QUOTE OF THE DAY: Andrew Sullivan

"If America's ideals are universal, they cannot be reduced to the ownership of one country.... What I see here is far from exceptional. It is the routine pattern of the rise and fall of all republics that become empires. It is what happened to Rome and Spain and Britain: Success, over-reach, hubris, bankruptcy and decline. And the withering of the sinews of a republic's body - as in the supine, divided, incompetent Congress, and a court so deferent to the emperor's unrestricted power in waging war wherever he pleases." — Andrew Sullivan