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Brink Lindsey is not a household name outside the Beltway, but inside he's a well-known writer and thinker. After a successful career as an international trade lawyer, Lindsey was hired by the libertarian Cato Institute. At Cato, Lindsey studied trade issues, wrote two widely praised books, and launched the institute's influential web magazine http://www.cato-unbound.org/ He was promoted to Cato's vice president for research.

"Libertarianism" is a philosophy of personal freedom that fits awkwardly within the American party system. Yet by and large libertarians have tended to align themselves within the Republican political coalition. Certainly Brink aligned himself that way through most of his adult life: I know, because he and I have been friends since we attended law school together back in the 1980s.

Brink initially supported the Iraq war. But as the war soured, Brink soured on the leaders who had waged that war. Brink began to argue that libertarians might find more natural partners in the Democratic than the Republican party. So long as George W. Bush remained president, Brink's Cato colleagues remained open to Brink's anti-Republican views. Lindsey received funding to start a private series of discussions to explore liberal-libertarian commonalities.

All proceeded in a thoughtful think-tank way until the election of Barack Obama in November 2008.

For libertarians and their donors, the election of Obama threw open all the terror of the advent of the apocalypse. Discuss ideas over dinner with Obama supporters? You might as well break bread with emissaries of Satan.

As with Juan Williams, there came with Brink a straw that broke the camel's back:

Lindsey published a negative review of a new book by Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute. Brooks argued that America was riven by a radical culture war, with 30 percent of the country manipulating democratic institutions to impose European-style social democracy on an unwilling 70 percent majority.

Writing in the liberal (uh oh) American Prospect in July, Lindsey argued:

"Figuring out how to restore growth and how to construct an effective but affordable safety net, are questions for debate, analysis, and democratic decision-making. My answers to those questions may differ from yours, but dividing up into warring tribes and demonizing each other aren't the ways to figure out who's right."

Shortly after that article appeared, Lindsey was fired along with a more junior Cato associate with whom Lindsey was co-authoring a book, Will Wilkinson (now a blogger at the Economist).

The Lindsey-Wilkinson firing touched off no Fox News explosion. No bold assertion of the principle of freedom of expression: only a little murmuring among Washington policy elites.

Among the right-wing of that policy elite, the murmuring was especially nervous. The Lindsey-Wilkinson firing followed my own termination from the American Enterprise Institute in March, after I posted a blog item lamenting that Republicans had thrown away an opportunity to negotiate a health care deal in order to inflict a personal defeat on the president. Which termination in turn followed the firing of Bruce Bartlett from a Dallas-based conservative think tank after a book criticizing the Bush administration for overspending.

Sometime before these events, a young Cato Institute blogger named Julian Sanchez proposed the term "epistemic closure" to describe what was happening in the conservative world. That's a fancy way of saying that minds are closed to contradictory information.

And one demonstration of how minds are closed? The ability to raise a howl about liberal close-mindedness after the firing of Juan Williams -- without recalling one's own side's exactly comparable actions not even 90 days ago.

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These are some of the results of The Harris Poll of 3,084 adults surveyed online between October 11 and 18, 2010 by Harris Interactive

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Overall, 46% of voters say they approve of the president's performance. Fifty-four percent (54%) disapprove.

Democrats retain a slight edge in the battle for control of the Senate according to the Rasmussen Reports Election 2010 Balance of Power summary. Six Senate races remain Toss-Ups (California, Colorado, Illinois, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Washington). Republicans need to win five of the six to win control.

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Despite doom-saying about Democrats’ chances in the midterms, the latest NEWSWEEK Poll (full results) shows that they remain in a close race with Republicans 12 days before Election Day, while the president’s approval ratings have climbed sharply. The poll finds that 48 percent of registered voters would be more likely to vote for Democrats, compared with 42 percent who lean Republican (those numbers are similar to those in the last NEWSWEEK Poll, which found Democrats favored 48 percent to 43 percent).

President Obama’s approval ratings have jumped substantially, crossing the magic halfway threshold to 54 percent, up from 48 percent in late September, while the portion of respondents who disapprove of the president dropped to 40 percent, the lowest disapproval rating in a NEWSWEEK Poll since February 2010.

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Mr Obama got top marks from those with college educations - 47 per cent - and those living in the west of the country (42 per cent).

Conversely, three-quarters of those without a degree, two-thirds of Midwesterners and 66 per cent of Southerners give him poor grades.

It’s hardly surprising that nine out of every ten Republicans give the president negative ratings.

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It is NOT normal for the rightous to listen to crazed idiots, nor for us to even pose the question as to why the9sic) don't. It is the equivalent of asking "why don't lions hug lambs?".

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The reports of Obama's "plummeting poll ratings" are greatly exaggerated. Among recent Presidents, a rating in the low 40's is hardly the kiss of death, as both Reagan and Clinton are popularly considered to have been successful Presidents, and both served two terms. Both Bushes, in fact, were helped by wars (Americans rally behind their Presidents during war). And both Clinton and Obama have been hammered incessantly by rightwing press.

Perhaps most importantly, since LBJ, all Presidents - except Clinton - have dipped below 40% job approval at some point in their Presidencies.

Unlike Republican Presidents, Democrats do not have a megaphone like Fox (and talk radio) to trumpet their successes, though several writers have attempted to do so.

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