I’m really appreciating the increased comment traffic lately (even after I delete the spam from readers like How To Get a Bigger Dick and Treatment for Arthritis in Dogs). “Enjoying” would be too strong a word, considering how many comments are critical, but I’ve always wanted the Sift to become a blog with a strong commenting community. As I see it, there are three kinds of blogs: ones where the author is writing mainly for self-expression and rarely gets comments; ones that are a conversation between the author and the readers; and ones where the author’s posts set off a conversation in the commenting community. The Sift is getting into the second category and it would be cool if someday it made it to the third. So if you haven’t been reading the comments, I suggest that you do.
In general I have a loose policy on comments. I delete the obvious spam, and I intend to delete any comments that abuse other commenters (though amazingly that hasn’t come up yet). I usually argue if I think I’m being misread or if the comment promotes what I see as a factual error, but if you just disagree with me and state your case fairly, I’ll often let it stand unanswered. I try not to get drawn into endless debates, so often my final comment will be that we’ve both had our say and the readers can judge for themselves. I don’t closely review the thousands of comments that the spam filter catches, so occasionally a legitimate comment may fail to post; I apologize for that.
This week: I’ve got two featured posts queued up. The Donald Sterling thing is getting way too much coverage, but there’s a part of the story I can’t let go by: the people who want to make Sterling the victim. (Why oh why should he lose his team because of comments he made in a private conversation?) Fox News’ Megan Kelly is far from the only one to frame the conversation this way, but I focus on her in “No, Donald Sterling is Not the Victim”. That article is almost finished and should be out shortly.
A theme I’ve been building lately is conservative judicial activism. The “judicial activism” meme started as a conservative attack on liberal judges during the Warren Court in the 60s, but these days it’s really conservative judges who are ignoring the Constitution and the precedents to legislate from the bench. Even so, the out-of-date rhetoric about “liberal activist judges” and conservatives “restoring the Constitution” are still with us.
With this in mind, it’s interesting to compare two recent books suggesting lists of constitutional amendments: liberal retired Justice John Paul Stevens’ Six Amendments and conservative talk-radio host Mark Levin’s The Liberty Amendments. Stevens’ amendments are focused on trying to undo recent Supreme Court misinterpretations, while Levin’s amendments (in spite of his rhetoric about the Founders’ original vision) are almost entirely ideas that the Founders rejected. I’ll flesh that out in “Restoring the Constitution is Now a Liberal Issue”. That still needs some work, so it probably won’t be out until around 11 EDT.
The weekly summary will cover the return of Benghazi, the botched Oklahoma execution, the changing politics of ObamaCare, Kerry’s “apartheid” comment, and maybe a few other things.
The Weekly Sift 