The American Enterprise Institute has fired David Frum.  Presumably this is retribution for publishing his views on the passage of the health care bill---though Frum is a conservative, he thinks it a disaster for American conservatives that they refused to deal with the Democrats on healthcare.  Bruce Bartlett now reports that Frum privately told him several months ago that AEI scholars---Bartlett puts the word "scholar" in quotes, but I won't go that far on a blanket basis---"had been ordered not to speak to the media because they agreed with too much of what Obama was trying to do."

I have long viewed a writer's AEI affiliation as grounds for deep skepticism about even a sensible-sounding argument, because of corporate and political meddling of this sort with their supposedly scholarly programs, but the details had faded over time.  The latest news seriously damages the position of any genuine scholars who still work there, putting guys like Roger Scruton, who has done superb work (The Aesthetics of Architecture, and Art and Imagination are among the best things I've encountered by way of recent philosophy of art, and I certainly read Arthur Danto and Richard Wollheim back in the day) in a difficult position.