Joel Mathis

Here's what we've always known about Andrew Sullivan, blogger : He's smart, but he's also passionate, contrarian, paranoid and reckless. On his best days, that's made him an entertaining -- if sometimes annoying -- read. (And important: His work on the Bush Administration's torture policies was crucial.) On his worst days as a blogger (we'll put aside his career as an editor ) it's led him down the path of outright calumny. But I've kept reading. Why? In part because he's just about the biggest thing going in the political blogosphere. His traffic, it's well known, forms the cornerstone that keeps other very smart blogs alive at The Atlantic's website. He's a one-man industry. In recent years, he's added staff that allowed him to function as a kind of meta-blogger -- he didn't necessarily comment on every story or debate out there, but at the very least he would point you to the most important debates happening elsewhere o

More than most American leaders who might run for president someday, Sarah Palin has made a career of dividing "us" and "them." Most famously, she spent parts of the 2008 dismissing her opponents and their allies as residing somewhere outside the "real America" -- and while she apologized for it , her constant grievance-mongering suggests she sees the world, and this country, mostly in terms of its divisions. Don't get me wrong: Other leaders can be "divisive." Palin is different: The divisions animate her. I mention all of this because of a recent posting to her Facebook page, which features this title: " An Intolerable Mistake on Hallowed Ground ." She is, of course, talking about the proposed mosque to be located 600 feet or so from Ground Zero in New York. I agree with the sister of one of the 9/11 victims (and a New York resident) who said: “This is a place which is 600 feet from where almost 3,000 people were torn to pi

At the Washington Post, Kathleen Parker repeats a bit of business that I see often on the right, but have never seen much evidence for: The reason Palin so upsets the pro-choice brigade is because she seems so content with her lot and her brood. One can find other reasons to think Palin shouldn't be president, but being a pro-life woman shouldn't be one of them. The idea is that Sarah Palin's fecundity -- particularly with regards to Trig, her special needs child -- is part of what makes her an object of particular scorn on the left. But -- the fevered speculations of Andrew Sullivan aside -- where's the evidence for this charge? I've never seen anybody say: "I'd like Sarah Palin ... but damnit, she's given birth waaaaay too often." I think conservatives have convinced themselves that the liberal contempt for Palin is born out of hoity toity cultural snobbishness. But it's not. Guess what? Liberals have kids too. Maybe not as often as con

I'm so tired of Sarah Palin's sense of grievance. But I know it's not going to go away -- it defines her. It is the reason, at this point, for her political existence. Don't believe me? Here's a Palin post offering President Obama advice on how to handle the BP oil spill. My experience (though, granted, I got the message loud and clear during the campaign that m y executive experience managing the fastest growing community in the state, and then running the largest state in the union, was nothing compared to the experiences of a community organizer ) showed me how government officials and oil execs could scratch each others’ backs to the detriment of the public, and it made me ill. You'd think Barack Obama had never, ever been a senator -- one elected to federal office two years before Sarah Palin became a governor. But you know what? I'm not going to replay the resume pissing match that indeed was resolved by voters two years ago.* *OK, one item: A big