Rick Herrick Central

Like most other people on the more non-conservative side of things, I was pretty disappointed with the administration's actions in the recent Shirley Sherrod dust-up.  But I thought that their actions were somewhat mitigated by the fact that they fairly quickly did the right thing: admitted they were wrong, apologized, and tried to take steps to make things as right as they could be under the circumstances.

A very interesting article on the topic by Jonathon Rauch.  The basic point, and I've long thought that this is very true, is that opposition to same-sex marriage is driven in some cases by homophobia, but not in all or even most cases.

Update Below: Will Wilkinson addresses Dylan Matthews's point about Hayek's support for social insurance and safety nets.

In this article on Bill Kristol's recent outreach to tea-party activists, James Poulos makes a declaration about how liberals and progressives view the size of government:

I've received quite a few e-mails from my conservative-leaning family members and friends identifying the culprit behind the oil spill in the Gulf. The issue, it seems, is that the Obama Administration is so in the pocket of organized labor that it's allowed the Jones Act, a law that places a number of restrictions on the nationality of ships that carry goods in U.S. waters:

I have not been writing much lately, as I've been pretty involved with other projects, but am really trying to get back to it!  At least I've posted one coherent thought now!

Fred Kaplan has a great response to Mitt Romney's Washington Post OpEd yesterday.  I read Romney's article and it certainly sounded suspect to me, but I'll admit that's because I assumed that, as a Repandercan, anything Mitt Romney "writes" is going to accord with the by-laws and stipulations of Asinine Conservative Nation as currently constituted on the Tea Party-Ron Paul-Glenn Beck Axis (ACNACCOTPRPGBA for short).  But arms control is one of the most arcane, esoteric, and technical areas of political science and public policy and that's coming from someone who specialized in both international and East Asian politics at university.  So that's some arcane and esoteric shit right there.

Well, I've mostly completed my completion from one server that's hosted my sites and code and all kinds of jack for over 10 years to a newer one.  I managed to get the Drupal site migrated with a minimum of fuss, but I did need to actually move the whole site over via tarball as opposed to installing a new version of Drupal and just having that work.  Dunno what that was all about.

But regardless, here I am at my new home!  Don't get the carpet dirty too fast.  Thanks.

Environmentally speaking, what's the best way to get shit-faced?

The opening of this article is nice:

A group of "leading conservative lawyers" – a phrase never confused with "U.S. Marines"...