Today on the Dish we saw Netanyahu refuse to back down while McCain and Lieberman joined him. Kevin Sullivan was stunned by the situation, Greenwald challenged ultra-Israel loyalists, Roger Cohen got to the crux of the conflict, Chait defended the administration, and Walter Russell Mead offered his advice. In a must-read post, Goldblog reported Obama's intentions.

In other news, Ezra Klein discussed "deem and pass," Petraeus sounded off on DADT, and scientists discovered some cool creatures under Antarctica. Andrew reviewed the pope controversy, a gay reader shared his experience with Catholic culture, another challenged Andrew on "social justice," and others chimed in over school choice. Diane Ravitch made her case against NCLB, Bernstein countered Saletan over politicians catering to polls, TNC tackled the obesity stigma, and Wehner deliberately distorted Tom Ricks.

MHB here and cool ad here. Window from Pakistan. Another installment of Andrew's Princteton speech - this time on gay Republicans - here.

-- C.B.

A reader writes:

Thank goodness that, a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right to keep and arm bears has never been abridged.

Marc Lynch checks in on the Iraqi election:

Over the last few years, most American analysts have argued that these elections would offer a path to power through the ballot box for the leaders of the Awakenings.   Their evident washout in Anbar suggest that they won't, which may trigger a lot of the fears of those analysts (including me) who for years warned about the dangers of not accommodating Sunnis in the political system or integrating the Awakenings and Sons of Iraq into the state.  But the response thus far suggests reasons to be less worried than in the past.  During last January's provincial election, when it appeared that Abu Risha's list had lost,  he threatened to turn Anbar into a "graveyard" for the Islamic Party if his List was not declared the victor.  Despite mounting claims of fraud, I haven't yet been seeing many such threats this time, and don't see any reason yet to anticipate that it will trigger the much-feared resurgence of the insurgency.

Video from Wonk Room:

Auto Straddle is collecting prom pictures:

So this girl Constance McMillen wanted to take a girl to prom, and wear a tux, and the principal was like hell to the no, and then the ACLU got involved, and then the school just decided it would be better to cancel prom altogether. Why are they so afraid of how cute girls look in menswear?...We have a feeling, even though we are old, that some girls are bringing girls to homecoming/prom/fancy-wear day dances these days...Are you one of those girls/boys? Well let’s celebrate those photos everyone is so f*cking afraid of!

The above picture is captioned, "Bakersfield, California. 1994."

(Hat tip: Matt)

TNC takes it on:

It's shame that's created our absurd McWeightLoss culture where Octomom takes to the cover of celebrity magazines to show off her new bikini body, and retired athletes claim to have found the secret to losing five pounds a week. It's symptomatic of who are, of our abiding belief in short-cuts, and our technological ability to elide truth. The truth is that weight loss--like almost anything really worth doing--is long, hard and very lonely. It requires you to live in a way that many of your friends and family almost certainly do not.

Dreher is less forgiving.

A few activists are holding on - good for GOProud - but the outlook is grim. Why? Look at what even GOProud supports: civil marriage equality, military service, and no federal constitutional amendment barring marriage equality. There are virtually no openly gay Republicans supporting Republican policy on gay rights. This is not true of any other minority.

This has changed for the worse over the last two decades, in direct opposition to what has happened in every other Western country, especially the British Tories. Here's my attempt to explain why the old conservative politics of homosexuality has fallen apart:

Pivoting off an NYT magazine article on "femivorism" about stay-at-home moms raising chickens, Elizabeth Nolan Brown asks:

[W]hy does everything women do – and I was going to say outside the realm of paid work, but really, it’s everything: working, not-working, part-time work, hobbies, etc. – have to be considered as a reaction to or against “feminism?” Why can’t we accept that there have, are and always will be myriad ways for arranging domestic, social and professional life, and the periodic, cyclical “discovery” of them by magazine or style section reporters says close to nothing about the state of gender relations, the nature of egalitarianism, feminism or the rejection thereof?

Rasmussen-free.

This is what they endure day to day:

There are no beds, no showers, no toilets and no electricity. Chickens and ducks roam the bare dirt yard amid scraps of trash and rotting animal dung. Fleas, flies and filth are the grunts’ constant companions. “It’s definitely rough living,” said Capt. Josh Winfrey, 30, of Tulsa, Okla., the commander of Company L, 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment.

The Marines of Company L have been living in the compound since late February. Unless they’re ordered to move into another sector, it will probably remain their home until they redeploy to Camp Lejeune, N.C., in August.

In the meantime, there’s little prospect for significant improvement anytime soon.

Kevin Sullivan scratches his head:

I challenge the increasingly marginal number of pundits, pols and bloggers who are blaming this incident on the Obama administration to explain to me exactly where and how Obama has changed U.S. policy on Israel in any material or substantive fashion. Joe Biden went over to Israel to make nice and say in no uncertain terms that "there is no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel's security" against the Islamic Republic of Iran...for some reason which clearly escapes me, there is a faction - albeit a tiny one - pinning blame for the fallout on the Obama administration. Worse yet, this same faction for the most part believes that this event is somehow consistent with a record of disinterest or hostility toward a nation that hasn't had any aid guarantees seriously challenged since 2005, while President Bush was still in office.

Simply mind boggling.

"A Ben Folds-ish guy named Merton manages to make Chatroulette charming!"

Jonathan Bernstein rebuts William Saletan's latest column:

Yes, the Constitution does create a system of representative democracy, not direct democracy.  But how are those representatives supposed to decide?   The Constitution is silent about that.  We can suppose (and here I'm following Hanna Pitkin) that Saletan is correct at one extreme; if Members simply take a poll about everything and do whatever the poll tells them, then they're not really "representing" them.  But, Pitkin argues, the other extreme -- in which the elected official does whatever she wants, regardless of what the people say they want -- isn't really "representation" either.  For her, representation is a way of making present someone (the constituents) who aren't actually present.  And so they have to be with the politician, in some sense, but not completely overwhelming him.

Bernstein's second criticism:

Mead's advice:

President Obama needs to do two things now in this dispute.  He must stand tall, and he must settle quick. 

Thoreau levels judgment:

I’m not writing this to defend libertarianism from the charge of being infiltrated by the GOP.  I’m writing this to argue that the GOP has not been overcome by libertarianism.  Those are two entirely different things.  From where I sit, I see some useful idiots for the GOP in the libertarian ranks, but I see precious little libertarianism animating the Republicans.  If you’re going to blame us for anything, blame us for shilling, not for animating.

"Leave it to film director/smile-monger PES to make your family-alienating gambling addiction seem whimsical."

Yesterday, Tom Ricks rightly complained that Pete Wehner misquoted him. Wehner, caught red-handed, doubles down. Sigh. It's not a close call. Wehner claims Ricks wrote "I think staying in Iraq is immoral." What Ricks actually wrote is the following, as an argument for keeping troops longer in Iraq:

I think staying in Iraq is immoral, but I think leaving immediately would be even more so, because of the risk it runs of leaving Iraq to a civil war that could go regional. That is, I don't expect much to be gained by staying, but I think much, much more could be lost by leaving right now. Just pulling out unilaterally reminds me of Jerry Rubin's comment back in the 1960s that after the revolution, he would just "groove on the rubble."

My italics.

Diane Ravitch makes her case against a program she once endorsed:

NCLB requires that all students must be proficient in reading and math by 2014. When the legislation was signed in 2002, this goal was wildly unrealistic--and now, it is merely laughable. The target date is only four years away, but no state is remotely close to 100 percent proficiency. Indeed, in 2008, 35,000 of the nation’s schools bore the stigma of "failing" because they weren't making sufficient progress toward that utopian target.

What NCLB has done with its proficiency deadline is set a timetable for the demolition of American public education.

Nowshera, Pakistan, 11 am

Netanyahu isn't backing down. Contra Chait, Yglesias doesn't think that Israel is at much risk of blow-back:

The current government in the West Bank is probably the most moderate we’ve ever seen, while Israel is governed by a right/far-right coalition that’s the least moderate we’ve ever seen. But of course the bulk of voters don’t pay attention to this sort of thing. So I think Congress is less likely than ever to question the upside-down nature of the US-Israel client-superpower dynamic.

The Israeli government is preventing the US president from achieving a core goal of his election: reorienting the US relationship with the Muslim world, reaching out to moderate Muslims, defusing the appeal of Jihadism, and securing a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine. And where does AIPAC and the Congress stand? With Netanyahu - against Obama.

Noah Pollak tells the US president to bring it on::

In her recent profile of the Texas Board of Education, Mariah Blake mentions the woman who pushed to remove Jefferson:

After the 2006 election, Republicans claimed ten of fifteen board seats. Seven were held by the ultra-conservatives, and one by a close ally, giving them an effective majority. Among the new cadre were some fiery ideologues; in her self-published book, Cynthia Dunbar of Richmond rails against public education, which she dubs “tyrannical” and a “tool of perversion,” and says sending kids to public school is like “throwing them into the enemy’s flames.” (More recently, she has accused Barack Obama of being a terrorist sympathizer and suggested he wants America to be attacked so he can declare martial law.)

Sounds like a future Fox News host to me.

Goldblog reports: get Netanyahu into an alliance with Kadima, rather than the Israeli right-wing crazies.

Must-read.

A priest is discovered to have been actively molesting children. His superior is notified in 1980. One of the things he is told of is the priest's forcing an 11 year old boy to perform oral sex on him. The superior does not contact the police. He approves a transfer of the priest to a different city, where the priest is required to undergo therapy but is also subsequently able to resume his work with access to children. Six years later, the priest is again found guilty of abusing children. This time, he serves a sentence, but he is subsequently allowed to resume work as a priest, with the church authorities hiding his past from future parishes, and is only removed from his position three days ago.

Joseph Ratzinger was the superior, he reviewed the man's files in 1980, and he was subsequently in charge of reviewing all sex abuse cases as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine Of The Faith in Rome. He was integral to the policy of hushing up as much of this as possible. Money quote:

"Here we have a major split between the U.S. and Israel, with key American military and political leaders explaining ... that Israeli actions are directly harming U.S. interests and jeopardizing American lives.  And what is the reflexive, unambiguous response of virtually every American Israel-centric neocon?  To side with Israel over the U.S.  AIPAC, the ADL, Elliott Abrams, AIPAC-loyal Democrats in the House, Marty Peretz, Commentary, etc. etc. all quickly castigated the U.S. Government and defended Israel, notwithstanding the dangers to Americans posed by Israeli conduct and the massive price paid by the U.S. in so many ways for this relationship (by contrast, J Street called the administration's anger towards Israel both "understandable and appropriate"). 

A reader writes:

Perhaps there is a reason why political commentators should refrain from, or perhaps even stay fully clear of, theological speculation.  They suck at it.  When Glenn Beck does it, I struggle to be surprised.  When you do, I cringe.  You define “social justice” from a political perspective, and miss the point entirely.  A Christian (Biblical) understanding of social justice is EXACTLY about redistribution of wealth. 

There is lots of chatter this morning about "the slaughter rule," "deem and pass," and reconciliation. Ezra Klein sums up the very inside the beltway controversy:

The conservative case against "Deem and Pass" is getting very complex, very fast. Yesterday, the argument was that it was flatly unconstitutional. But it turns out that Republicans used Deem and Pass dozens of times while they were in power. So today's furor is that Nancy Pelosi and Louise Slaughter joined Public Citizen in a lawsuit arguing that a bill that George W. Bush signed was invalid because Deem and Pass is unconstitutional. But the court ruled against Public Citizen, Pelosi and Slaughter. Deem and Pass, well, passed. And now Democrats are using it, too.

Joshua Tucker's reading of the above graph:

From Military.com:

Could parachute-wearing bears sniff out Osama bin Laden?

A reader writes:

As a young boy I attended a Catholic elementary school.  In the confessional I struggled with my sexual urges and same-sex attractions.   When I asked my priest why this was happening to me, I was told that God gives all of us challenges in life and this was my cross to bear.  The path to salvation for boys like me, was to pledge my life to God by becoming a celibate priest.   He recommended that I attend a pre-seminary for my high school education. 

Scientists have discovered a shrimp-like creature and a jellyfish in a place thought uninhabitable:

The video is likely to inspire experts to rethink what they know about life in harsh environments. And it has scientists musing that if shrimp-like creatures can frolic below 600 feet of Antarctic ice in subfreezing dark water, what about other hostile places? What about Europa, a frozen moon of Jupiter?

The Israeli right, whether religious or secular, has no interest in a two-state peace.

It's so weird watching hawkish politicians who are usually castigating Obama for weakness with respect to foreign leaders suddenly turning around and accusing the president of ... standing up for America's interests:

Lieberman questioned why the initial flap was allowed to continue on the Sunday talk shows. Singling out David Axelrod, he noted that calling it an “affront” serves nobody’s interests. From there, McCain said the escalation “may be giving the impression to the wrong people, the neighbors of Israel have stated time after time that they are bent on Israel’s extinction.”

McCain and Lieberman previously went to Israel itself to undermine the foreign policy of the US president, by stating that they would bar any attempt to use aid or loan guarantee leverage against Israel in its continuing aggressive settlement policy. The Washington Post puts almost all the blame for the tension on - surprise! - the US. In fact, they use the term "bludgeon" to describe the president's understandable reaction to Netanyahu's insult of Biden:

AEI's Norman Ornstein and Brookings' Thomas Mann point out several parallels between now and the last time the Democrats controlled Congress and the White House:

To be sure, there were many reasons for Democrats’ massive losses in 1994, including scandals and angry gun owners. But the failure to fulfill their responsibility for governing contributed mightily to the debacle. That was the conclusion of pollsters from both parties in the aftermath of the November contests. Two weeks after the election, Republican pollster Bill McInturff found that “one of the most important predicates for Republican success was not having health care pass.” He noted that the collapse of the plan reinforced voters’ belief that Washington was in a dysfunctional state of gridlock.

Bernstein nods his head. The president says: "We're going to make this happen."

Mark Blumenthal wants to do away with the census:

Does it make sense to spend $14.7 billion (the estimated cost of the 2010 Census) every 10 years trying to get each and every household in the United States to fill out a census form? Probably not. There is a more efficient alternative, but it requires the use of statistical sampling and, presumably, bipartisan support for a constitutional amendment to update the meaning of "enumerate." Too bad the same conservatives who complain about the cost of the census also reject that idea out of hand.

From the Commonwealth Fund, courtesy of Ezra Klein:

These days, we spend a bit more than 17 percent of our GDP on health care. That comes out to more than $2.5 trillion. If we'd reformed the system in 1995, and our spending had slowed by 1.5 percentage points then, health care would only be 14.2 percent of GDP right now. If we'd followed Carter's schedule and moved in 1980, we'd be down to 11.5 percent of GDP. And Nixon's plan in 1975? A mere 10.75 percent of GDP, which as you can see on the graph, isn't that far from what Europe spends. The lesson is simple: The earlier you start, the more you save. And with each opportunity you miss, you lose years of accumulated savings.

A reader writes:

I've always been a fan of Diane Ravitch's. I worked in educational publishing for about 15 years and she has always had her finger on the pulse of what's wrong with American education. And while I do agree with her about vouchers, I couldn't disagree with her more about charter schools.

On paper, she's right -- there isn't a lot of evidence or research that charter schools are better than regular public schools. But I think something is getting lost in the analysis. Part of what makes charter schools interesting and valuable is that they allow "small school" settings that are publicly funded.

Intrade puts health care at around a 70 percent chance of passing. Keith Hennessey:

I think health care reform legislation has about a two in three chance of being enacted into law.  The legislative dynamic is volatile and my estimate changes at least daily.

"I think this is part of a broader problem with the Obama administration. ... We saw it in Honduras. Where rather than monitoring the situation, they let a cowboy president try to act in an extra-constitutional way to violate a fundamental principle in the Constitution, all without having done their homework in advance," - Karl Rove, when asked about Obama's handling of the Biden-Netanyahu row.

Today on the Dish we saw AIPAC place the blame on the US government while Walter Russell Mead came down on Israel. A reader made an shrewd point about a double standard applied to Obama and Andrew responded to Goldblog's refusal to respond to him any further.

On HCR, Nate Silver assessed the odds of success, Jonathan Bernstein told us what to keep our eyes on, Frum showed the similarities between Obamacare and Romneycare, and Will Saletan spoke the truth on polling. The Texas Board Of Education tore out Jefferson from its history books and Andrew somewhat sided with Beck over social justice. 

Friedersdorf and Powerline continued to expose Andy McCarthy's awfulness, Wendy Kaminer knocked the ACLU for having selective principles, Douthat defended Paul Ryan, Sara Mosle talked school choice, Lady GaGa released an underwhelming video, and Kucinich continued to suck. Bob Barker was one creepy dude. Weekend wrap here. Another segment of Andrew's Princeton speech here. And today's window was great.

-- C.B.

Will Saletan:

From the standpoint of a campaign strategist, everything you do in Congress should aim at re-election. That's one reason why our government has become dysfunctional: Lawmakers spend less time completing the work they were assigned in the last election and more time preparing for the next one. They inflame or placate the public when they should be serving it. Elections were supposed to be a means to good legislation. Instead, legislation has become a means to election. The polling mentality has turned democracy upside down.

Wendy Kaminer, who supports marriage equality, chides the ACLU:

Not surprisingly, the right wing, anti-gay Alliance Defense Fund is perhaps the primary defender of First Amendment rights in cases involving the anti-gay speech and belief of conservative Christians.  ADF receives (and perhaps desires) little assistance from the ACLU, an increasingly unreliable defender of speech and belief that conflict with its gay rights agenda: while the ACLU aggressively defended the rights of students to wear t-shirts to school celebrating gay rights, for example, it stayed out of an important federal case, Harper v Poway, involving a Christian student punished for wearing an anti-gay t-shirt, even when the case reached the Supreme Court.  National and state spokespeople for the ACLU, once a staunch defender of freedom of conscience, have pointedly ignored an invitation to comment on Julea Ward's federal case, although they might simply have pointed out that liberty cannot be secured for some without securing it for all.

Title from Anthony Lewis' excellent biography of the first amendment. My own defense of this position here.

The newborn male Asian elephant, nicknamed 'Mr Shuffles' by staff, shelters under his mother 'Porntip' during his first public appearance at Taronga Zoo in Sydney on March 14, 2010. The baby elephant was believed to have died during labor but was born alive on March 10, amazing its keepers and defying expert opinion that such an outcome would take a miracle. By Torsten Blackwood/AFP/Getty Images.

Evan Feigenbaum has a theory:

Beijing rarely shares American threat assessments. And China’s leaders, even when they do sense a challenge to “stability,” are far more relaxed than are Americans about the scope and nature of those threats. This is certainly true of Pakistan, where Beijing trusts the military’s instincts and senses little threat to the Pakistani state. It’s true of Iran. And it’s true of North Korea, which few Chinese believe will collapse and where a managed transition toward Chinese-style reform is the medium-term outcome China seeks to achieve.

(Hat tip: Greg Scoblete)

Enduring America is tracking reports of aggression against Iran’s leading reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front (aka Mosharekat, whose members include the recently released Tajzadeh):

Deputy Interior Ministry Solat Mortazavi told the Iranian Students News Agency that all activities of IIPF have been banned and its headquarters have been locked. Mortazavi implied that the ban was in place before the IIPF announcement that its congress had been called off because of pressure from security forces. ... Speaking to BBC Persian, a leading member of the IIPF, Ali Shakouri, disputed the claim that the party was banned but confirmed that its headquarters are locked and inaccessible.

An EA correspondent puts the rumors in context:

From his recent post:

Andrew is free to publish malicious nonsense, such as the series of maps he published yesterday, maps which purport to show how Jews stole Palestinian land. Andrew does not tell us the source of these maps (in a magazine with standards, the source would be identified), but they were drawn to cast Jews in the most terrible light possible.

The map said nothing about "stealing land", the source was identified (as he has now conceded), and the notion that even if this were true, it would be tantamount to casting "Jews in the most terrible light possible" is certainly not what I intended and not what any fair reader would take away. As I've noted twice since publishing it, the map is certainly crude by conflating Ottoman and British public land with Palestinian land, and also misleading in conflating land owned with that politically controlled by Israelis or Palestinian Arabs, so I published a clearer one in response, and have provided more context today.

I aired the whole controversy in real time, which seems to me to argue against the notion that I'm "not particularly interested in hearing fact-based arguments that undermine whatever argument he happens to be making." I also aired a clarification to the new and better map here. I do this kind of blogging and clarification all the time - on every subject under the sun, with maximum accountability and reader reaction. I admit error promptly and I air dissents constantly. But I also stick to my arguments if they hold up over time.

Now this: my simple publication of a map was apparently

meant to deny Jewish claims to virtually any of the land of Israel.

Seriously, this is absurd. It was clearly designed to show how far we've come since the original partition the Palestinians foolishly rejected, and how dangerous it would be for the US, the region and Israel to continue even more aggressively on this path. My commitment to a secure Israel is as strong as Joe Biden's (before he too got a taste of the current government). Only a week ago, I wrote in my "Much Delayed Response to Goldblog":

I regard the establishment of the Jewish state as one of the West's high-points in the 20th Century.

The President of the United States cannot afford to look like a patsy; for Israel’s sake as well as for the many others who depend on American support for their security around the world, any American president needs to be seen as a figure who commands respect.  Israel’s actions left the Obama administration looking foolish and weak; like it or not, Israel must now do more than say it is sorry.  It must help fix the damage it caused, " - Walter Russell Mead.