The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Czar Nicholas II (Romanov)
Breaking News From 1917
“Romanov Detained in Russia”–headline, Baltic Times, April 8
Ask an Expert
“Jimmy Carter: ‘Stupid Decision’ by SCOTUS”–headline, Politico .com, April 7
Chuck Cuts
“Sen. Chuck Schumer defended Democrats’ strategy of slamming the billionaire Koch brothers, predicting Monday that the efforts ‘will work,’ ” Politico reports:
Schumer said recent polling shows 48 percent of Americans recognize the name of the businessmen, who have poured millions into conservative political ads and campaigns.
“That’ll mean about 90 percent of them will know it [the Koch name] in October,” Schumer said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday. “We also have to have a shield that protects us from these ads. And I think the Koch brother thing will work.”
Meanwhile, John Hinderaker of PowerLineBlog features a 2009 letter from a senator thanking the Koch Industries Political Action Committee, for”the generous KOCHPAC contribution to my 2010 campaign for re-election to the United States Senate.” The letter’s author is Chuck Schumer.
“Again, I can’t thank you enough,” the letter ends. “All my best to you and yours, and I look forward to working with you throughout this election.” Schumer’s joining the McCarthylike smear campaign against the Kochs is a dagger in the heart of his erstwhile supporters.
All the News That’s Fit to Bag
A New York Times editorial inveighs against plastic bags:
There’s something ridiculous about the life of a two-handled plastic shopping bag. The 20 minutes it spends cradling your groceries home is bracketed by two vast gulfs of time. First, thousands of years beneath the earth, in a natural-gas deposit, and then, after its conversion to a disposable polyethylene product, a second eternity as all-but-indestructible trash.
Derelict bags flutter from tree branches and power lines; they float in the ocean; they foul beaches and roadsides. If they are not offending the eye they are endangering fish, clogging storm drains or, most likely, bulking up a landfill. Some find brief second lives through reuse, like picking up dog droppings,but those noble detours, too, are short and swift, and end most often in the trash.
We can think of another disposable product about which much the same things may be said. It’s made of paper, it delivers news rather than groceries, and it sometimes comes in a plastic bag.
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
