With today's award to Paul Krugman, the Nobel as gone to an economist who died a decade ago. The person alive to receive the award is merely a public intellectual, a person operating in the same domain as Oprah Winfrey. And even as a public intellectual, the prize is inappropriate, because never before has a scientist operating in the capacity of a public intellectual so abused and debased the science he purports to represent. Krugman's New York Times column drawing on economics is the equivalent of 2006's Nobelists in Physics, astromers Mather and Smoot, doing a column on astrology -- and then, in that column, telling lies about astronomy. But what's done is done. The only question now is whether Krugman will pay taxes on the prize at the low rates enabled by the Bush tax cuts he has done so much to discredit, or if he will volunteer to pay taxes at higher rates he considers more fair.

You see, this is the level of discourse Sullivan maintained for many years towards Krugman. He should acknowledge his errors here. Indeed, it is precisely the type of thing Sullivan would have written in, say 2003 and 2004. Come clean Sully. Admit your idiocies. Start fresh.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only