Weigel

Now Let Us Speak of Famous Earmarks

On Twitter, Jason Linkins reminds us of one of John McCain’s hobbies: Tweeting lists of silly-sounding earmarks. Remember this howler? Oh, those wacky liberals and their silly-sounding spending! Why did McCain rank this item #1 on the silliness scale? I’d guess it was the same reason Bobby Jindal derided “something called volcano monitoring” in his 2009 State of the Union response – you don’t hear this sort of natural disaster and think “Tennessee.” Or “Richmond.” But this stuff happens, and it’s useful to fund it. Matthew Yglesias has more on the point-scoring, the rapidity of which encourages me that no one’s really hurting from the earthquake.