This is getting to be all-Lindsey-Graham-all-the-time, but the guy’s just had a busy week.

That said, his questioning of Chuck Hagel today wasn’t his best moment.

I have no particular problem with any of the questions our senior senator asked the nominee, in terms of their substance. I do have a problem with Graham’s hectoring tone, his interruptions, his condescension. This was not the way Lindsey Graham usually interacts with people, and it was painful to watch. It was like he was doing an impersonation of someone with a completely different personality.

He managed to get Hagel off-balance, and the nominee looked bad a couple of times. But the way Graham was riding him generated sympathy for Hagel, which is not what I think the senator meant to do.

Personally, I have a lot of doubts about Hagel as secretary of Defense, and I think Lindsey Graham is capable of shedding light constructively on the uproblem areas. It’s the kind of thing I rely on him to do. But that’s not what I saw, and heard, him doing on this video clip, and that is disappointing.

Since Barack Obama’s (public) inauguration is today, and it’s also MLK Day, and there’s the annual King Day at the Dome march and rally in Columbia, I went looking for an image that sort of tied these things together.

Unfortunately, what I found was a very poor quality, but I share it anyway.

Above is an image of Barack Obama speaking at the King Day ceremonies on Jan. 21, 2008, just a few days before the South Carolina primary. Seated to his right you can (sort of) see Hillary Clinton (with a red scarf) and John Edwards, awaiting their turns to speak. (It was a fairly low-res image taken at a distance and blown up, and the subjects were in shadow while the foreground was brightly lit.)

It was brutally cold. Earlier in the day, after meeting with me and the editorial board at The State, Obama borrowed our men’s room to put on some long johns that someone in his entourage had run out to buy for him during our interview. It was a slightly funny scene when I went downstairs a few minutes after our meeting ended to see if our guests had left, and found Secret Service agents guarding the men’s room.

I don’t know where they found long johns to buy that early on a holiday morning. All I know is that was a fairly busy day. First, there was the Obama interview, which he could only do at 8 a.m. on MLK Day, as the week before he had not been closer to us than Nevada. (Normally, my day started at 10 — and ended about 8.)

Then we had to meet to make our endorsement decision. This was facilitated by the fact that we all liked Obama, Joe Biden (whom we also liked) had dropped out months before, and Hillary Clinton’s campaign had avoided meeting with us. Maybe she could have talked us into endorsing her instead, but by that point I was seeing her as emblematic of old partisan warfare and Obama as something new and better. So it would have been a challenge for her, but not impossible. But the deliberate avoidance of an interview meant she denied herself that chance.

Still, we discussed it thoroughly, and made our decision. Then I ran out and froze for awhile at the King Day event, and came back and blogged about it. Then the endorsement had to be written, along with my column about the endorsement. I taped a brief video announcement about the endorsement. Some of the was completed the next day, as I didn’t post the endorsement stuff until then, and the endorsement and column weren’t in the paper until Wednesday.

But it was still a pretty busy day, considering it was our day off.

I missed the State of the State last night — perhaps some of y’all would like to share your observations about it — but I read the newspaper story this morning, and the headline struck me as really ironic:

Really? Did she say that with a straight face? The woman who hardly had a word to say about South Carolina when she was running to be governor of it, but went on and on about “Obama, Obama, Obama,” seeming to forget that her opponent was named “Sheheen”?

That Nikki Haley?

But of course, for her and other Tea Party politicians, the “look not to Washington” meme is yet another way of saying, Obama, Obama, Obama…

If it weren’t, I’d be on board with the message on so many fronts. I dig subsidiarity. I think the state should fully assume the responsibility of providing an education to its citizens, for instance. Just as long as we’re willing to tax ourselves enough to get the job done properly, of course. The same goes for many other public functions, such as running a prison system, and enforcing state statutes.

But under the principle of subsidiarity, one recognizes that there are some tasks to which the smaller government is inadequate, so they properly become the responsibility of the larger entity.

Defense is one such task. Another is health care reform. The best solutions in health care are national, and far more likely to be effective on that scale. And in any case, our state has little interest in effectively addressing the problem.

When Haley and others reject Obamacare, they are really rejecting the idea of health care reform — if we understand “reform” to be finding a way for health care to be accessible and affordable for all of our citizens. I’ve seen no indication that the naysayers are willing to do what it takes to address that effectively. Have you?

That makes rejecting the imperfect solution offered by the federal government unconscionable. The governor of Arizona, no Obama fan, understands that, at least when it comes to Medicaid expansion. I’m sorry that our governor does not.

Here is a rather lengthy announcement from Andrew Sullivan about how he is striking out on his own with a new blog that will sell subscriptions, not ads:

And so, as we contemplated the end of our contract with the Beast at the end of 2012, we faced a decision. As usual, we sought your input and the blogosphere’s – hence thenot-terribly subtle thread that explored whether online readers will ever pay for content, and how. The answer is: no one really knows. But as we debated and discussed that unknowable future, we felt more and more that getting readers to pay a small amount for content was the only truly solid future for online journalism. And since the Dish has, from its beginnings, attempted to pioneer exactly such a solid future for web journalism, we also felt we almost had a duty to try and see if we could help break some new ground.

The only completely clear and transparent way to do this, we concluded, was to become totally independent of other media entities and rely entirely on you for our salaries, health insurance, and legal, technological and accounting expenses…

So, as of February 1, we will revert to our old URL – www.andrewsullivan.com. All previous URLs will automatically redirect, so don’t worry about losing us. Until then, the Beast has generously agreed to keep us on so we can organize ourselves in time for the launch. In fact, Tina and Barry have been fully supportive of this decision once we made it, although we’re all sad to part ways.

Here’s the core principle: we want to create a place where readers – and readers alone – sustain the site. No bigger media companies will be subsidizing us; no venture capital will be sought to cushion our transition (unless my savings count as venture capital); and, most critically, no advertising will be getting in the way…

So for the next month, we’re going to offer you advance membership of the Dish for $19.99 a year, which translates to $1.67 a month, which is around a nickel a day. The meter won’t start until February, and the price won’t change then, but by pre-subscribing, you give us a crucial financial bridge to get to independence – and you’ll never notice a thing when the transition happens.

To be honest, we didn’t know where to set the price – we have almost no precedents for where we want to go – but $19.99 seemed the lowest compatible with a serious venture. We wanted to make this as affordable as possible, while maximizing revenues.

Maybe, just maybe, Sullivan can pull that off, with the readership he has. It will be interesting to see. Since the old-media business model collapsed some time back, everyone who wants to do journalism for a living in the future has been looking around for the new model. Sullivan says, “The point of doing this as simply and as purely as possible is precisely to forge a path other smaller blogs and sites can follow.”

And we smaller blogs will be watching.

OK, so maybe the House isn’t going to vote on it tonight, but apparently there is a deal:

President Obama and Senate Republicans reached a sweeping deal late Monday that would let income taxes rise significantly for the first time in more than 20 years, fulfilling Obama’s promise to raise taxes on the rich and averting the worst effects of the “fiscal cliff.”

According to Democratic aides, Vice President Biden is on his way to the Capitol to explain the details of the pact he negotiated with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and a Senate vote on the package could be held by 10:30 p.m. ET, beating a midnight deadline. White House officials gave in on the last issue, how to handle estate taxes, yielding to GOP wishes, aides said.

The House will begin considering the bill tomorrow, with a vote on final passage in the next day or two…

I’m not sure what I think of it, beyond being disgusted that we had to have all this drama over something that should have been normal, everyday functioning of government.

You?

One reason I like having the new Twitter widget on my blog is that it’s a quick way of sharing with y’all cool stuff that I run across elsewhere — stuff that I probably wouldn’t get around to writing an actual, separate blog post about, but which you might enjoy anyway.

Stuff that an explanation or elaboration would ruin. Stuff like this surreal bit in The New Yorker, which as you can see in my Twitter widget at right, I reTweeted. Excerpts:

If I were built, I’d avert the fiscal cliff. I’d avert the fiscal cliff with my muscles. “Listen up, pansies,” I’d say to Boehner and Obama. And they’d take one look at my torso and know I meant business…

If I were built, our Congresspeople would more truly represent our interests, rather than the interests of corporate America. There’d be more jobs, less crime, and the tax code would be simplified. If I were built, income tax would be based on physique. It’d be easy: you pay your body fat percentage. Rush Limbaugh would lose his house and go bankrupt. And Nancy Pelosi? She would be my wife, if I were built. Congresswoman Pelosi knows a real man when she sees one. And C.B.O. wouldn’t stand for Congressional Budget Office, it’d stand for chest, buttocks, and obliques. And there’d be no more gerrymandering or filibustering or pork. If I were built, the only pork you’d see in Congress would be the spare ribs Paul Ryan and I sometimes shared post-workout.

If I were built, I wouldn’t know what gerrymandering was. I wouldn’t really understand the issues if I were built. But it wouldn’t matter, because my muscles would understand the issues. And my wife, Nancy Pelosi. She’d understand the issues, too…

The world is full of fun stuff like that, as well as interesting and even important things that I might have time for a quick comment about, but not a full blog post.

And if you follow me, who knows? You could end up being my 2,000th follower. I’m at 1,961 and counting…

Stan Dubinsky brought this to my attention via email today. Apparently, this railroad bridge is in Durham, NC, and has stood for a century despite the fact that oversized vehicles slam into it “about once a month.”

So what I want to know is, how did they get all this footage of the crashes? Did somebody really leave a video camera going in the hope of catching an event that happens only monthly? And then, did it over and over?

Oh, wait, I see — this appears to explain it…

OK, it’s official:

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Gov. Nikki Haley told the federal government Thursday that South Carolina won’t set up a state health exchange, saying President Barack Obama’s re-election did not change her stance…

Under the law, states that can’t or won’t set up exchanges will have theirs run by Washington…

The attitude behind this still ticks me off. Saying “we won’t play” to the one chance at healthcare reform in this generation, just because it’s associated with Barack Obama, is infuriating. And really unforgivable. It’s just so pouty-childish. Like a passive-aggressive, totally ineffective version of nullification.

But I suspect we’ll all be better off with this thing run by the feds, rather than by people who want it to dry up and die.

The bizarre thing is that Ms. Small Gummint prefers for this thing that will affect so many South Carolinians to be run by the federal government rather than the state. But I guess expecting it to make sense is expecting too much.

This kind of reminds me of our anti-union governor advocating to have our children driven to school by members of the Teamsters Union. Which is what you get when you privatize school buses…

What I’ve heard said about South Carolina weather can be said about an election result in Richland County — if you don’t like it now, wait a few minutes and it will change. (Actually, that weather saying makes more sense in a place like Kansas, but never mind.)

After a court ordered a recount last evening, after I put out my Virtual Front Page, this comes in this morning:

The South Carolina GOP plans to ask the S.C. Supreme Court on Friday morning to halt a recount of votes from Tuesday’s election from Richland County.

The state Election Commission said Thursday it would recount all votes in the county Friday after massive voting-machine problems.

At stake — for the parties — is the seesaw contest between Joe McCulloch and Kirkman Finlay III for the House District 75 seat.

At stake for the rest of us is the integrity, or lack thereof, of our elections.

Meanwhile, read Warren Bolton’s column this morning on some perspective on the county legislative delegation’s unanimous decision to replace an experienced director of elections with the woman who presided over Tuesday’s mess. An excerpt:

Yes, Lillian McBride and her staff are responsible for making elections run smoothly, something they failed miserably at on Tuesday. But make no mistake. The buck ultimately stops with Richland County legislators, some of whom have declared they’re going to get to the bottom of this mess in a hearing next week. I hope they’re prepared to look in the mirror.

After all, it was the county’s legislative delegation that voted unanimously last year to appoint Ms. McBride director of the newly merged Richland County Voter Registration office and the Election Commission.

Mike Cinnamon oversaw elections admirably for almost four decades, but the delegation hardly gave him the first look. In effect, it forced Mr. Cinnamon out the door and put someone in charge whose expertise was in making sure voters got registered, not ensuring they could vote in a timely manner. Mr. Cinnamon retired, taking his vast knowledge with him.

At the time, Sen. Darrell Jackson, who chairs the delegation, and Sen. John Courson said both candidates were qualified but that Mr. Cinnamon had garnered no support. Sen. Jackson went on to say that he supported Ms. McBride because he wanted someone who could serve long term and who had more supervisory experience. As director over voter registration, Ms. McBride oversaw seven full-time and five part-time employees, while Mr. Cinnamon had a one-person staff between elections.

But how do you usher out someone with such institutional knowledge and an admirable record of running elections without somehow making sure things can continue to operate well?

Well, the election is over on the east coast, except for those who were standing in line as I posted this.

Soon we’ll know — at least, I hope so.

Let’s discuss the results in this thread. I’ll do my best to keep up with your comments…

This morning I had a comment from someone/something on a post that was more than two years old. Which was suspicious on its face. Here was the comment:

Hi there, I do believe your website could possibly be having web browser compatibility issues.
When I look at your site in Safari, it looks fine however, when opening in IE, it’s got some overlapping issues. I merely wanted to provide you with a quick heads up! Apart from that, excellent site!

That’s the first one I’ve gotten that seemed to be trying to call a problem to my attention, in a new ploy to suggest that an actual person was sincerely reacting to my blog.

But the dead giveaway was the mention of Internet Explorer. I mean, what actual human still uses IE?

OK, I’m kidding. I’m sure many of my readers do so, and that’s fine (personally, I alternate between Chrome and Firefox, with an occasional foray into Safari). No, the ultimate giveaway was the “excellent site!” bit. Nobody writes in to say that, except spammers. Not to my blog, anyway. And if they did, they would tell me what it is they like about it, which a machine, so far, cannot do convincingly.

Here’s what I’m wondering about — does anybody know what the spammers hope to gain from such messages? I don’t get it. I followed the provided link, and I can’t see how anyone on the planet could benefit from my having done so. Unless there’s something going on that I don’t see.

I suppose, after all these years of blogging and many more years online, I should understand these things better. But I just ain’t that hep.

Can anyone explain this?

Just got around to following the link Tweeted yesterday by Eva Moore at the Free Times, leading to that paper’s “Tongue-in-Cheek Look at the Next Quarter Century.”

In the section on the year 2019, I found this:

November: Blogger and former The State editorial page editor Brad Warthen, having moved to an apartment above Main Street, wins the election for Columbia City Council’s District 2 seat. Transparency improves, but the length of the average council meeting immediately doubles as Warthen pontificates for hours.

So now you know. I would start working on my campaign speeches now, but I don’t need to. I can wing it.

Before you come to the library for tomorrow night’s panel discussion on the presidential election, come to the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center this evening — actually, registration starts in just an hour as I hit the “publish” button — for this event:

The Greater Columbia Community Relations Council will host a civil, in-depth discussion of the transportation sales tax referendum at Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center on Monday, Oct. 22.

The forum, to be moderated by veteran local broadcast newsman David Stanton, will begin at 6 p.m. Registration starts at 5:30 p.m.

The Community Relations Council is NOT taking a side on this issue, but intends for this event to provide a thorough and fair airing of the issue by all sides, to help Richland County voters be better informed.

There is more than one reason to be for the referendum, and more than one to be against. Consequently, CRC has invited four panelists each from both sides of the debate.

Presenting the case for a NO vote will be:

• Don Weaver – Businessman and president of the South Carolina Association of Taxpayers.
• Bishop Redfern II – The Ecumenical Church.
• Michael Letts – Businessman and candidate for Richland County Council.
• Daniel Rickenmann – Businessman and former Columbia city councilman.

Presenting the case for a YES vote will be:

• Lee Bussell – Businessman and chair of the Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce’s board of directors.
• Paul Livingston – Richland County Council member and Chair of the Richland County Transportation Study Commission.
• Jennifer Harding – Businesswoman and member of the CMRTA board of directors.
• Brian DeQuincy Newman – Attorney, Columbia City Council member and chairman, CMRTA board of directors.

“CRC believes that it is important to bring about frank and civil discussions of issues that affect the quality of life in the Midlands,” said Henri Etta Baskins, executive director of the Community Relations Council. “For that reason we are hosting the upcoming forum.”

The CRC intends to hold other such forums on important issues facing the community, in keeping with its mission to bring together differing views and opinions so that they may be heard “in a manner that aligns with our core values of mutual respect and equal access to opportunities for all,” said Ms. Baskins.

I will be there, as a member of the Community Relations Council, but will not be participating in the program. I had to tell my fellow board members early on in the planning for this that I couldn’t take a direct role in it, as I unquestionably favor one side of this debate — the yes side.

But I will be there and will watch with interest, because assuming we can successfully conduct a civil, fair discussion on this hot local issue, it could be a model for a new way for the CRC to serve this community.

I hope to see you there…

Everybody’s running in circles over Mitt Romney telling The Des Moines Register that “There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda,” and his campaign then issuing statements that supposedly pull him back into the pro-life camp.

I had to smile at this Slate piece about “Romney’s Abortion ‘Agenda’,” which bore the subhed, “Don’t fall for his insinuation that he won’t restrict abortion. It’s full of weasel words.”

Yeah, well, don’t fall for any insinuation he makes that he will restrict abortion, either.

I don’t believe the guy cares one way or the other, which is why the noises he makes on the subject to differing audiences seem so… malleable.

I found this little item from Lynn Sweet at the Chicago Sun-Times interesting:

I’ve learned that Mayor Rahm Emanuel met Thursday with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak–who is delivering a message from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu–that he is not attempting to interfere in the U.S. elections on behalf of Mitt Romney.

Emanuel spokesman Sarah Hamilton confirmed that the meeting took place in Chicago’s City Hall.

The meeting comes after Netanyahu is seen increasingly as making statements that raising questions about Obama’s commitment to defending Israel and preventing an Iranian nuclear strke–questions that hurt Obama with Jewish voters…

Emanuel –whose father is an Israeli-American–is a logical conduit. He is the figure in the Obama orbit most familiar to the Israeli government–having served as a front-and-back channel while he was President Barack Obama’s chief of staff…

Emanuel’s father is more than that. He was a member of the Irgun. He is totally the Israeli version of a made man, a man of respect from way back.

Excuse the Godfather terminology, but that’s what this kind of unofficial, just-between-us-guys stuff reminds me of.

Look at it this way… The word’s out on the street that Netanyahu, the head of one family, has been bad-mouthing the head of another, far more powerful, family, a.k.a. POTUS. So what does he do, since the head of the bigger and more powerful family won’t have a meetin’ with him, so he can’t set things straight in person? Totally on the Q.T., he sends his capo to meet with the other don’s capo, just to talk, one man of respect to the other. The message is, My friend didn’t mean no disrespect to your friend, and certainly hasn’t thrown in with that other guy who’s giving him trouble. Please assure your friend of my friend’s undying loyalty, and remind him we have a mutual enemy, and we remain more than willing to take him out for you, even though it means we’ll take an ungodly amount of heat for it, and our whole country will probably have to go hide out in Sicily for a couple or three years afterward. So please fuhgeddabout this thing so we can take care of that other thing…

And so forth. I get carried away. But this is where my mind goes when one world leader uses such a back channel to communicate the message that that stuff he said was just business, not personal…

Taegan Goddard brings our attention to the following:

Author of Voter ID Law Admits to Racist Email

South Carolina state Rep. Alan Clemmons (R), the author of a voter ID law considered discriminatory by the Justice Department, testified in federal court that, “while crafting the bill, he had responded favorably to a friend’s racist email in support of the measure,” McClatchy reports.

Clemmons

An email from Ed Koziol said that if the legislature offered a reward for voter identification cards, “it would be like a swarm of bees going after a watermelon.”

Clemmons responded: “Amen, Ed, thank you for your support.”

However, Clemmons testified that he did not remember giving out packets of peanuts with cards that said “Stop Obama’s nutty agenda and support voter ID.”

The original story he’s referring to was a bit more circumspect in its headline: “S.C. lawmaker admits positive response to racist email on voter ID bill.” Indicating that the lawmaker didn’t originate the racist meme.

But still. He did say, “Amen.” He now says he regrets that. From the McClatchy Washington Bureau story:

Garrard Beeney, who represented the civil rights groups, presented emails sent to and from Clemmons’ personal account between 2009 and 2011, when he was working on the law. One, from a man named Ed Koziol, used racially charged rhetoric to denounce the idea that poor, black voters might lack transportation or other resources necessary to obtain photo ID. If the legislature offered a reward for identification cards, “it would be like a swarm of bees going after a watermelon,” Koziol wrote.

Beeney asked Clemmons how he had replied to this email. Clemmons hesitated a moment before answering, “It was a poorly considered response when I said, ‘Amen, Ed, thank you for your support.’”

Beeney also contended that Clemmons, a Republican, wrote the law to suppress Democratic votes. Blacks in South Carolina typically vote Democratic. Beeney asked Clemmons whether he remembered distributing packets of peanuts with cards that read “Stop Obama’s nutty agenda and support voter ID.”

Clemmons said he did not, though Beeney said he had testified in June that he did…

Which takes me back to last night. As I noted in my real-time comments during Nikki Haley’s speech, the crowd seemed pretty lukewarm to her until she mentioned Voter ID. The party faithful, they love them some Voter ID. You might say they gave her a big “amen” on that.