Fox, for all its merits, is an outlet that primarily talks to people who already agree with the vast majority of its stances (which always --always-- leads to a little softening of standards).

What standards are these? The imaginary ones Mollie learned about in High School journalism class?

It simply means more to the median voter when a reporter at CBS gets critical of Benghazi than when Sean Hannity does the same.

So let's hasten the demise of CBS News (an attainable goal) rather than hoping it will suddenly adhere to purely theoretical standards of neutrality and fairness (an unattainable fantasy).

I've flown through MUC many times. Yes, like most places, you have to show your boarding pass (so the airline gets a cut? or to prove that you really are a passenger and therefore the store is entitled to sell to you without collecting local taxes?), but I've never had to show my passport. Of course, I usually don't argue with the minimum wage clerk, either (I just want to get to the free Lufthansa coffee machines). No, I do not live in the EU. (If you stick in the Schengen area you don't even have to show your passport to get in or out of the country.)

Isn't this really a question about where to draw the line? We don't want businesses refusing to hire people because of their gender, or the color of their skin, or their sexual orientation. We get that and  appreciate it.

Doesn't this really answer the question about the validity of 'slippery slope' arguments when deployed against icky 'discrimination'?

That is, that such arguments are completely valid, and that outlawing the 'discrimination' we dislike inevitably means opening the door to a state-imposed morality, any deviation from which will be punished by the full force of the law.

By the way, isn't it awful that a perfectly good word like 'discrimination' has been hijacked by the forces of political correctness? (See also 'tolerance'.)

Guys, you often talk about 'leadership' or 'the leadership' in the House and the Senate. Who are these people (beyond Boehner and McConnell), how do they get to be 'the leadership', and what powers do they wield?

Government has indeed become a separate, sinister entity that, by replacing self-government with rule by a self-perpetuating and unaccountable governing class, is at the root of, if not all our problems, certainly all of our problems that a politician should be talking about.

Of the two complaints - over-regulation on the one hand, and hyperlitigiousness, especially personal injury, on the other - only the latter seems to be a particularly US problem. That is to say, a massive proliferation of regulations governing every part of life is a global phenomenon, and does not appear to be correlated with a large or powerful lawyer-lobby.

The vast resources devoted to litigation in the US compared with other countries seems to me to be a dead-weight drag on the economy (and society) - the quality of, say, commercial justice in the US is not perceptibly better than in countries where companies spend hugely less time, money, attention and effort on suing each other.

It's the perennial problem: how do we maintain an optimistic attitude in the face of the scale of the task ahead of us, without underestimating, or letting others underestimate, that scale? How do we give Paul Ryan a pat on the back for his efforts with the budget but at the same time bear in mind that all he is really doing is managing the decline? How do we keep our eyes on the sunny uplands while being prepared for the alligators at our feet preparing to pull us into the swamp? Having won the battle for freedom on the foreign front - a generation ago - how do we go about defeating the Evil Empire within?

I think we need to look at 1776, 1789 and 1917 rather than 1980.

Posts like this remind me that we know NOTHING about why people vote the way they do. The social "science" on this makes economics look rigorous.

A couple of generations ago (and less) women as a group exhibited what was considered much more conservative voting behaviour than men as a group.

Why the change? We have a million theories, but we don't actually know.

In the absence of such knowledge I fear that any comprehensive strategy to move the women's vote is doomed to failure.

On the other hand, genuine grass roots initiatives like Barkha Herman's Guns'n'Schools PAC seem like a wonderful idea.

Mollie, can you point to a time or place where the 'American model/ideal' of 'neutral' journalism has actually been practiced? If not, isn't your quest to bring this about by naming and shaming somewhat... quixotic?

Come on - join the wreckers! You know you want to...

Don't give up.

And I have heard and, perhaps, understood the term "civil defense".

The American Civil Defense Association was organized in 1962 by several individuals that recognized our country’s continued need for civil defense and the importance of personal emergency and disaster preparedness.

TACDA is a non-profit, non-political, 501(c)3 organization supported primarily by our members, the American public, and not the Federal Government.

I wouldn't call myself a libertarian absolutist, either. But perhaps I am fooling myself.

If you could stomach reading Fairness and Freedom I'd love to hear your take.

(I have to say that hearing Australia described as 'the great civilization of the south' reminds me of watching a late-night chat show in Sydney in, perhaps, 2000, where, following the sending of a few policemen to East Timor, the subject was 'now that Australia is a world power, what should we do'...)

To me, from the very beginning, the problem has been with the word "Popular" ("liked, admired, or enjoyed"). If this was "Active" (or something similarly objective or mechanical) then I wouldn't think twice. One seems to be a judgement. The other is just reporting.

I think this underestimates the decision-making capacity and practice of the average American.

Every day people decide how to feed and clothe their family, which job to take or leave (Obama's massive unemployment notwithstanding), which house to buy or rent... And most people do this perfectly sensibly (despite the nanny state trying to make them do stupid things).

That is to say, where the state does NOT intervene and distort, most people make most decisions well, and do it often enough to believe that the organ of common sense is not completely atrophied.

Wow.

National defence is a matter for the Federal government. We are at war. The front in this war is every mall, bus station and home in America. Therefore we can and must operate under martial law.

Colour me frightened.

If people are to effectively participate in local politics, the politics has to be really local.

The population of the US in the 1830's was about 12-14 million. The population of New York City is about 8.2 million. That is, Mayor Bloomberg is about as distant from his subjects as the federal government was from the folks Tocqueville was observing.

So - how many political units must NYC be split into to reproduce this salutary civic effect?