Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Rosanna Arquette, 53. She's been in a lot of excellent things, hasn't she? Very likeable. Also, she was in a James at 16, so there's that.

The good stuff:


1. Daniel Larison, taking on interventionists who can't be bothered to explain how intervening (in various places) would actually work.

2. Yes, there were some good national polls for Barack Obama yesterday. Yes, it's better at this point to have good head-to-head polls than bad ones; it's not twelve months ago when I'd say it's totally irrelevant. But, no, there's no reason to think the election has changed substantially, as Nate Silver points out.

3. Rules committee reform in the House? Suzy Khimm reports on what a former House Parliamentarian would like to see. Don't hold your breath on this one -- but it's good to have as many reminders as possible that strict rule by majority party isn't necessarily any better than the mess in the Senate. As always, I'll point out that strict rule by the majority party is not the same thing as majority rule, so even if you like majority rule you should be aware of that difference.