So much for fiscal conservatism. Then again, historically speaking, it's easier to pitch dismantling the social welfare safety net for the poor and middle class as a way of saving it when you've run the government into deficit through tax cuts for the rich.

More compassionate conservatism: "...the president's proposed budget for the 2005 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, would control the rising cost of housing vouchers for the poor, require some veterans to pay more for health care, slow the growth in spending on biomedical research and merge or eliminate some job training and employment programs." And tax cuts. Don't hold your breath for corporate subsidies or the Pentagon budget to go under the knife.

Ann Coulter has a new conspiracy theory: The American government (less often than she thinks, but never mind that) allows people who benefit from government services to vote for candidates who support perpetuating them. This is classic Coulter - first she argues that shredding the federal government is supported by everyone except for wealthy Hollywood celebrities and a pathological underclass - then that tax-cutting Republicans have it rough because so many Americans greedily want to keep paying taxes and benefiting from the services they pay for. Conservatives, of course, never vote their economic interest...

Andrew Sullivan, rightly blasting Bill Bennett's attack on gay rights, concludes with a telling indictment: It's not an argument. It's the rhetorical embellishment of a privilege. Conservatism has always been prone to such a trap. Perhaps Sullivan, one of the strongest proponents of driving a wedge between civil rights and economic justice as ideologies and as movements, should take his own words to heart.