[guest post by Dana]

Joe Biden’s statement:

It is with broken hearts that Hallie, Hunter, Ashley, Jill and I announce the passing of our husband, brother and son, Beau, after he battled brain cancer with the same integrity, courage and strength he demonstrated every day of his life.

The entire Biden family is saddened beyond words. We know that Beau’s spirit will live on in all of us—especially through his brave wife, Hallie, and two remarkable children, Natalie and Hunter.

Beau’s life was defined by service to others. As a young lawyer, he worked to establish the rule of law in war-torn Kosovo. A major in the Delaware National Guard, he was an Iraq War veteran and was awarded the Bronze Star. As Delaware’s Attorney General, he fought for the powerless and made it his mission to protect children from abuse.

More than his professional accomplishments, Beau measured himself as a husband, father, son and brother. His absolute honor made him a role model for our family. Beau embodied my father’s saying that a parent knows success when his child turns out better than he did.

In the words of the Biden family: Beau Biden was, quite simply, the finest man any of us have ever known.

Beau Biden was only 46 years old.

May God comfort the entire Biden family at this difficult time and envelop them in His love.

–Dana

UPDATE BY PATTERICO: This is something, isn’t it?

Happy Birthday to the best coach I could have asked for. Love you Pop. #TBT pic.twitter.com/LPf2QxuE9h

— Beau Biden (@BeauBiden) November 20, 2014

Yesterday I published a post defending Charles C.W. Cooke against good-natured criticism by Ace on the issue of “using their tactics against them” as it relates to the Bernie Sanders deal.

As I expected, several people misread the post as an argument that we should always engage in “gentlemanly” or “Marquis of Queensbury” style behavior that eschews such lowbrow common tactics as questioning people’s hypocrisy. The people who read my post that way were wrong; that’s not what I said. But part of the problem is that people throw around phrases like “we need to fight fire with fire” without being specific.

So let’s look at a couple of specific examples.

How would you react in the following situations?

Example 1: You are a city councilmember and are foursquare against a minimum wage. Over your vote, your fellow council members pass an absurd $15 minimum wage that will certainly disemploy significant numbers of lower-skilled workers. A labor union that lobbied hard for the minimum wage now seeks an exemption.

You have the ability to cast the deciding vote. Do you hold firm to your principle that the minimum wage is bad in all cases, and vote for the exemption? Or do you hold the labor union to its own standards by voting against the exemption — an act that may also help promote your longer-term policy goals?

Example 2: The candidate you oppose for President smears your favored candidate with a dirty and false story which gains traction, and your candidate is looking like he may lose a close race. You have the opportunity to publish a blockbuster story about the opposing candidate that will almost certainly torpedo his candidacy. As you are about to publish, you learn your story is false, because you discover a document written by a now deceased person that utterly debunks your story. Only you know about the document. If you publish your story and burn the document, nobody will ever know your story is false.

Do you hold firm to your principles of honesty and refuse to publish the story? Or do you hold the opposing candidate to his own standards, and publish a false story to retaliate for his own false story — an act that will probably also help you elect your favored candidate and achieve other long-term policy goals?

Please consider what you would do in each instance, give your answer in the comments, and then only after you have commented, read further below to see what I would do.

(more…)

Kevin Kane from the Grapes of Wrath and Bryan Potvin from The Northern Pikes, doing a classic old Pikes song: “Hopes Go Astray” — live and acoustic.

By the way, the site was indeed down last night. The hosting company had a series of events go south that affected the server for multiple sites; it was not unique to this site. All seems well now. Sorry for any inconvenience.