Strafing the Speaker

Here's some typical blog reaction. Radiant Times:

"With all the fuss about global warming nowadays, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is complaining that she cannot have a huge jet to traipse across the country with her immediate family and political supporters. Does she realize what a huge government jet would cost the taxpayers? Maybe not, and maybe she does not care - who knows?"

Political Retch:

"What has happened to the democrats, now they want Pelosi to be treated like a queen? She and her band of freaks are starting to sound less and less like the peoples' choice to lead the country. If the plane isn't big enough then don't go to California, or better yet pay your own damn fare on a commercial jet. Silly [rhymes with witch]!"

But National Review's David Frum exercises caution:

"I have an uneasy feeling that the conservative press may have overhyped this story about Nancy Pelosi's airplane request. If she really and truly did ask for her own personal Boeing 757, as many stories and much radio commentary have implied , well yes obviously that would be a huge scandal. But I keep being struck by the exact phrase in these articles: that she asked for 'access' to a a transcontinental plane. If she asked only that she get similar transport to that which was provided to Speaker Hastert, but with larger fuel capacity that could take her nonstop across the continent (ie, the military equivalent of a Gulfstream G-IV ), then that's a very different matter . . .

"My own personal view, for what it's worth, is that the security protections for most US leaders - including the president - have by now vastly come to exceed what can be justified by any plausible cost-benefit analysis. Americans keep buying tiny additional increments of security for their leaders at ever more exorbitant marginal cost.

"And I do suspect that politicians - Republicans as well as Democrats - exploit this security-mindedness for their own comfort and convenience. Does the Speaker of the House really and truly need to be in secure contact with the Capitol at all times? I wonder. And if the Speaker truly does need to be in constant contact, still - why does that require a plane that can fly cross-country without refueling? Does the communications equipment not work when the plane is on the ground?

But those are very different questions - and that's a very different topic - from the Marie Antoinette angle being played up."

I've got the latest on the brouhaha over the Edwards bloggers:

Former senator John Edwards said yesterday that while he is offended by some inflammatory remarks written by two bloggers before he hired them for his presidential campaign, he is keeping them on anyway.

As The Washington Post reported Monday, Amanda Marcotte wrote of the Duke rape case: "Can't a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it? So unfair."