It’s been a strange day of stops and starts, and of late-afternoon bloggy emotion, thanks to the provocations of Rich Lowry and Erick Erickson. Here are a few final items:
* Harry Reid has little margin for error in maintaining his “nuclear” threat over the filibuster, reports The Hill‘s Alexander Bolton.
* Katha Pollit updates readers on the horrific case of the Salvadorean woman being forced by her country’s government to carry a life-threatening pregnancy to term.
* Ezra Klein sums up the evidence and the arguments about the causes and effects of recent slowing in health care costs.
* At Ten Miles Square, Paul Stephens commemorates United Nations Peacekeepers Day, and explores reasons for their high (if largely unnoticed) casualty rates.
* At College Guide, Daniel Luzer cites Harvard’s sixty-person public relations staff as a case study in administrative bloat in higher education.
And in non-political news:
* “Fast Casual” food trend (food without service staff) taking a growing toll on food chain profits.
That’s it for today, sports-and-scandal fans. Let’s end the day with another Leonard Cohen performance, this one of “The Stranger Song” in 1967. He’s still astonishing audiences 46 years later.
Selah.
