The mainstream media, led by the intrepid White House press corps, closely followed by the inside-the-Beltway punditocracy, has declared what must happen for the oil to stop flowing into the Gulf of Mexico: President Obama needs to get angry at the oil.

I wish I were kidding, but sadly, I am not. This is the number one topic fluttering around the field of so-called conventional wisdom these days: Obama's not mad enough.

Salon has the full rundown on this, which I find I cannot improve upon:

Here are three questions CBS White House correspondent Chip Reid asked at yesterday's White House press briefing:

"You said earlier that the President is enraged. Is he enraged at BP specifically?"

"Frustration and rage are very different emotions, though. I haven't -- have we really seen rage from the President on this? I think most people would say no."

"Can you describe it? Does he yell and scream? What does he do?"

Important questions! Is the president more frustrated, or mad? Doesn't he know that the oil will stop spilling into the Gulf if he just gets madder??

The article also has a list of links to other prominent "journalists" who have jumped on board the "Obama should get angry" bandwagon, in case you'd like more of the same idiocy. I feel kind of sorry for Chip, as he used to have a shred of integrity, back when he was just a "poll numbers guy" during the 2008 election season. Then he joined the White House press corps, and it's like he's had some sort of lobotomy or something. Maybe it's a prerequisite for the job, or something.

Sigh.

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[Short post today, my apologies.]

I read a story today in the Washington Post which deserves a lot more attention than it has so far gotten, and for that reason, I'm turning the bulk of this column over to an excerpt. This sort of thing truly enrages me, because it is institutionalized, legalized corruption at its finest. I'm beginning to think John McCain was right on the whole subject of earmarks -- just ban the practice altogether.

Washington, before it became a city, was a swamp. You can put fancy neoclassical buildings up everywhere, but it seems you can never get rid of the inherent swampiness of the town. Sigh.

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Finally, some good news

While I would immediately caution everyone not to get overly optimistic about what I'm about to say, President Obama's approval rating was looking up in April. Gains were modest, but were pretty much across the board. Although, as I said, the end of the month saw a slight reversal to this trend, likely the result of the drip, drip, drip nature (or, more properly, "gush, gush, gush") of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

More on all of that in a bit. As well as a special look, at the end here, at how Obama stacks up against Ronald Reagan's first term. We're interrupting our march backwards through time, comparing Obama to all previous presidents for whom polling data is available, to highlight the Obama versus Reagan picture. Of course, graphs comparing Obama with every previous president back to Eisenhower are always available at the Obama Poll Watch website, for your perusal.

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It is a great temptation for people in government to mete out harsh punishment after something happens which they do not agree with or support. Whenever some incident bursts onto the public consciousness and raises an outcry, government officials almost always feel the urge to use their power to explicitly punish whoever is responsible. The BP oil spill is just the most recent (and most glaring) example of this right now. But there's one problem with national politicians elbowing each other out of the way to punish individuals or companies in such a fashion -- it's not only illegal, it's downright unconstitutional to do so.

Here is the relevant text:

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
-United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 9

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Memorial Day is the time to memorialize all the brave individuals who served our country throughout its history, and sometimes paid the ultimate price for doing so. But, in particular, this year I'd like to focus on all those who did their duty for their country, and fought for the American ideal of equality for all citizens -- even while they did not enjoy such rights themselves, either in the military or in American life at the time. These second-class citizens, one would think, would have even less reason than citizens accorded full rights under the law to risk death on a foreign battlefield, and therefore would not have volunteered to do so. One would be wrong in thinking this, however.

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Our headline today quite obviously references the legislative progress this week on banning the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy (of not allowing gay people to openly serve their country)... but we've got another asking-and-telling issue which we simply must deal with first, before we get to any of that.

You see, the Republicans are asking you -- that's right, you, Mr. and Mrs. America -- to tell them exactly what they should be doing in Congress. Over the Intertubes. And so far, it's not been going exactly as planned. In fact, it could adequately be described (in youngster-of-today vernacular) as an "epic fail."

The idea itself was a simple one. Put up a website, let ordinary people suggest things Republicans should be doing in Congress, and let them vote on all the wonderful ideas. The problem is, well... those Intertubes have some awfully wacky folks on them, don't they?

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President Barack Obama, as expected, was asked at today's press conference about the assertation by Representative Joe Sestak, who is running for the Senate from Pennsylvania, that the White House offered him a job in order to sideline him from the primary race against Arlen Specter (which Sestak then won). Obama's answer was to kick the can down the road a bit. This is not too surprising, since this is what his White House has been doing with the issue for three months now. Here is Obama's response to the question:

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President Obama has just announced he'll hold a (for him, rare) press conference tomorrow. The questions asked will largely be focused on the oil spill in the Gulf.... as well as the usual assorted inanity from the White House press corps (has anyone else noticed that the intelligence of a question these reporters ask is inversely proportional to the amount of money that reporter makes?). But there's a "big picture" type of question which really should be asked -- or, even better, that Obama should answer, even before the question round begins. And that is the fundamental disconnect a lot of federal agencies have at their core: their mission statement is both to award permission (and rake in fees for doing so), and also to enforce the laws the permission is bestowed under. In other words, these departments (and there are many of them) act as both a salesman and a cop.

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Optimism is growing this week that Congress will repeal the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) policy of not allowing gays to serve openly in the United States military. To be more accurate, what Congress is proposing is a watered-down version of a full repeal. Which is ironic, because the purpose of their "compromise" is to fix DADT -- which itself was the original compromise on the issue that President Clinton signed.

But it may be enough, for now. If it passes. President Obama and the White House had a much more incremental plan, which was for the Pentagon to study the issue all year long, publish their study right before the end of the year (conveniently, after the midterm elections), and then next year Congress could tackle the issue from their end. This was to provide political cover for Democrats, so they didn't have to vote on such a hot-button issue in an election year.

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The recent controversy over Republican senatorial nominee Rand Paul's comments and views on civil rights (and on the role of the federal government versus private business and private individuals in general), is certainly entertaining and quite possibly damaging to his candidacy (or possibly not, this is Kentucky we're talking about, after all), but at the same time it is probably not going to be the key issue that decides Kentucky voters this November. It's a pretty safe assumption that most people for whom civil rights are a top voting issue have already made up their minds not to vote for Paul anyway. But there's a much more fundamental argument to have with Tea Party candidates like Paul (and Republican candidates in general) which, so far, has been missing in the media debate. The real question that should be asked is: "What, exactly, in the federal budget will you cut to 'rein in Washington spending' and attack the deficit?" Because the answers to that are going to be the most effective argument to make against the Tea Party movement's surge within the Republican Party -- because my guess is that no matter what they answer, the voters are not going to like it.

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