Things You Hear on NPR: If the Person You’re Interviewing Doesn’t Give You Quite the Quote You Wanted, Just Go Ahead and Say It for Him

NPR this morning, “reporting” on immigration policy (getting less subtle in its advocacy for one side and its chosen narrative):

[NPR’s Steve] INSKEEP: So for that symbolic prosecution, they’ve been diverting from drug cases. I get that. But I’m remembering when Jeff Sessions announced this policy. He didn’t say to prosecutors across the country, abandon drug prosecutions. He said prosecute everybody. And if you need more resources, let us know. Have prosecutors been getting more resources to handle these border-crossing cases?

Things You Hear on NPR: Overturning Marriage Laws Something to Celebrate, but Voting Reforms ‘Controversial’

Here’s how NPR began its story today on the upholding of Ohio’s latest voting reform:

An ideologically split U.S. Supreme Court Monday upheld Ohio’s controversial “use-it-or-lose-it” voting law by a 5-to-4 margin.

Here are the corresponding openings of NPR’s top two stories (according to their own measures) about Obergefell, the 2015 Supreme Court decision that forced states to redefine marriage:

Introduction to Conservatism: Four Book Recommendations

I sometimes wonder (and I’m sometimes asked) what I think would be the single best thing to read, what book I would recommend, to introduce someone to the ideas of conservatism for the first time, or to persuade those not yet persuaded.  (To date, I’m not sure I have an answer.  Mark Steyn’s America Alone and Arthur C. Brooks’s Who Really Cares—and of course C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity—were significant and influential for me, but I’m not sure any of them is a direct answer to that question.)

In a recent interview, Ben Shapiro asked Jonah Goldberg more or less the same question; Goldberg gamely offered some impromptu thoughts on the subject.  Here’s the list:

My Response to Friends Who Believe Supreme Court in Masterpiece Cakeshop Ruled ‘in Favor of Discrimination’