Defining Deviancy Down

By defining what is deviant, we are enabled to know what is not, and hence to live by shared standards. --Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method, 1985

Given the amount of attention we've given to the US Attorney Purge, there's been no end of right-wing nutjobs who've written in asking just what the big deal is. In most cases, these are just attacks dressed up as questions. And I do my best -- not always successfully -- to ignore them. But interspersed in that mess of emails are a few who seem to be asking, genuinely, what the big deal is. Perhaps they're critics of the president or conservatives who genuinely don't see it. --Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo, March 25, 2007