Featured Links
June 4, 2001

Featured link of the week: Talking Points

You may think that I'm written a lot about the White House vandalism scandal, but that's only because you've never visited Josh Marshall's Talking Points. Marshall is a young writer from Washington DC who keeps a political commentary weblog. He was one of a very few political writers who were openly dubious about the White House vandalism story from the start, and he's been enjoying himself over the last couple of weeks finding new ways to say, "I told you so!"

Marshall is also a doctoral student in colonial American history, though unfortunately none of his essays on that subject appear to be available online.

Other political commentary weblog links:

• Mickey Kaus - Kaus is what you call a neo-liberal, which basically means he broadly supports liberal goals but believes that traditional liberal approaches to achieving those goals. His big issues are welfare reform -- he's been advocating such reform since 1986 -- and the increasing income gap.
• Andrew Sullivan - Sullivan is more conservative or not, but where he significantly departs from most conservative writers is in his fierce support of gay rights. Sullivan himself is gay; he's also British, which gives him a bit of an outsider's perspective on certain things. His site is a lot more flashy (and Flash-y) than is typical for a political commentary site, but he's toned down the most egregious and irritating Flash effects recently.
• The Scene - I find it somewhat difficult to categorize Virginia Postrel's politics. She seems to be sort of a left-leaning libertarian, if that makes any sense. She herself would argue that left/right distinctions have become largely meaningless in modern society. She describes the current division in culture and politics as stasis vs. dynamism, i.e. people who want things to stay as they are, or want to plan a "safe" course into the future vs. those who prefer an open-ended experimental free-market approach to the future. She may have a point.
• Mullings - Rich Galen is a (gasp!) Republican insider, but his daily comments on politics are notably non-strident, which is unusual for a conservative writer. He's wrong about the vandalism story, though. Forget the widely-discredited White House vandalism story; he's still clinging to the now-officially-discredited-by-the-White-House Air Force One vandalism story.

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