BITTER, PARTY OF ONE: David Brooks homes in on the Democratic trap – letting their current powerlessness fuel their anger rather than increase their discipline. One crucial disadvantage of the opposition today is that they seem, well, merely against everything. Some of this is inevitable when you’re out of power. But if you do not balance it with a proactive agenda, it can turn into Michael Moore-ism pretty quickly. Specifically: cavilling constantly about the war on terror without proposing a coherent alternative. David is also right to notice how unconservative this White House can be: spending at a rate not seen since LBJ, creating a new bank-breaking drug-entitlement, slapping tariffs on favored industries, subsidizing big agriculture, and on and on. But the Dems don’t see this. And so their critique – crude and Krugmanian – doesn’t convince as many as it could.

EMERSON AND BLOGGERS: Chris Lydon, who won legions of fans with his Boston-based NPR talk-show, now has a blog. And he has an idea: that the blogosphere is an essentially Emersonian enterprise:

Melancholy and enthusiasm are contrasting strands through all Emerson, but there is no summing up this man who disagreed with himself and both perplexed and dazzled his friends.- Walt Whitman loved it that nobody could tag Emerson’s thinking: “no province, no clique, no church.”- Whitman felt “a flood of light” about Emerson, an impression of pure being.- Hawthorne said Emerson “wore a sunbeam in his face.”
In the booming energy of blog world, we are glimpsing the fulfillment of an Emersonian vision: this democracy of outspoken individuals.-
“Trust thyself,” was Emerson’s refrain.-“Every heart vibrates to that string.”-
Speak your own convictions, and your own contradictions, he urged. Claim your own ideas before someone else does.-“I hate quotations,” begins another of the famous aphorisms.-“Tell me what you know.” Which is what the great bloggers keep doing.

Yes, Chris is onto something. Read the whole thing.

BARRY ON JOURNALISTS: “I think the public is genuinely unhappy with us. Lately, when I tell people I work for a newspaper, I’ve detected the subtle signs of disapproval – the dirty looks; the snide remarks; the severed animal heads in my bed. How did we get into this situation? Without pointing the finger of blame at any one institution, I would say it is entirely the fault of The New York Times.” – Dave Barry, hilarious as usual, Miami Herald.

ASHCROFT WATCH: My worries about the way in which the Justice Department is using secret service regulations to suppress anti-Bush protestors is shared by the Economist.

NYT AND GEOGRAPHY: No prizes for catching this howler in the NYT yesterday. It’s about the Pope’s visit to Bosnia:

But it was the pope’s presence here that spoke volumes. His arrival comes as the broken pieces of the Baltic states are desperately trying to prove that they have made progress toward unity and deserve a first step toward admission into the European Union.

Balkans. Baltics. Whatever.

WHY ISRAEL IS DIFFERENT: This wouldn’t be allowed in any Arab state.