This Vacation Is a Bad Move, Michelle

Michelle Obama is taking some of the harshest criticism she's endured to date as first lady over her vacation to Spain with friends and daughter Sasha. (The White House defends it as a "private" trip.)

• Megan McArdle, the Atlantic: "It's really quite unbelievably politically stupid. When we're in the middle of the worst recession in living memory, it's not a good idea to take a luxury vacation that most of your countrymen could never possibly afford in the best of times, at considerable taxpayer expense for the security, in a foreign country."

• Doug Mataconis, Outside the Beltway: "A trip like this displays some incredible political myopia on the part of the Obama Administration regarding the perception that they’re creating in the eyes of the public."
• Perhaps the most high-profile criticism has come from the Daily News in a column by Andrea Tantaros that likened the "material girl" first lady to Marie Antoinette.
• Not everyone agrees: Today in the Huffington Post, Taylor Marsh strikes back at the Tantaros "hit piece in Mort Zuckerman's rag," saying the publisher has a vendetta against the Obamas. "I'd personally like to see Pres. Obama call Mr. Zuckerman out on this cheap shot."

(More Michelle Obama stories.)