Daily Reading: June 13, 2012

Today's best from around the web. Lots and lots of goodies today...

If you read anything today, read this: 


More from Democracy. Jack Meserve on the left's slipshod approach to morals regulation (emotional politics in action!):

During the controversy over the proposed ban of sugary drinks over 16 ounces in New York City, Jon Stewart pointed out that if Mayor Bloomberg’s soda ban and Governor Cuomo’s marijuana decriminalization both pass, a 17-ounce soda will draw a larger fine ($200) than a 25-gram bag of marijuana ($100). It was a funny bit, but it reveals a larger, unfortunate fact of recent liberalism: We’ve been incoherent and hypocritical in our policies toward vices.

No excuse to not read these (short but good): 


Yglesias with some elegant rhetorical slate of hand:

Back during the debate over the Affordable Care Act, some leftwing opponents of the bill had taken to describing it as a "bailout" of or "giveaway" to the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. And of course in a certain light that's accurate. When you give low income people money to buy health insurance, you increase sales of health insurance and medicine. One of my standard ripostes, however, was to argue that by that logic food stamps are a giveaway to the supermarket lobby. After all, when you give poor people groceries someone makes money selling the groceries.

The always provocative Andrew Sullivan gets in a spat over Drone strikes:

 But the notion that the fundamental reason the US is now targeted simply because we defended ourselves from a brutal attack (and aims for more attacks) seems far too simplistic to me. Yes, we always have to worry about stirring more violence in defending ourselves from violence. But we also have to worry about the violence directed at us. There is a distinction between the motives of an arsonist and the errors of a fire-fighter. 

Fellow bloviator Thomas Friedman talks civilational trends. Fun little column, but I'll pick on Tom and the NYT copy editors by quoting the correction: 

Correction: June 13, 2012 An earlier version of this column incorrectly described Turkey’s geographical location. Europe is to Turkey’s west, not to its east.

Jonathan Bernstein, writing at Plum Line, dismantles some recent Romney talking points. Valiant work, but trying to dismantle Romney's pervasive deceits has a lot in common with trying to bail out the Titanic with a Dixie cup:

Never mind that it’s highly unlikely that any factory has closed down because the company is given the option to receive tax credits if they offer health care. Never mind, even, the unlikely possibility that real-life companies are reacting to false rumors about what horrors Obamacare might unleash on them in the future by shedding jobs now. What we have here is a claim that a company relocated from Iowa to Wisconsin because of unspecified “direct” effects of the health law. Obama is puzzled because the story he’s been told can’t possibly be true.

Read these if you have the time ( a little longer, but good):

At The Atlantic, Adam Ozimek and Noah Smith lay out the case for allowing more highly skilled immigrants:

Before independence, for example, America was the beneficiary of perhaps the most elite immigrant group in history. Millions of Scots, who constituted much of the intellectual and technological elite of the British Empire, left Great Britain to seek religious freedom and better economic opportunities in the 13 Colonies. Many of the Founding Fathers, including Jefferson and Hamilton, were partly or wholly descended from that Scottish wave, as were many of America's greatest early inventors, such as Thomas Edison.

Via Arts and Letters Daily, awesome piece on the "Rise of the Gay Superhero":

Wonder Woman is a good start. She was created in 1941 by the psychologist William Moulton Marston, a cultural radical who celebrated same-sex relationships in a period when they were still illegal.

Noah Berlatsky, a Chicago writer working on a book about the comics notes that in early issues, “Marston has girls tying each other up and paddling each other and gushing over their love of Wonder Woman … The implications there are absolutely intentional. In his novel The Private Life of Julius Caesar he talks about how girl-girl love is the perfect love.”
One of Wonder Woman’s favourite catchphrases: “Suffering Sappho!” 

Also at The Atlantic, a good pragmatic account of the potential necessity and risks of a Syrian intervention:

Syria, though, possesses a capable military, is located at the heart of the Arab world, is adjacent to the tinderboxes of Lebanon and Iraq, is rife with sectarian divisions, and enjoys the active sponsorship of P-5 member Russia, as well as Iran. As such, it presents extraordinary risks.

When it comes to Syria, how do the prudential criteria for intervention stack up?

Color me skeptical.