I Like Christopher Buckley.

But I cannot quite reconcile the notion that he has conservative or libertarian ideals, and still endorses Obama. Those two ideas simply don't go together.

AllahP thinks there's something not quite right about the break between Chris and National Review; like Ace, I'm fine with it. Though, perhaps, as usual, less brutal and less gleeful in my brutality. (That's why people read Ace, but do not read me. That, and his habit of "accidentally" downloading lesbian pron from time to time onto AoSHQ.)

Buckley is a great writer—and can be funny in a way that his dad never was—but isn't entitled to write a column in a magazine with a different ideology simply on the basis of his last name.

I don't want to sound mean, but no media organ is equivalent to an Ivy League school, where family connections matter more than nearly anything else.

Buckley's got talent, and he'll do fine. I don't think he was a terrific match for National Review, and I'm sure his erstwhile editors were just as sad as he was when it came time to part ways.

And, no,Ace: I don't buy that he did it just to get a property sold.

And, no, AllahP: I'm fine with having people in the tent who can't manage to pull the lever for McCain. I wish they would, for the sake of the WoT, but it isn't mandatory. Not everyone's going to have the stomach for that—particularly those who focus on immigration from a law-and-order standpoint, or on an economic basis.

My opposition to open borders is strictly a national security thing. Other than that, I'm pretty much a wetback-digger. Okay, I lied: I actually think that there is tremendous discrimination against Canadians, and those who aren't From the Americas. I'd love to see a system in place that respects freedom and capitalism, yet doesn't let a lot of people "cut in line." Unfortunately, that would require asking an American bureaucracy to do its job in an even-handed way, and with alacrity/competence.

What I would see as mandatory for a National Review writer would be not endorsing a corrupt socialist for the highest office in the land.

So it is a sad moment. But it was time.