- Get ready for a big week in Iowa.
- The Stribune takes a hefty whack at Pawlenty’s health care record.
- The New York Times, in effect, chronicles Huntsman nepotism.
- Ryan Lizza does his thing with a long and excellent profile of Michele Bachmann, focusing in large part on her Christian political philosophy. There’s also this, which warrants a few follow-ups:
While looking over Bachmann’s State Senate campaign Web site, I stumbled upon a list of book recommendations. The third book on the list, which appeared just before the Declaration of Independence and George Washington’s Farewell Address, is a 1997 biography of Robert E. Lee by J. Steven Wilkins.
Wilkins is the leading proponent of the theory that the South was an orthodox Christian nation unjustly attacked by the godless North. This revisionist take on the Civil War, known as the “theological war” thesis, had little resonance outside a small group of Southern historians until the mid-twentieth century, when Rushdoony and others began to popularize it in evangelical circles. In the book, Wilkins condemns “the radical abolitionists of New England” and writes that “most southerners strove to treat their slaves with respect and provide them with a sufficiency of goods for a comfortable, though—by modern standards—spare existence.”
African slaves brought to America, he argues, were essentially lucky: “Africa, like any other pagan country, was permeated by the cruelty and barbarism typical of unbelieving cultures.” Echoing Eidsmoe, Wilkins also approvingly cites Lee’s insistence that abolition could not come until “the sanctifying effects of Christianity” had time “to work in the black race and fit its people for freedom.”
- Drew Westen’s Sunday essay well captures Democratic discontent with Obama’s predilection for compromise and the absence of a villain in his political narrative.
- Kevin Drum is skeptical of the political value of such advice.
- S&P misjudged our political system, I argue.
- Economics of Contempt has some much more uncharitable things to say about the ratings agency.
- Is there a relationship between sovereign debt and credit rating? S&P just kind of eyeballs it.
- The path back to AAA.
- Fresh from the CBO:
The federal budget deficit was about $1.1 trillion in the first 10 months of fiscal year 2011, CBO estimates in its latest Monthly Budget Review—$66 billion less than the roughly $1.2 trillion deficit incurred through July 2010. Revenues were about 8 percent higher than they were at the same point last year, whereas outlays rose by less than 3 percent.
- Walking up recall election season in Wisconsin.
- Mark Thompson explains the chance attack that made Saturday the deadliest day for the U.S. after a decade of fighting in Afghanistan.
- With Congress on other matters, the Obama administration plans to start giving states waivers on No Child Left Behind requirements.
- With no help from Washington, state governments try to pour their own meager resources into economic development.
- And the Smithsonian’s “Department of Innovation” should innovate itself a new logo.