MICHAEL BARONE: The Wars of the Roses?

Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton. It sounds like the Wars of the Roses: Lancaster, York, Lancaster, York.

To compare our political struggles to the conflicts between rival dynasties may be carrying it too far. But we have become, I think, a nation that is less small-r republican and more royalist than it used to be. Viscerally, this strikes me as a bad thing. But as I’ve thought about it, I’ve decided that something can be said for the increasing royalism of our politics. And whether you like it or not, you can’t deny it’s there. Not when the wife of the 42nd president is a leading candidate to succeed the 43rd president who in turn is the son of the 41st president. The two George Bushes are referred to in their family, we are told, as 41 and 43. If Hillary Clinton wins, will she and her husband call each other 42 and 44?

Then there’s Jeb. And how long until Chelsea’s 35? . . . .

THE PAJAMAS MEDIA straw poll results for the first week are now in. Romney squeaked ahead of Giuliani, and Obama is at the top on the Democratic side. But the second week voting has started, and it’s looking different. Big news: How badly McCain is doing, which underscores the damage that Campaign Finance “Reform” has done him in the blogosphere.

TOM COBURN profiled in GQ:

The dynamic had begun almost the day he arrived in the Senate, in January 2005. While fellow newcomers like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama observed the customary “freshman silence,” Coburn’s first major move as a senator was to pick a fight with one of his party’s most venerated leaders, Ted Stevens of Alaska, a forty-year veteran of Congress who also happened to be the Senate’s president pro tempore.

The fight was over pork. As the 2006 transportation budget passed through the Senate process, Coburn noticed something odd: $200 million to pay for a bridge in Stevens’s home state—a bridge almost as long as the Golden Gate and taller than the Brooklyn Bridge, connecting an island of fifty people to the coast. In the Senate, these kinds of giveaways are not unusual; members, and especially those in a position of influence, are frequently given millions of dollars for personal spending projects back home, items that bypass the normal review process and are quietly ushered in by their peers (whose own projects get the same deal). But to Coburn, who hadn’t spent forty years in the Senate and didn’t have any of his own special projects and didn’t particularly care about keeping pacts with his new colleagues, $200 million seemed like a lot to spend on a bridge for fifty people. So he tried to take the earmark out. And that’s when Tom Coburn discovered what his life in the Senate would be like. . . .

So now there’s all this hullabaloo about the Democrats taking over—Tom Coburn is supposed to care? He’s supposed to get excited now that the peanut butter is on top and the jelly is on the bottom instead of the other way around? This is a revolution? It’s a revolution that Ted Stevens has been pushed aside as chairman of the defense-appropriations subcommittee and that in his place the Democrats have installed…Daniel Inouye of Hawaii? A man who inserted $900 million of his own personal projects into the budget last year—and who happens to be one of Ted Stevens’s best friends in the Senate? It’s a revolution that the Democrats have cleaned out the subcommittee behind the Bridge to Nowhere and replaced the chairman with…Patty Murray of Washington? A woman who personally led a campaign for the bridge and who threatened revenge against any Democrat who opposed it? It’s a revolution that Thad Cochran has been deposed as the most powerful budgetary overlord in the Senate and is being replaced with…Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia? A man who has single-handedly converted his state into a federally funded monument to himself, with no less than thirty projects named in his own honor, including the Robert C. Byrd Expressway and the Robert C. Byrd National Technology Transfer and the two Robert C. Byrd federal buildings and the Robert C. Byrd Center for Hospitality and Tourism—not to mention the actual statue of Robert C. Byrd that stands in the rotunda of the state capitol?

Robert C. Byrd is going to clean up the government? This is a revolution?

Coburn smiled at the suggestion. “We’ll see how the Democrats vote on the first big earmark boondoggle that comes up,” he said. “I’m gonna try to reserve judgment.”

Read the whole thing.

THE ECONOMIST on a minimum wage increase:

It is probable that the minimum wage increase will not cost enough jobs to make its effects readily distinguishable from random economic variation. It is also probable that it will improve the lot of a few poor people, though not many, as fewer than 20% of those who earn the minimum wage live in poor households now. On the other hand, it also seems probable that much of any benefit that goes to poor families will come out of the pockets of other poor people—very probably even poorer people, such as convicts, who are currently barely hanging onto the fringes of the labour force. . . .

CEO’s who support higher minimum wages are not, as the media often casts them, renegade heros speaking truth to power because their inner moral voice bids them be silent no more. They are by and large, like Mr Sinegal, the heads of companies that pay well above the minimum wage. Forcing up the labour costs of their competitors, while simultaneously collecting good PR for “daring” to support a higher minimum, is a terrific business move.

Sounds like more of that Hagelian courage. . . .

IT FEELS LIKE THE FIRST TIME. But remember, when people tell you it’s the first time, they’re not always telling the truth . . . .

LOADS OF LIBBY-TRIAL COVERAGE at JustOneMinute.

UPDATE: Here’s a Libby trial live-blog aggregator, set up by the Media Bloggers’ Association.

TROOPS RESPOND TO CRITICISM OF THE WAR. A must-see video.

IN THE MAIL: J.D. Johannes’ independent Iraq documentary, Outside the Wire. I’ll post a review when I get a chance.

ANN ALTHOUSE ON RACIAL ASPECTS OF OBAMA-MANIA: “What accounts for amazement to the point of adoration at the fact that a man possesses excellent skill at something like note taking? Is it not that he can do it and he’s black? You can laugh at Noah’s nuggets of gratuitous adoration, but you ought also to look at them critically and think about the implications.”

DISCIPLINARY PROBLEMS at the ATF?

BENCHMARKS FOR BOEHNER: And some further thoughts here.

Back before the elections I commented about the Republicans: “It’s as if they had some sort of bizarre death wish.” Still seems to be true.

UPDATE: Reader Keith Mitchell writes:

One has to wonder if the Boehner has been reading the reports the Defense Department is already required to publish quarterly. Titled “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq.” Complete with benchmarks and progress.

Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq:
Link

Weekly Updates on reconstruction:
Link

State Department Updates:
Link

My guess would be “no.”

SOME REAL (I.E., NON-HAGELIAN) COURAGE, at Duke University.

MICKEY KAUS:

Why, exactly, is Sen. Chuck Hagel showing “courage” in conspicuously denouncing the Iraq War now that virtually the entire American establishment has reached that same conclusion–now that Hagel is virtually assured of getting hero treatment from Brian Williams and Tim Russert and long favorable profiles in the newsweeklies?

Read the whole thing. “Courage” consists of saying what the media want you to say. My thoughts can be found here.

REQUIRING GUN OWNERSHIP: My New York Times oped on the topic generated enough interest that I’ve put up this longer treatment of the subject: It Takes a Militia: A Communitarian Case for Compulsory Arms-Bearing. The piece notes that “communitarian” reasoning is arguably more supportive of requirements to own guns, and belong to a militia, than of gun control. Does this suggest that I support programs for “national service?” Not so much, and reading the piece will give you some idea of why. (Bumped).

REPUBLICANS: MISSING Ronald Reagan.

CINGULAR, PRICELINE, TRAVELOCITY fined for using adware.

CHRIS HEDGES calls for censorship of the “radical Christian Right.”

IT’S STILL 1968. And always will be, apparently.

UPDATE: Hey, the spitting is back:

There were a few tense moments, however, including an encounter involving Joshua Sparling, 25, who was on crutches and who said he was a corporal with the 82nd Airborne Division and lost his right leg below the knee in Ramadi, Iraq. Mr. Sparling spoke at a smaller rally held earlier in the day at the United States Navy Memorial, and voiced his support for the administration’s policies in Iraq.

Later, as antiwar protesters passed where he and his group were standing, words were exchanged and one of the antiwar protestors spit at the ground near Mr. Sparling; he spit back.

Capitol police made the antiwar protestors walk farther away from the counterprotesters.

“These are not Americans as far as I’m concerned,” Mr. Sparling said.

Quick, rerelease Electric Ladyland!

MORE Hezbollah fauxtography.

ED FELTEN says that the music industry has boxed itself in over copy protection. (Via TechMeme).

DAVID BELL: Was 9/11 really that bad?

Plus, identifying the real enemy.

UPDATE: Comments on the Bell piece, here.

XENI JARDIN reports from Guatemala. And she’s got a cool new series called Xeni Tech.

THE Carnival of the Capitalists is up! So is the Blawg Review. Lots more carnivals at BlogCarnival.com — and don’t miss the Blog Carnival box in my right sidebar.

SUPERMAXING the brain?

DNA EXONERATES THE INNOCENT: Except when it doesn’t.

Plus, an anti-railroading society?