa Murkowski for senate in 2010, thus slaying the Murkowski dynasty for good? Running for president in 2012 or 2016 or even 2020 when she will be younger than Hillary when she thought she'd extend the Clinton dynasty to the White House? So if Palin's planning a bigger political future, she's going to travel an unconventional road to get there.

All that said, however, I titled this post "Sarah Palin and the price of politics" for a reason. No politician has paid so dear a price (and so quickly) for daring to step onto the national stage as Sarah Palin has. I'm sure, at times (and in due time) she'll look back at the way she was treated by the press and the popular culture as a badge of honor — though that is a meager booby prize when considering how her family was treated. But, more likely, considering her abrupt exit, she's thinking along the lines of what Ross Douthat wrote in The New York Times yesterday as his lead sentence: She should have said no:

(READ MORE BY CLICKING ON "READ MORE" BELOW.)

One line of thinking on Sarah Palin's departure holds that she is abandoning the governor's office to pursue the presidency or, less ambitiously, a U.S. Senate seat. If that is what Palin's camp is thinking, they're nuts. Another line suggests that she's abandoning politics to pursue a more ordinary life. Reihan Salam argues at Forbes.com that "Palin's collapse represents the end of a certain kind of politics. If the culture war really is ending, culture warriors like Palin will fade from the scene."

I'm not sure the culture war is ending; I'd say, rather, the battle space is shifting and the battle lines are altering. But in general, I think Salam is on to something.

Update: Daniel Larison offers an excellent summation of the entire Palin phenomenon, with which I concur for the most part. I like this in particular:

Palin was never as threatening to the left nor as wonderful for the right as both sides imagined. Her resignation will prove to be a good thing for her, her family and Alaska. Her tenure as governor has been so lackluster that it might be fair to say that Palin never demonstrated her worthiness for the office so much as in her departing from it.

Never has a major political candidate been so poorly served by her own supporters. To quote that Russian proverb again, “The yes-man is your enemy, but your friend will argue with you.” Palin was surrounded and cheered on by almost nothing but yes-men, because once anyone tried to offer any kind of criticism that person seemed to become persona non grata in her circle and in the wider conservative world pretty quickly. That is why a reasonable column offering advice and encouragement to Palin could be met by so much insane fury from so many of her supporters. It will be very difficult to explain to later generations what it was that the Palinites saw in her that made them so fervent and enthusiastic. The Palin enthusiasm of 2008 will not end up making much sense a few years from now. At least the excitement about a Jack Kemp presidential campaign after 1996 was based in a record with some accomplishments in it.

I'm not sure this qualifies as "insane fury," but the Robert Stacy McCain-Ace of Spades contretemps makes for some amusing reading.

Down and out?: Sarah Palin's abrupt resignation as Alaska's governor may not bode well for her political future.
If Sarah Palin wants to be president, she has a funny way of going about it.

Palin's announcement Friday that she would not seek re-election in Alaska and would, rather, step down from the Alaska governor's office on July 26, did not sound like the words of a self-assured stateswoman. "I have given my reasons candidly and truthfully," she said. "I do not want to disappoint anyone with my decision; all I can ask is that you trust me with this decision."

Sorry, not nearly candid, truthful, or good enough coming from a politician with less than one term as governor of a small (however important) state on her resumé. Not if she has the White House in her sights.

Ken Thomas at No Left Turns tries to find some good sense in Palin's move:

Derided by the conventional wisdom (just see the front pages of any paper) as "bizarre," Governor Palin’s decision to resign is yet another sign of her determination to make herself the most credible challenger to Obama in 2012. Modifying Machiavelli’s advice, she will likely encircle Washington as a prelude to occupying it; one can imagine her rallying the red portions in both red and blue states. As much as I admire her character and cleverness, I hope it will be accompanied by a deeper prudence--the wisdom of serpents accompanying the innocence of doves.

I disagree. Most Americans, unacquainted with the wisdom of Machiavelli, won't see Palin's move as anything other than impulsive and "bizarre." Although Alaska's governor insisted that she explained her reasons why, I'm not sure that her explanation was adequate to the moment. She sounds crazy to me -- and not in the "just-crazy-enough-to-work" sense of crazy.

I was favorable to Palin's candidacy in the fall, but not overly enthusiastic about it. I was happy to defend her against some of the dumber charges of her critics. But also I thought National Review anointed her prematurely, and I doubt that today's announcement ends the media circus surrounding Palin and her family. Not if, in fact, she really does plan to run for president and not, as some rumors suggest, get out of politics altogether.

For what it's worth, I liked Philip Klein's take over at the American Spectator:

(T)o all but her most loyal supporters, today's bizarre press conference made her look brittle -- like a person who couldn't take the heat and was buckling in the face of attacks. Today's move is perfectly understandable if she wants to give up politics and protect her family from the blistering assaults of the media and her political oppenents. Maybe this news -- odd within the political realm -- actually makes her a pretty normal person by real world standards. But normal people do not get elected president.

Klein's colleague, Quin Hillyer, is much less charitable:

Sarah Palin's resignation is an appalling dereliction of duty and a highly cynical move to set herself up for a presidental run for which she is manifestly unqualified.

I have written the same thing about other politicians who resigned their offices mid-term without any scandal or family crisis necessitating it: It is an absolute dereliction of duty to quit mid-term. When you run for office, you are making a promise to your constituents to serve out your term (unless you get elected to higher office or have one of the aforementioned compelling reasons not to do so). To do otherwise is, in effect, to break your word. It is a sign of a lack of integrity.

I think there is a kernel or two of truth in Hillyer's analysis as well, although I wonder if Americans' memories are long enough to hold Palin's abrupt departure against her. But the old knock against Palin still holds: She's inexperienced, unpolished and, as today's announcement suggests, lacks sound judgment. It doesn't matter that the current president managed to win the Oval Office with a thin record of achievement -- if anything, as we're seeing Obama stumble through his initial months, the onus of experience should be even greater on future presidential aspirants.
Nixon's 'last press conference': Richard Nixon told reporters in 1962 that they wouldn't have him to kick around anymore. That turned out not to be true. Could the same be said for Sarah Palin?
Steve Hayward at the Corner ponders Palin's move and mentions a historical parallel. "Some folks have mentioned Nixon, rehabilitating himself in the 1960s, and skipping the 1964 election." The difference between Richard Nixon and Sarah Palin is the depth and breadth of experience possessed by the former. Nixon was a congressman, a senator, and a two-term vice-president when he lost the presidency in a close fight with John Kennedy in 1960 and then appeared to self-immolate in the 1962 California governor's race.

It was after his crushing defeat at the hands of Pat Brown that Nixon delivered one of his more famous and openly bitter public utterances: "I leave you gentlemen now and you will write it. You will interpret it. That's your right. But as I leave you I want you to know — just think how much you're going to be missing. You won't have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference and it will be one in which I have welcomed the opportunity to test wits with you."

Nixon proved himself wrong. Palin's statement today was nothing like Nixon's, and maybe she'll engineer a Nixonesque comeback, going from the depths of defeat to the pinnacle of power in a matter of years even after everyone has written her off. Sarah Palin asks us to "trust" her, which is a request people should rarely indulge in a politician. For good and for ill, Sarah "the Barracuda" doesn't seem all that Nixonian.

Sarah Palin's abrupt resignation as Alaska's governor may not bode well for her political future.

Sarah Palin's abrupt departure from Alaska's governor's office may not bode well for her political future.

Richard Nixon told reporters in 1962 that they wouldn't have him to kick around anymore. That turned out not to be true. Could the same be said for Sarah Palin?

No partisan point to make, really, about this dispatch from the Agence France-Presse. Although I'm morbidly curious whether past presidents employed a taster in their security entourages. I wonder if it's a Secret Service agent who draws the short straw or a full-time employee with a job description and everything? And what does the position pay?

John Hinderaker at Powerline alerts us to a quote by long-time MSM potentate and "Newsweek" pooh-bah Evan Thomas' comments on Obama-crazy MSNBC's "Hardball" about Obama's latest trip into the breezy fields of the international community.

THOMAS: ... Obama is 'we are above that now.' We're not just parochial, we're not just chauvinistic, we're not just provincial. We stand for something - I mean in a way Obama's standing above the country, above - above the world, he's sort of God. He's-

MATTHEWS: Yeah.

THOMAS: He's going to bring all different sides together.

Good Lord! Or, should that be Good Obama! ... blessings be upon him. Standing "above ... (gulp ... gasp ... wipe forehead to fend off the vapors ... ) above the world!" saying ... well ... America sucks. Some "god." And I love that "yeah" from Chris Matthews. I'm surprised he could utter an intelligible word with his lips around Obama's ...

Sorry about that. Evil, sinful thoughts! Must pray and repent to The One for forgiveness. Now, where did I leave my Obama iconography ... Oh yeah ... here it is ...

This is all getting just a little out of hand on the left/MSM. As much as I admired Reagan, and still do, Reaganites didn't worship him and consider him "sort of God." Maybe it's because many on the left largely reject God and organized religion? Gotta latch on to something, eh? Organize something else to fill the void? This obsessive adulation of Obama is starting to defy any other rational explanation.

Yes. Newsweek has shed its decades-long objective pretenses and "rebooted" itself as a partisan, liberal magazine. It is no longer a serious magazine. But I defy anyone to find a quote in National Review as sycophantic, and just ... well, creepy as Evan Thomas' comment. This is beyond Beatlemania wailing and panty peeing. It's something else — something that should be a international embarrassment to an American press corps that likes to think of itself as the best — or at least the most important — in the world.

Speaking of National Review, the great Rob Long has penned a "tribute" to Newsweek's coverage of Obama:

Can't wait for that issue of NR to hit my mailbox.

(HT to the original source: Newsbusters, where you can see Evan Thomas utter that nonsense for yourself. I can't bear to embed the video.)

Remember the hullaballoo about Mark Levin? We had a bit of a back-and-forth about it here. Well, our discussion was nothing compared to what went down at The American Scene, The Other McCain, Rod Dreher's blog, and the Riehl World View, among other places. The right-on-right fight has gotten so strange that dogs and cats have actually started moving into Georgetown studio apartments together.

Today, James Poulos does a fine, high-minded job making sense of it all at First Things' Postmodern Conservative blog.

Bottom line: "(A)ll these people, as political commentators, are ultimately useless without virtuous politicians, at all levels of government, virtuous both as politicians and as human beings. Casting the conservative debate in terms of puerility vs. effeminacy... will lead Republicans away from that lodestar and into the ditch."

Well worth reading.

(P.S. If you haven't checked out First Things' Web site lately, you should. With Spengler, Poulos and the PoMo cons, Wesley Smith, and the Anchoress all blogging there now, the post-Neuhaus First Things is really thriving.)

Via Ed Morrissey at Hot Air and Mark Tapscott at the Washington Examiner comes scrutiny of a curious blog post from Norman Eisen, special counsel to President Obama for ethics and government reform. Eisen discusses some proposed changes in lobbying rules aimed at limiting "special interest influence" on the way stimulus dollars are spent.
Norman Eisen: The White House special counsel, shown here shaking hands with Vice President Joe Biden, proposes to restrict all "oral communications" from citizens about how the government spends stimulus funds. (Via Politico.)
Tapscott reads censorious intent in Eisen's post: "A new White House policy on permissible lobbying on economic recovery and stimulus projects has taken a decidedly anti-First Amendment turn," Tapscott writes. "It's a classic illustration of Big Government trying to control every aspect of a particular activity and in the process running up against civil liberty."

Morrissey echoes Tapscott, with a healthy smattering of snark: "Anticipating a deluge of criticism over the thus-far ineffectual spending plan," Morrissey writes, "Eisen has a straightforward plan to deal with criticism. He’ll simply use the power of the federal government to silence it. Problem solved!"

Surely Morrissey and Tapscott are overstating things a bit? Well, maybe not...

(Click 'Read More' below for the rest of this post)

The White House special counsel, shown here shaking hands with Vice President Joe Biden, proposes to restrict all "oral communications" from citizens about how the government spends stimulus funds. (Via Politico.)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is in China today, attempting to outdo her despotic hosts in Beijing with her own matronly brand of authoritarianism. Pelosi argued that government tyranny is essential for saving the planet from the looming specter of climate change.
Nancy Pelosi: The Speaker of the House says "every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory" if we hope to save the planet from environmental catastrophe. Nuts to that.
Obviously, Pelosi didn't use the exact phrase, "government tyranny is essential." That would be crazy! But greater government tyranny would be the necessary outcome if her policy prescriptions and those of her compatriots in Congress should come to pass.

Here's what Pelosi did say on Thursday to a complaisant audience of nodding bureaucrats, budding Communist Party courtiers and sundry lackeys of the regime at Tsinghua University: "I do see this opportunity for climate change to be ... a game-changer. It's a place where human rights — looking out for the needs of the poor in terms of climate change and healthy environment — are a human right." (Read that again: "It's a place where human rights... are a human right." Tautology, anyone?)

"We have so much room for improvement," Pelosi added to a student interlocutor who asked how she, The First Woman Speaker of the House^TM, would prod Americans to cut back on their carbon emissions. "Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory ... of how we are taking responsibility."

By "we," of course, Pelosi means "you," and by "our lives" she means those of you plebeians who are not elected officials, government bureaucrats or favored members of the entertainment-political-industrial complex. Rest assured, you'll pay. It's funny how Republicans receive so much opprobrium for trucking in fear -- fear of jihadist terrorism, inordinate fear of communism, fear of expansive government overreach and so forth -- yet we're supposed to bask in the fear of environmental catastrophe peddled as fact by Pelosi and her ilk.

Pelosi obviously did not come up with this idea of subjecting "every aspect of our lives" to an "inventory" by herself. She had help. The mindset, encouraged by many academics and activists but certainly not shared by all, is illustrated brilliantly by an exchange in the latest issue of the Claremont Review of Books (I think the correspondence may be behind a subscriber's firewall. In which case: Subscribe!). David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith of the University of Adelaide wrote in response to a review-essay by Steve Hayward. Their book, The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, gets some rough treatment from Hayward. Shearman and Smith object to the idea that antiquated notions of liberty should hinder the vital work of Saving the Planet. They ask:

Is Hayward really implying by his critique that freedom is more important than life itself? Is this a modern day version of "better dead than red?" If so it is absurd. No life, no freedom. Why should freedom be the ultimate value? Because it produces lots of money? Why should money then be the ultimate value? How do you stop the regress?

This is a stupid objection and a deliberate misreading of the essay, to which Hayward responds:

Environmentalists usually argue against what they call "false choices" (i.e., that economic growth and environmental protection are incompatible), yet Shearman and Smith insist upon a categorical tradeoff between liberty and life itself, which false choice ironically reinforces my point. Fine: I'm willing to accept that but would, along with most Americans, insist on Patrick Henry's ringing reply.

I hope Hayward is right that most Americans remain reluctant to trade their rights for the possibility of reducing the globe's temperature by half-a-degree Fahrenheit (or Celsius... pick your poison) some decades hence. But regulation is slow, remorseless, difficult to see coming and even more difficult to resist. Seldom are power grabs as naked as the Waxman-Markey bill now winding through Congress, even though it's fair to say that few people have or ever will actually read the bill under discussion.

No whiskey? No way!: Some busybody bureaucrat in Great Britain says that the production of whiskey and beer contributes to climate change.Often the proposals come in the garb of reasonable and incremental proposals and exhortations to do good. In Great Britain, for example, the chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change says that Britons will need to change their diets if they have any hope of cutting carbon emissions. According to the Times of London:

Government advisers are developing menus to combat climate change by cutting out “high carbon” food such as meat from sheep, whose burping poses a serious threat to the environment.

Out will go kebabs, greenhouse tomatoes and alcohol. Instead, diners will be encouraged to consume more potatoes and seasonal vegetables, as well as pork and chicken, which generate fewer carbon emissions.

Beer and whiskey harm the planet because "the growing and processing of crops such as hops and malt into beer and whisky helping to generate 1.5% of the nation’s greenhouse gases." Yet David Kennedy insists his committee is not attempting to force anyone to anything. "We are not saying that everyone should become vegetarian or give up drinking but moving towards less carbon intensive foods will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve health,” said Kennedy.

Kennedy's assurances should fool no one. It may be true that Kennedy and his band of despotic do-gooders do not wish to ban the production of certain foods and beverages -- today. They almost certainly want to tax beef, lamb, beer and whiskey to such an extent that only the rich, well-connected, and aforementioned favored members of the entertainment-political-industrial complex could afford them. Americans must know this is coming to the United States. As for me, they can have my bottle of Rittenhouse Rye when they pry it from my cold, dead hand.

You've got to hand it to the liberal greens, though: They love "life" so much that they're willing to wipe out most everyone's standard of living to make it last as long as possible.

The dead may be carbon neutral, but they can't pay taxes, either. And, really, what's more important than that?

Some busybody bureaucrat in Great Britain says that the production of whiskey and beer contributes to climate change.

Our friend Rick "Deregulator" Henderson points to this Los Angeles Times story as a "preview of what would happen if the government bails out newspapers."

The Los Angeles Police Protective League -- the police union -- wants the editorial board of the San Diego Union-Tribune summarily dismissed. Well, that's nice. Why would the union bosses make such a demand? On what basis could they make such a demand?

As it turns out, the San Diego Union-Tribune was purchased recently by a private-equity firm called Platinum Equity. According to the Times story, "Platinum relies on a $30-million investment from the pension fund of Los Angeles police officers and fire fighters, along with large sums from other public-employee pension systems around the state, to help fund its acquisitions of companies."

So the L.A. police union is, in a way, part owner of the San Diego Union-Tribune. And because the Union-Tribune's editorial line is critical of the rapacious behaviors of public-employee unions, the police union wants the editorial line to change.

"Since the very public employees they continually criticize are now their owners, we strongly believe that those who currently run the editorial pages should be replaced," wrote League President Paul M. Weber wrote in a March 26 letter to Platinum CEO Tom Gores.

Platinum sounds disinclined toward ousting the editorial writers, but who knows? Platinum is in the newspaper business for the money, not the honor of running San Diego's outpost of a foundering medium.

I will say this, however, about Paul M. Weber, a man whom I presume cared about public service at some point in his career: He is a thug and an enemy of the Constitution who has no business being a policeman. His role as president of a union is corrosive to the public good, and it frightens and appalls me that such a man has the authority to carry a badge and a gun.

Let me put it another way: Sgt. Paul M. Weber of the Los Angeles Police Department took an oath to protect and serve his city. Paul M. Weber, union boss, took an oath to protect and defend the interests of his union members. Clearly, however, those oaths are not always compatible and indeed may be contradictory.

Weber, in an interview with the Times, said that the union is not demanding changes in the paper’s news coverage of public-employee union issues or in its staff of reporters. (Yet.) "It’s just these people on the opinion side," he said. "There is not even an attempt to be even-handed. They’re one step away from saying, ‘these public employees are parasites."

It's fair to say the Union-Tribune doesn't believe that public employees are parasites. I don't think public employees are parasites, either.

Their thuggish union bosses, however, are another story.

Charles Kesler's editorial in the latest issue of the Claremont Review of Books concerns Barack Obama's "new New Deal," or what some (read: the PR men at the New York Times) have taken to call the "New Foundation." Whatever you wish to call it, it's becoming clearer by the day that President Obama is up to no good. Kesler writes:

Obama prefers to call himself progressive and pragmatic, terms that rule socialism neither in nor out and that recall his predecessor and model, Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR wanted to save capitalism from itself, and he exploited so masterfully all the ambiguities in that objective that thoughtful people can be found, even today, who think he succeeded. They tend to forget that he changed not only capitalism but constitutionalism, and the latter unambiguously for the worse. They tend to overlook, too, that the relatively benign reform era they like to celebrate, the New Deal of public works projects and Social Security, is the New Deal stripped of its more corporatist, or to put it less kindly, fascist elements like the National Industrial Recovery Act. It was the unreformed Supreme Court's "horse-and-buggy" constitutionalism that saved the country from that ugly experiment, and thus allowed future generations to praise FDR's moderation.

As it happens, Joel and I interviewed Kesler a couple of weeks ago for an upcoming podcast on The Federalist, which we've lately undertaken to read. But it's impossible to discuss the Constitution or Publius without getting into contemporary presidential politics. And so we did. Be on the lookout or, better yet, subscribe.

Patterico's Pontifications was nice enough to link to our original take on this joke of an editorial — a peek into what the liberals who run one of the most influential editorial pages in California really think.

Patterico alerted me to his post at the very moment I was going to break down the differences between the two editorials. Read his analysis, but here's mine:

The "new" editorial is really an amazing document, in light of their original "draft." It was nice of them to keep the opening line, sort of, of the original editorial.

Original:

Good morning, California voters. Do you feel better, now that you've gotten that out of your system?

"Revised" editorial:

Good morning, members of the California Legislature. Good morning, Governor.

OK. So they only kept the opening two words from the screed. I'm sure the editorial writer who wrote the "draft" is happy.

And it gets oh so gentle after that.

Feeling bruised and abused this morning? Well, you can't say you didn't see it coming. The polls have been saying for weeks that voters were going to do just what they did on Tuesday: Conclusively reject your slate on the ballot, Propositions 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D and 1E.

Today, on the morning after voters kicked around your best effort at fixing the state budget as if it were a deflated soccer ball, you face a decision.

You can blame the voters for reacting with uninformed and misplaced anger.

Or you can look in the mirror and admit you had it coming. And you know you did.

That's really rich. The original editorial entirely blamed the voters. Then, after "discussion," The Bee said doing so is wrong. That California's politicians had it coming. The difference between the two editorials is not mere "editing" of an editorial after a discussion. It's a complete rewrite. I'm with Ben. I believe this was no "mistake," at least not until their idiocy started getting broad attention.

Over the last couple of decades you and your predecessors in both parties created an environment of cynicism that poisoned Californians' faith in democracy. You have insulated yourselves from the electorate. You have rigged elections by drawing noncompetitive districts. You have discouraged turnout with negative campaigning. You have catered to special interests across the political spectrum.

Golly. That's kinda what I was saying. Maybe I should send up a resume! I don't think I'd want to be part of an editorial board, though, with a member whose instinct is to further poison "Californians' faith in democracy" by calling them idiots.

As I noted, the Sac Bee really meant to present to readers practical, sober solutions for the fiscal crisis that is facing California. And, of course, the Sac Bee thought passing these ruinous tax hike propositions was the right course. After humbly noting that the voters weren't buying it — while taking the space to accuse voters of being "tuned out and disengaged" (to the contrary ... but let's leave that aside) — it asks California's politicians to make the hard choices they were told to make on Tuesday.

There is only one way to do that: Work to reform California politics. Not just simple reforms, such as requiring only a majority vote to pass a budget, but larger ones, too: more transparency in the Legislature and the Governor's Office; less ballot-box budgeting; more accountable schools, cities, counties and special districts; modernized and more efficient government, including pay and benefits for the reality of life in the 21st century. In other words, make Californians feel they are getting their money's worth from the governments they pay for.

Ahhh, yes. Make it easier to pass a budget (read: tax increases). No thanks. A lot of this nonsense could be stopped if redistricting could get done — throwing out the status quo of hard left and hard right districts which would go a long way to releasing the death grip the public sector unions have on this state. Notably, the Sac Bee is silent on that key reform.

If that sounds difficult, well, it will be. You're starting from a deep hole, one that you've dug yourselves.

The first step is to stop digging. Don't blame voters, no matter how much you may want to.

You mean the way you did, Sac Bee, before noon on Wednesday.

Accept their verdict with good grace.

Unlike you did, Sac Bee.

Acknowledge that even if they don't have a mastery of all the details of the state budget, their judgment about your performance is not subject to your approval.

Yeah. It's not the voters' job to have a "mastery of all the details," like you said before, Sac Bee. The voters of California are big picture people. And if legislators get that wrong, they get smacked.

And at bottom, that was what this election was about: Not the fine points of governing, but the judgment of the public on your performance. You have been judged and have been found wanting.

And so have you, Sacramento Bee.

I've seen some lame walkbacks in journalism before, but this might take The New Republic Prize for lame attempts to excuse incompetence. ExurbJon and Monkey Ben note that the offending editorial has been pulled from the Bee's Web site. The original editorial, you see, was not really an editorial. It was merely a "draft" that the editorial board was kicking around and was never meant to be published.

Note to our readers: Many of the comments below refer to an article that was posted in error. That article was a draft prepared for internal discussion among members of The Bee's editorial board. Such discussions are a routine part of our work, and frequently lead to editorials that are considerably different from writers' first drafts.

That's what happened in this case. After discussion, we decided that our initial editorial about the special election should take a different tack. The result was the editorial that now appears on this page. This editorial is the only editorial about the special election that appeared in Wednesday's editions of The Bee.

David Holwerk, Editorial Page Editor, The Sacramento Bee

Oops! Er ... um ... this is quite embarassing. I mean, yeah. We had the editorial up on our Web page for about 12 hours and didn't realize it. But this was a just a wacky mix-up. It's kinda funny, really. You see, our staff cat, Toonces — the cutest little thing you'd ever see — walked on the computer keyboard of our deputy assistant editorial writer (who is new around here) and accidentally sent to the Web guys the "draft" that the new guy fired off to help facilitate conversation. The Web guys, of course, didn't know that Toonces is not really on our editorial board (in fact, he's not even a paid staffer at The Bee) and not authorized to send "ready to publish" information to the Web. And, golly, we were so focused on figuring out good, workable solutions to this state's pressing problems that we didn't notice this mistake by Toonces (and the eager new guy) until around lunch time. And ...

What's most funny about The Bee's official explanation is not what it excuses, but what it explains. Holwerk is admitting that someone on his editorial board has utter contempt for California voters who dare to demand that the legislature and the governor come up with a solution to the budget crisis that does not include scaring voters into approving broad and massive tax hikes. I'd argue that is a respectable position to take. A Bee editorial board member thinks it's a position worthy of unhinged ridicule. And apparently, airing such views — in a full draft of a lead editorial for the Capitol Newspaper in California — is "a routine part of [its] work."

As many readers here know, Ben and I met and became friends as staffers on the editorial board of The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, California. Before that, Ben was an editorial writer for Investor's Business Daily just outside Los Angeles and I was an editorial writer for The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Virginia. We know very well how editorial boards function. It is highly unusual for members of the board to write a full "draft" of an editorial before the board even meets to discuss how to craft the argument for the issue in question — even on a tight deadline for a morning-after-the-election editorial. It is even less likely that such a raging screed would be mistaken as the "real" editorial that is sent to the Web page staff to throw on the Internet. Then again, the Bee editorial board member went through the trouble of even writing a headline for his "draft." C'mon. I've never written a headline for a draft editorial. Not once. I doubt Ben has, either.

But, it seems, The Bee has less formal standards. And "after discussion, we decided that our initial editorial about the special election should take a different tack." So, the Bee editorial board contemplated using that screed "draft" in the paper. They didn't dismiss it out of hand, but, "after discussion" (I'd love to have heard that debate) thought better of it and took "a different tack." I'm guessing it was a close call. It would have been nice if Holwerk had addressed what was in that editorial — especially it's insulting and childish tone toward readers and voters — and apologized for it. That's what I would have done. But I guess insulting readers is not really a concern to The Bee.

One of the great things about the Internet Age is that The Bee cannot pretend that editorial was never published. It was (the Web counts). Here's the full, original editorial, which I'm glad I saved in a text file on my computer this morning. Behold the "draft" that will live in infamy (and the Internet) for all eternity:

Editorial: You did it! Uh, so what now?

Published: Wednesday, May. 20, 2009 - 12:00 am | Page 18A
Last Modified: Wednesday, May. 20, 2009 - 9:09 am

Good morning, California voters. Do you feel better, now that you've gotten that out of your system?

You wanted to show the state's politicians just how mad you are at them. And you did. Boy, did you ever.

Proposition 1A with its taxes and its spending limit? Too much of one and not enough of the other, you said (or was it the other way around), and voted it down. Never mind that the taxes go into efffect anyway. You showed 'em.

Proposition 1B? That was a tougher call.

Proposition 1C? No way. You like the lottery just like it is. And all they were going to do with that extra $5 billion was spend it.

Propositions 1D and 1E? Forget it. You had already voted to put money into preschool and mental health programs. You're not taking it out now.

And 1F? Heck, yeah! Let's not pay our legislators if they can't pass a budget on time. So what if it likely won't have any effect, or that this year they actually passed a budget months earlier than they needed to? That's not the point.

The point is that you're sick and tired of all this political mumbo-jumbo. So you showed those politicians who's in charge. You. You're now officially in charge – of a state that will be something like $25 billion in the hole for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

So, now that you've put those irksome politicians in their place, maybe it's time to think about this: Since you're in charge, exactly what do you intend to do about that pesky $25 billion hole in the budget?

Lay off some state workers? Which ones? And how many? Remember, the entire state payroll is about $25 billion. You could lay off every last one of them – every Highway Patrol officer, every prison guard, every state firefighter, every health inspector, every professor in the UC and CSU systems, every DMV employee and every nameless, faceless paper-shuffling bureaucrat – and the state would only be barely in the black. But if you want to do that, go ahead. You're in charge, remember.

Wait, how about taking money back from the counties? Great idea. Not that it will be easy. Most of them are already in the red and getting ready to lay off cops, prosecutors, probation officers and clinic staff.

Let's see. What about laying off more teachers? Shortening the school year? Releasing prisoners? Selling some of the state's real estate holdings? Borrow billions to tide the state over until the economy improves

What's that? Few of these ideas sound like what you want to do? Well, that's OK. You really don't have to do these things yourself. You just have to figure out what you want done and tell the Legislature to do it.

They'll surely hop right on it, now that you're in charge. Just keep in mind that your suggestions have to keep the state solvent and able to meet all its legal obligations. And you know how complicated things get when the lawyers get involved.

You say it'll take you awhile to figure this stuff out, that you'll need a little time to get up to speed on the details? No problem. You've got until June 30 to get it all straight.

That sounds a lot like work, you say? Sorry, no whining allowed. You asked for this job. Now you've got it, so get on it. Oh, and remember. The entire nation is watching to see how you do now that you're in charge.

No pressure or anything. Just thought you'd want to know.

I can think of no better peek into the shaded windows of elite California liberal opinion.