But in her new memoir, Going Rogue, Palin apparently writes that she doesn’t believe in evolution. New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani writes:

Elsewhere in this volume, she talks about creationism, saying she “didn’t believe in the theory that human beings — thinking, loving beings — originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea” or from “monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.”

Palin’s not the only Republican with this ignorant viewpoint.  By 2012, it will probably be the espoused viewpoint of every GOP candidate for President.

How is such ignorance tolerated in the body politic?

Ask David Broder:

It is evident from the length of this deliberative process and from the flood of leaks that have emerged from Kabul and Washington that the perfect course of action does not exist. Given that reality, the urgent necessity is to make a decision — whether or not it is right.

One of the two major parties, aided and abetted by the establishment media is decrying actually thinking about things. A-W-E-S-O-M-E!

Tuesday’s defeats in gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey not only ended a decade or more of Democratic gains in those states but also signaled possible trouble ahead in the midterm elections at the national level.

This calls for extensive and exclusive quotes from a Blue Dog Democrat and a Republican operative:

Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee, a leader of the moderate-conservative “Blue Dogs,” called the result “a wake-up call for Congress. A tidal wave could be coming.”…

Jim’s apparently seen the latest Roland Emmerich trailer, with prerequisite African-American President…

Former Republican congressman Vin Weber said he sees the Democrats in “a difficult position.

Oh dear, I guess it’s back to missionary for the rest of us Mr. Broder.

But then maybe ol’ Davey, George Will and Krauthammer share the same editor? That’s a lot of error for one person to catch.

Today “the Dean” says this:

Consider the precedent that would be set if a major piece of social legislation were to be passed with a states’ rights provision. Imagine, for example, if Franklin Roosevelt had signed the first Social Security law with the proviso that any states with Republican governors and legislatures could exempt themselves from its coverage…

That issue was settled in the realm of economic policy during FDR’s second term, after enough new Supreme Court justices were seated to uphold the New Deal measures an earlier conservative majority had struck down. In the area of civil rights, Lyndon Johnson and a Democratic Congress put an end to the doctrine of states’ rights.

That must be why when Medicare/Medicaid was passed during LBJ’s Administration it included an “Opt-Out” provision, because the issue was all “settled”.

Forget whatever short-comings there are of an “opt-out” and the Senate’s bill, and there are many, to boldly assert it is bad because it uses an invalid, unworkable, and untried concept for health care policy is either the product of result-driven stupidity or a plain-old lie.  Broder, you don’t like Harry Reid, laughably for all the wrong reasons, it does not excuse sloppy falsehoods.

Yet what causes Broder to put down the Ensure and take notice? A Democrat made a fat crack and it is all Obama’s fault.

And no, as sad as it all is, I’m not kidding.

In Broder’s World, only Michael Moore can be called fat.

No matter the motive, the tangled case centers on a classic love triangle: Stephanie Birkitt, Letterman’s longtime assistant, had previously dated the talk-show host before moving in with Halderman.

When Halderman saw the two embrace at the end of a private road near his Norwalk, Conn., home, “he felt betrayed,” Arnot said in an interview Friday. “He felt he was the backup. He felt lied to. He felt very angry, more at Letterman than at his girlfriend. . . . Joe was furious, beside himself, that this was being thrown in his face.”

Will Kurtz ever write about about John Ensign’s actual wrongdoing: putting his cuckolded chief of staff into a lobbyist job, making calls to get him clients, meeting with those clients and his former employee within the already absurdly short one-year no-lobbying window and then contacting federal agencies on behalf of those clients of his former chief of staff-turned-lobbyist? Asking another Senator, Tom Coburn, to be the adulterers’ go-between to negotiate a pay-off? And getting his own parents to write a check for $96,000 to the aggrieved family?

Will Howard Kurtz ever write about where John Ensign put his wiener?

What’s so wonderful about David Letterman’s wiener that Howie Kurtz keeps writing about it exclusively without ever writing about John Ensign’s wiener? Why, there’s even a “media” angle that Kurtz could address, should he ever care to leave off writing about other guys’ wieners.

More than anyone else, Howard Kurtz has tweeted the David Letterman “scandal” to make himself the Village’s Other Guys’ Wieners correspondent. It’s embarrassing and someone should intervene. He continues to drape the Washington Post with stories about David Letterman’s wiener: five stories, chats, and counting.

Perhaps he should branch out and cover other Other Guys’ Wieners.

Does Howie Kurtz’s front-page Washington Post treatment of the David Letterman "scandal" and subsequent shakedown really deserve a second article on the front of the Style section the same day and a Letterman-headlined WaPo0 chat Monday? Or is there a word in the scandal that makes a thrill go up the Hacktackular One’s leg? Is that word Stephanie Birkett’s first job title: intern?

Kurtz’s front-page splash on Saturday began with a breathless tick-tock worthy of, oh, I don’t know, maybe the revelation of a Nevada Senator’s staff liaison and blackmail negotiation?

The sun was not yet up when David Letterman stepped into a limousine outside his home and saw the one-page letter that threatened to reveal the secret details of his personal life.

It was 6 a.m. on Sept. 9, and the CBS star immediately saw that whoever was trying to extort him had the goods. The person knew that the married comedian had done terrible things, that he’d had sex with women who worked for him at "Late Show." And, the letter warned, he had just two hours to respond.

What followed was three meetings at New York’s stately Essex House, the last of which, on Wednesday, was secretly recorded by detectives in an adjoining hotel room. And in an undeniable black eye for the network, prosecutors said Friday that the extortionist was a veteran CBS News producer who proceeded to deposit the bogus $2 million check handed him by Letterman as part of the undercover sting.

Captivated by his own view of the prurient aspects of the case, in another article (probably deemed "commentary" by the WaPo Style editors who put it on their Page One) the same day, Kurtz got right down to what you might be doing when you’re watching Dave:

A man who makes his living mocking such ripe targets as philandering politicians has suddenly become a national punch line.

A veteran entertainer who comes into people’s homes when most of them are in bed has now confessed to "creepy" behavior.

Eeeeew. Here’s a hint, Howard: the person on the television isn’t actually in your home! And without Letterman himself cracking wise, is he really a national punch line? Kurtz provides no examples.

He does quotes a couple of public relations executives (pee-ahr, dahlinK!) who try to set him on the right path about a story the Beltway Boy finds titillating:

Ken Sunshine, a veteran public-relations specialist, minimizes the professional fallout for Letterman: "He didn’t murder anybody. He was extorted. It’s consenting adults. Nobody’s accusing him of rape. This is shoplifting, maybe. . . . Unless someone accuses him of using his position to forcibly come on to some of the women, to me, it’s none of my damn business."

Michael Sitrick, a Los Angeles publicist, says the public "is more forgiving of someone in the entertainment business" than elected officials. "He had sex with women in the office, and there will be some people upset about this — but I’m not sure his audience really is. If a woman had said, ‘Look, I worked for him, I kept resisting but I was afraid I’d lose my job,’ it would be different."

So, no big deal, right? Oh wait — does disgraced racist broadcaster Don Imus have an opinion? Well, Mistah Kurtz quoted him!

Radio host Don Imus struck a harsher note, telling Fox News that Letterman is "an angry, mean-spirited jerk."

Exempting himself from criticism for any further focus on the story, Kurtz ends his tale with this teaser (there might be more — tune in for tomorrow’s noon chat!):

What happens next depends on the course of the investigation, Letterman’s handling of new revelations and whether other comics lay off their comrade. CBS clearly has a great deal invested in its late-night star. But it’s not hard to come up with a Top Ten List of reasons why Letterman needs to tread carefully.

The one who needs to tread carefully is Howie Kurtz. Who twittered single-mindedly on the topic?

Just finished Letterman stories. Anything else going on in the world? How’d that Olympics thing turn out?

Whose twitters today about his own CNN Reliable Sources program let us know he’s entirely too consumed with another man’s dalliance?

Letterman not a public official. But amazed that one of my panelists said it’s OK for the boss to do an intern. Didn’t we have that debate?

A debate over whether it’s OK for Letterman to do interns. Lisa Bloom, Amy Argetsinger, Ben Mankiewicz and me.

Not a public official, not a family-values preacher, not a choir boy, not a member of your family: Letterman’s an entertainer, and in case Kurtz hasn’t noticed, that business gives wide latitude to its own. As do we, the people formerly known as The Audience.

Writing about Letterman’s extortion from the city where Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn acted as the go-between for a workplace adulterer and his extortionist suggests Howie Kurtz is dangling a shiny object for the Versailles media to fondle and examine, when there’s lackluster Village media coverage of an in-town crime worth reporting.

I mean, there was actual money paid out in Ensign’s case, and unlike in Letterman’s, no one notified the authorities. Unless you count FOX News as an authority.

Wouldn’t a real media reporter ask questions about the DeeCee’s media near-blackout of the ongoing Coburn/Ensign saga?

Talk to the tiny-hand

That way he can continue to write idiotic columns on global warming where the format is this:

1. It does not get warmer every year (Will must love those Drudge headlines when there’s an occasional snow-storm in April).

2. Here’s a guy from AEI who says limiting carbon emissions is too big a bother for our modern carbon emitting lifestyle.

Conclusion,

So, we are doomed. So, why try?

Required action:

America needs a national commission appointed to assess the evidence about climate change.

Yes, appoint yet another one — and make sure it’s made up of one blue dog Democrat, one James Inhofe and one Marc Morano. They’ll get to the bottom of this skulduggery.

Yes, huzzah and harrumph and all that. I congratulate George Will on evolving from global warming denier to laughingly shrugging your shoulders.

The progressives believed that the cure lay in applying the new wisdom of the social sciences to the art of government, an approach in which facts would heal the clash of ideologies and narrow constituencies…

Historically, that approach has not worked. The progressives failed to gain more than brief ascendancy

Somehow David Broder ignores the three most successful legislative Presidents of the 20th century were the policy-ambitious FDR, LBJ, and a progressive Republican, Theodore Roosevelt. Apparently he does this so he can kick Clinton and Carter a few more times.

Franklin Roosevelt made sweeping policy changes that put one party in control of Congress for the longest period in American History, more than sixty years. During that time it managed to pass strong civil rights laws; sweeping securities, labor, and financial reforms; social security and medicare. Even Republican presidents avoided significantly altering its fundamental accomplishments.

It won THE war, it made the peace, it created the middle class and the longest period of prosperity in American history. It started by burying the depression and ended by burying the Soviet Union, in between it only beat Hitler and Jim Crow. What a fucking failure! Thank goodness we finally decided it had to change because rich peoples’ taxes were too high.

But David Broder, can take comfort in his apparently belief the last great Democratic President was Grover Cleveland, with whom he probably ate quail.

During a sit-down with two newspapers last Friday, President Obama embraced an idea that would be farcical if he weren’t serious about it.

The president said he is "happy to look at" bills before Congress that would give struggling news organizations tax breaks if they were to restructure as nonprofit businesses.

"I haven’t seen detailed proposals yet, but I’ll be happy to look at them."

Sure, why not? Yet another monopolistic industry that drove itself into the ground by worshipping at the altar of the Almighty Profit Margin and pocketing the donation plate proceeds gets a possible economic boost/tax break from the White House. It seems that this administration will never grow weary of throwing money at craven, incompetent, self-entitled management types:

So far this year, Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., and CEO Janet Robinson have each been granted half a million stock options, and Robinson got 650,000 options last year. And for the past 19 months, they’ve been paid under a plan that allows for up to $3.5 million in annual bonuses.

Trouble is, in 1991, the Times adopted rules barring its executives from getting more than 400,000 stock options and $3 million in bonuses in any given year. On Friday, the company disclosed the errors in an SEC filing and restructured Sulzberger and Robinson’s packages so as to bring them in compliance with the Times‘ own rules. 

Inept, grabby executives? I’m SHOCKED! Pinch Sulzberger, may I introduce you to John Thain?

Unlike the banking industry’s precipitous tumble last year, the newspaper business has been on a slow march into the La Brea tar pits, thanks in no small part to its stubborn refusal to join the 21st century. However, like the banksters, it, too, wants its greed and ineptitude rewarded, and this administration seems eager to help.

But wait, there’s more! Let’s not overlook the President’s continued contempt for online journalism. The money quote:

"I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context," he said, "that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding." 

O RLY? No fact-checking or putting stories in context? Two words, Mr. President: Marcy Wheeler.

Look, there is no equating the two sides. Yes, the left has its fair share of crazies, but, unlike the right, our crazies call for parity, not armed insurrection, and they don’t have corporate sponsorship. (Honestly, how does one come to a "mutual understanding" with Foxheads who, even when presented with concrete physical evidence of your citizenship, still insist you weren’t born in this country?)  

Like junkies with the DTs screaming "GET THESE BUGS OFF ME!", the national media have wasted more time and energy trying to shake off the "liberal" label the Republicans tattooed on their asses than by engaging in real reportage. Frankly, there hasn’t be "civil discourse" since Clinton "trashed the place." The media have spent the last two administrations either condemning Clinton for failing to keep it in his pants or fellating Bush, who should have whipped it out more often so we wouldn’t be mired in a never-ending land war in Asia, a war that, despite the shrill DFH protests, none of the cheerleaders in the White House press pool bothered to question. Most of the old national media types have proven themselves to be no more than stenographers for the well-oiled, well-funded conservative movement, even if you insist upon the existence of some mythical "balanced" media. 

I recommend you re-read the comments about a "robust and open" Internet made earlier today by your FCC Chairman, sir. Because like it or not, the Internet — and blogging/online journalism — is not going away. You’re going to need the left’s help in 2012, Mr. President, so you might want to ease up on the false equivalencies. 

Suck it

This just may be the most reprehensible column of a long and enabling career.

Looming beyond the publicized cases of these relatively low-level operatives is the fundamental accountability question: What about those who approved of their actions? If accountability is the standard, then it should apply to the policymakers and not just to the underlings. Ultimately, do we want to see Cheney, who backed these actions and still does, standing in the dock?

Of course, David Broder does not. ‘L’Etat, c’est Dick!‘

It doesn’t matter who got raped, or threatened with powertools, we just cannot have people called to account in America for what they do — in the name of all-holy bipartisanship. The kind of position you would expect from Broder’s fellow quail devourer Karl Rove.

He goes on to remind us that Bill Clinton lying about a blowjob was a disgrace that required resignation.

So war crimes get a pass while being disingenuous about foreplay is a crime against humanity. Got it.

He ends on a different subject though it should apply all around:

I made an egregious error…I should have known better.

Indeed you should.