In today's Wall Street Journal, Steven Rattner has a very revealing op-ed (the full piece is only available to subscribers).  Arguing that "Wall Street Still Doesn't Get it," he quotes the President's comment to a group of bankers that "my administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."  I take that to be the Obama way. H e did the same in the health care deal. If memory serves, Obama made deals with drug companies and the AMA very early in the process. I gather that, until recently, he was working the same angle with BP on cap and trade. (BP has extensive natural gas reserves which could make the company a good deal of money, if the bill is structured in a particular way).  I suspect he's doing the same with Israel just now. Thanks to the cartel-breaking dust-up, he has more leverage than he had recently. (He tried to use the recent housing permit incident similarly).

The President, in other words, practices classic Chicago politics.  He uses popular anger to threaten the big guys, and then cuts a deal with them for half. The intended result--the big guys are happy that they did not get killed, and the common people are happy that they took a hit. (In the mean time, the smaller players are creamed. The big guys can take the hit, and then profit from the reduced competition).

This corporatist approach is not all that new, but Obama is trying to expand its scope.  It is probably the inevitable direction that bigger government will take in America.

I suspect the part of Obama's anger at the tea parties is that they gum up the works of his pragmatic, moderate, corporatism.  They show that there are other ways of seeing it. There are people who don't want such cartelization.  When Obama says he's no socialist, he's being sincere.  He wants to use the market to serve what he takes to be public goods that otherwise would be ignored.  A big, diiverse economy, with players of all sizes makes that more difficult. It is much easier to use the private sector when it's limited to fewer, bigger companies. The tea parties, in this sence, represent the ancient American prejudice in favor of mediating institutions.  Their principles reflect that idea.

I'm not done with this Mitch Daniels thing yet.  How does it play out if Daniels runs for President and if he keeps his current strategy of trying to avoid social issues and trying to get everyone else to do the same thing?  Here how I think it would probably play out:

First, Daniels would take fire from social conservative leaders and his rivals for the Republican nomination.  Try to picture the ads about Daniels not willing to take a position on whether the federal government should subsidize abortions under most circumstances or whether he would he would appoint judges that imposed liberal social policies.  It would become a media story that would compete with Daniels' economic message.  Ironically, Daniels' not talking about social issues will create a spiral of commentary on Daniels not talking about the social issues.  This wouldn't be a big problem if millions of people didn't care about these issues.  And I don't just mean people who are socially conservative first.  There are lots of economic conservatives who are also social conservatives. This is a threshold thing.  Someone doesn't have to be the best social conservative or have a perfect record (see Romney or McCain), but tossing the social issues overboard risks alienating this large group  of down the line(ish) conservatives along with the social conservatism-first group.  Daniels has a chance to be the Republican contender with the best economic record and the best economic message.  If he is acceptable on the other issues, I think he would have a good shot.  But if people who are socially conservative get the idea that he has written their issues off... well then there will be plenty of other Republican contenders who are also selling their own brand of economic conservatism (maybe not as good) but who also have some kind of social agenda.

Then after these dynamics become clear, Daniels will be backed into making some kind of high profile statement of principles and lay out some set of policies on the social issues.  But the damage will have been done.  Social liberalism-first voters will scorn Daniels because he laid out policies they disagreed with.  The reality is that (as Reihan Salam pointed out somewhere) neither Daniels nor any other Republican presidential candidate was ever going to get these voters.  Voter who don't think much about the social issues one way or another will think less of Daniels because he will have clearly made his statement out of political pressure rather than conviction.  With these voters, he will take a hit on character rather than ideology.  Social conservatives will discount his statement because it will seem like he had to be dragged into making it.  This strategy is lots of loss for no gain.

The way to really deemphasize social issues is to lay out an orthodox set of principles (if those are Daniels' principles) and an incremental policy agenda built around policies with majority support.  The country will not be unduly divided at the news that the Republican presidential candidate is pro-life, and if Democrats want to build a campaign around defending taxpayer-funded abortions, let them.  The way to focus on economic issues is to talk about the economic issues most of the time and in the greatest detail.  The irony is that the best way for Daniels to minimize having to talk about the social issues is for him to have something of substance to say.      

Jennifer Rubin describes a pretty impressive performance by Mitch Daniels in front of a group of conservative activists and journalists.  The biggest problem that I got from the meeting was Daniels' insistence that the social issues be "set aside" while we deal with the country's economic problems. 

This is a good way for Daniels to lose more friends than he makes.  There is a way to integrate and deemphasize the social issues without alienating social conservatives.  It involves articulating a framework and laying out a series of incremental policies that have majority support.  For instance he can describe his pro-life convictions and say that he is in favor of legislation to remove the license for abortions in the last three months under most circumstances.  If he wants to be a strict federalist about it, he can say he favors that legislation on the state level.  He can surely say that he opposes federal subsidies for such abortions.  And then he can move back to the economic issues.  He will also need a good answer on federal judges and the role they play on social issues. 

Daniels can run, but he can't hide and he can't even really call a timeout.  We can't have a total timeout because these issues are part of public policy and they will be thrust on the next President (if only on court appointments) whether Daniels likes it or not.  These issues matter even to many people who don't rank them at the very top of their concerns.  If Daniels really wants to diffuse these issues, the answer is an eloquent statement of his principles and a prudent, incrementalist policy agenda.  Social conservatives are not the problem.  McCain didn't lose because he spent too much time talking about Obama's abortion extremism.  If Daniels can let them know that he will, within the limits of the powers of his office, seek to advance some social conservative goals, and appoint judges who will not usurp the power of the voters in order to impose liberal policies, Daniels might find plenty of common ground with social conservatives and alot of political room to focus on his economic policies. But he needs to stop telling social conservatives to shut up about their concerns until such time as Daniels decides that American can afford to talk about them again . 

Marc Thiessen notes that State Dept. legal adviser Harold Koh justifies the deadly Predator drone strikes via the congressional Iraq War resolution (AUMF).  But, as several others (including the UN, the ACLU, and former Bush officials) have observed, the victims of the drone strikes had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.  Yet the terrorists could be targeted, as John Yoo, among others have maintained, under the President's Article II powers--an expansive argument Koh has rejected.  Thiessen, a former Bush speechwriter, raises the questions, "In a few years, when the situation in the war against terrorism has stabilized, will there be calls for the disbarment of the Obama lawyers who authorized these strikes and criminal investigations of the CIA officers who carried them out? Will Harold Koh join John Yoo and other Bush lawyers in the left's hall of infamy?" 

For some background, see my previous post on this issue.

Obama will first seek regulatory approval for that action, which may take weeks to complete, but only after first determining which agency(ies) have jurisdiction(s) and completing their review process(es), while also gathering input from stakeholder(s) local, regional, national and international on potential economic, environmental and political (shhh!! expunge that) impacts of proposed ass kicking, all of which to make certain that proposed ass-kicking will work ("Before we do anything we have to know that it will work") and upon positive preliminary assessment could be considered for exemption from review status and final implementation processing.

In the Texas textbook fight, as it so much else, it's wise to read the bill, or in the case the standards, before criticizing them:

Benjamin Jealous, president of the NAACP, had come from his headquarters in Baltimore to complain about the downgrading of the human debasement of African slaves. According to Jealous, language referring to the "triangular trade" among the English colonies on the eastern seaboard, the Caribbean, and Britain had excised the horrors of slavery

Of course, the "triangular trade" has been taught in American public schools at least since I was in California's system a half-century ago, as the import of slaves to the New World, their harvesting of sugar, tobacco, and other commodities, and the sale of these or their by-products (such as molasses and rum) in Europe. Jealous was caught by the gimlet-eyed Terri Leo, secretary of the board. She asked him if he had, in fact, read the proposed curriculum changes and could cite the language he found unacceptable. He was compelled to admit that he had not, and could not. Whereupon she pointed out that the new language summons students to explain "the plantation system, the Atlantic triangular trade, and the spread of slavery." Jealous had been caught in a criticism by inference--or, more bluntly, by dependence on second-hand talking points. 

Texas has also, apparently, exercised reasonable judgment about whom to study:

Later Paul Henley of the Texas State Teachers Association, a powerful public employee union, assailed the board, blasting the replacement of a reference to Santa Barraza--a Texas woman of Hispanic origin, alive and well, who paints folkloric representations of the U.S.-Mexico borderland--with the late cartoon animator Tex Avery (1908-80) on a list of Texas-born contributors to the arts. Most of them, like Barraza, are obscure; Avery is not

Speaking of Tex Avery, here's my favorite of his cartoons. (Beward. puns ahead!)

Is 2010 shaping up to be another 1994?  According to the Real Clear Politics average of polls, Obama's job approval rating has been between 50 and 47 since the beginning of the year.  Gallup puts Obama's approval at 47.  To compare, at this same point in Clinton's first term, his job approval in the Gallup poll was 46 and would head up to 49 by the end of the month before dropping to 39 in September and end up back at 46 again the week of the midterm elections.  So if the pattern holds, it looks like some of the conditions for 1994-like Republican gains are there.

But there are also reasons for long-term concern for Obama opponents.  The unemployment rate for Jan-Nov 1994 varied from 6.6 to 5.9.  The unemployment rate for the year to date has varied from 9.7 to 9.9.  Obama has been keeping his approval ratings at about Clinton in 1994 levels during a much worse job market.  And as Daniel Larison has pointed out (I can't remember when he posted it), Obama's approval ratings have been much more stable than Clinton's.  I'm not sure exactly what all this means except that Obama's popularity has been holding up remarkably well given the labor market and that even a modest decline in the unemployment (say to the low 7s) could, absent some perceived foreign policy disaster, push Obama's job approval rating into the 50s and put him in a very strong position for reelection. 

One of the things that jumps out at me about the relationship between the unemployment rate and a President's job approval rating is how context-dependent it is even absent foreign policy disasters like Iraq in 2006 or rally-round-the-flag effects due to events like Reagan getting shot.  Reagan had high approval ratings for most of 1984, but the unemployment rate for most of the year was in the 7s - which isn't that good by the standards of the last thirty years.  But it was alot better than the 10 percent or more unemployment of much of 1982.  Probably just as important, the halving of inflation rate from 1981-1984 halted the erosion of the living standards of those who had jobs.  Obama, after this recession, might also be running for reelection in a country with reduced expectations for what a "low" unemployment rate looks like. 

It makes it harder for the government to take care of those things that really are job of the federal government:

Under intense media scrutiny, at least a dozen federal agencies have taken part in the spill response, making decision-making slow, conflicted and confused, as they sought to apply numerous federal statutes.

In one stark example of government disputes, internal e-mail messages from the minerals agency obtained by The Times reveal a heated debate over whether to ignore some federal environmental laws about gas emissions in an effort to speed the drilling of relief wells.

One agency official, Michael Tolbert, warned colleagues on April 24 that emissions of nitrous oxide from the well were "pretty far over the exemption level," an issue that his colleague Tommy Broussard said could result in "BP wasting time" on environmental safeguards in a way that would be "completely stupid."

But a third colleague, Elizabeth Peuler, intervened to demand that the agency take "no shortcuts."

"Not even for this one," she said. "Perhaps even especially for this one."

Isn't an oil spill a job for "Slick Willie"?

I made a case for Mitch Daniels as a potential 2012 presidential candidate.  Why should conservative be wary of Daniels?  I'll try to be fair and balanced.

1. George Packer argues that Daniels got the cost of the Iraq War horribly wrong when Daniels was head of the OMB.  Daniels responds that his estimate of the Iraq War's cost was only for the first six months of the war.  I think Daniels has the better of this argument on the substance, but if he runs for President, he will also have to make sure everyone who hears the charge that Daniels underestimated the cost of the war (possibly to increase political support for the war) also hears Daniels' explanation.

2.  What does Daniels think about foreign and defense policy?  This is more of a blank space than a real weakness, but Daniels will have to fill it in.  Unlike with McCain on domestic policy, I don't worry that Daniels won't do his homework if he decides to run for President.  I don't see the foreign policy equivalent of McCain's responding to the financial crisis by suggesting putting Andrew Cuomo in charge of the SEC.

3. Does Daniels underestimate the importance of social issues?  Daniels is reported to have said that we need a "truce" on social issues as the country deals with its economic problems.  The 2012 presidential election is likely to be economy-driven unless there is some widely perceived foreign policy disaster at least as large as the Iraq War in 2006 (let us pray nothing like that happens.)  But we should keep in mind President Obama's wise observation that a President should be able to handle more than one thing at a time. There is no contradiction in pushing a plan for economic reform and highlighting (though not obsessively), President Obama's abortion extremism.  There is a way to highlight these issues in a way that is not obnoxious.  In fact, a focus on social issues, would be, in every sense, preferable to the culture war identity politics that the McCain campaign played in 2008.  I also worry that Daniels will fall into the same trap that Phil Gramm fell into in 1996.  Despite a good record, Gramm was visibly uncomfortable talking about social issues.  The result was that Pat Buchanan became the candidate of voters for whom social issues were a high priority.  Buchanan ended up beating Gramm in the Louisiana caucuses and scuttled Gramm's hopes of being the conservative alternative to the establishment candidate Bob Dole.  Daniels is a much more appealing candidate than Gramm, but Mike Huckabee is also a much more plausible President than Buchanan.  I'm not sure that Daniels will be able to compete with Huckabee for those conservatives for whom social conservatism comes first by a wide margin, but he will need to be eloquent enough, often enough on the social issues so that social conservatives who are also strongly economic conservatives won't get the sense that he will marginalize their social concerns if he becomes President.  Having good answers on the role of judges will go a long way, as would a strong message about the wrongness of late term abortion.  There is a lot of rhetorical room to reassure social conservatives and even appeal to people outside of the conservative base.  Tonality matters as much as substance here, but it will take work to get it right.

This author argues yes, maintaining that regular Internet use shapes our brain physiology to make us, in so many words, stupid.  High-speed brain dumps make us unable to read deeply: 

To read a book is to practice an unnatural process of thought. It requires us to place ourselves at what T. S. Eliot, in his poem "Four Quartets," called "the still point of the turning world." We have to forge or strengthen the neural links needed to counter our instinctive distractedness, thereby gaining greater control over our attention and our mind.

If so, this is worse than cell phones and brain tumors, alcohol and brain cells.  The argument for wisdom from the Internet (not really a contradiction) can be found in the accompanying WSJ article.

And, no, the remedy is not reading No Left Turns!

Mitch Daniels might be running the smartest presidential campaign of any Republican and he might not even be running.  He has gotten glowing profiles from both the Weekly Standard and National Review (only available to subscribers it seems.)  He has written several smart op-eds for the Wall Street Journal on the takeovers of GM and Chrysler, health care, and cap and trade. 

Daniels has the chance to combine elements of Obama's 2008 appeal and position himself as the antidote to Obama's shortcomings.  By not being a retread presidential candidate or a recent member of the Republican Washington leadership (and his Washington experience was obscure to most people who aren't obsessed with politics), Daniels can come across as a fresh face from the hinterland running for hope and change against a corrupt, incompetent and spendthrift Washington establishment.  But unlike Obama, he can point to oodles of experience and to a record where he was able to balance the budget while keeping taxes under control, and both maintaining and demanding a higher standard of government services.

Daniels' Wall Street Journal op-eds also show the outlines of a compelling 2012 message.  He has a record of moving health care policy in a market-driven direction through HSAs.  What really helps Daniels is that his HSA plan had positive outcomes that can be pointed to in a campaign.  The great political weakness of market-driven health care reforms is that they ask the public to give up something they like in the form of employer-provided health insurance (even if they think it costs too much) in return for a promise that market-driven policies (whether renewable individual policies or HSAs) will make things better.  The act of asking the public to give up something real for something that is outside most people's experience gives Democrats the opening to terrify the public with the prospect of losing their coverage and in return getting nothing or inferior coverage that costs more.  Daniels will be able to point to Indiana and say that his health care plan, in the real world, increased people's take home pay, saved the government money, and preserved people's access to the world's best health care system.  That also gives Daniels one heck of a platform from which to attack the other guy's combination of individual mandates, coverage mandates, tax increases, and expensive subsidies.

Daniels also seems to have found the range in attacking Obama's economic policies.  Obama likes to say that he is pro-business and not a socialist.  Fair enough, but there are lots of ways to be pro-business and not all of them are good.  A cap and trade bill that taxes most people and businesses and subsidizes connected companies is pro some businesses but not really all that good for most of us.  A health care bill that forces us to buy insurance that costs too much is pro some businesses but bad for most if it increases the cost of coverage for businesses and workers and/or increases government costs that have to be paid in either higher taxes or fewer medical services.  Daniels' description of Obama's policies as "crony capitalism" ties together a bunch of Obama policies (Obamacare, cap and trade, the takeover of the auto companies) and taps into public frustration not only with government, but with the privileges of insiders.

Daniels doesn't seem to be doing the things a presidential candidate is expected to do in our current permanent campaign era.  He isn't going to Iowa or New Hampshire and if he is building on the ground operations in those states he is keeping it very quiet. He hasn't published a pre-campaign campaign biography/manifesto and left his job behind to go on a nationwide book tour so people can tell him how awesome he is.  Daniels has a PAC that distributes money to favored candidates, but it seems more oriented to Indiana races than toward collecting chits from Republican candidates around the country.  All this would seem to put him at a fundraising and organizational disadvantage for a presidential campaign, but I wonder about that. If a candidate can produce the right buzz through their message and positive media coverage (and conservative journalists seem to really like him), the internet can produce a huge surge of cash.  If no other candidate produces genuine enthusiasm, even someone with a "late" start in the summer of 2011 can swamp established GOTV operations of candidates that are neither loved nor fully trusted.  Above all, the thrill of novelty should not be underestimated, and especially not when it is combined with substance.  But what do I know?  I backed Phil Gramm in 1996. 

In "The Gaza Blockade and International Law" University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner (WSJ subscriber only) notes the precedent for Israel's blockade of Gaza in the American Civil War--the Union's seizing of Confederate ships on the high seas.  Israel does not recognize Gaza's sovereignty.  "... Israel's legal position is reasonable, and it has precedent.  During the U.S. Civil War, the Union claimed to blockade the Confederacy while at the same time maintaining that the Confederacy was not a sovereign state but an agent of insurrection."  A closely divided Supreme Court approved the seizures, suggesting "a certain latitude for countries to use blockades against internal as well as external enemies." 

In an important sense, the criticism of Israel is a criticism of past American practice as well.  In looking to our self-interest in the Middle East, Americans should recall our own history.

Robert Samuelson gives an interesting reflection on the politics of defining poverty. The official poverty rate has remained virtually unchanged for decades partly because of how we count it:

The poor's material well-being has improved. The official poverty measure obscures this by counting only pre-tax cash income and ignoring other sources of support. These include the earned-income tax credit (a rebate to low-income workers), food stamps, health insurance (Medicaid), housing and energy subsidies. Spending by poor households from all sources may be double their reported income, reports a study by Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute. Although many poor live hand-to-mouth, they've participated in rising living standards. In 2005, 91 percent had microwaves, 79 percent air conditioning and 48 percent cell phones

And the Obama administration's effort to improve the statistic might not be helpful:

The "supplemental measure" ties the poverty threshold to what the poorest third of Americans spend on food, housing, clothes and utilities. The actual threshold -- not yet calculated -- will almost certainly be higher than today's poverty line. Moreover, the new definition has strange consequences. Suppose that all Americans doubled their incomes tomorrow, and suppose that their spending on food, clothing, housing and utilities also doubled. That would seem to signify less poverty -- but not by the new poverty measure. It wouldn't decline, because the poverty threshold would go up as spending went up. Many Americans would find this weird: people get richer but "poverty" stays stuck.

So Rich Lowry went after the likely Republican Senate candidate from Connecticut pretty hard today.  But I don't think that WWE programming is McMahon's most glaring weakness.  I think her biggest weakness is how her company has handled the health issues of her employees.  Some journalist should go through the back issues of the Wrestling Observer from the last ten years and then construct a tick tock of how WWE handled say, the death of Eddie Guerrrero and how WWE dealt with the steroid issue. 

There are things for a Republican partisan to like about McMahon.  She seems willing to spend enough money that Connecticut voters will have heard her message dozens of times before election day.  Based on her business past, she is both relentless and ruthless.  And who knows or cares about how WWE handled the immediate aftermath of some wrestler's death?  But the Rand Paul situation demonstrated how the media can, all at once, latch onto something that was already out in the open and transform the public's perception of a candidate.

So I'm going to talk up William Voegeli's and Wilfred McClay's (it was online Friday but isn't now) articles on the Tea Parties.  They are really good at helping us understand the Tea Parties as a populist reaction to a governing elite that both seeks to expand government past its core functions and claims (or pretends to claim) incompetence at basic functions of government.  Voegeli gets to this contradictions when he writes that this elite both believes that it can transform our health system in a more state-run direction and that securing the border is impossible absent an amnesty first. 

The Voegeli and McClay articles are worth reading in conjunction with William Schambra's National Affairs article on Obama and technocracy.  What the Tea Parties are revolting against could be the view that "government exists not to attend to the various problems in the life of a society, but to take up society itself as a problem," and that "To address social problems this way, the policymaker must put himself outside the circle of those he governs, and, informed by social science, see beyond their narrow clashing interests."  This is especially necessary because "most citizens (and the self-interested politicians they elect) are either baffled by or deliberately ignore social complexity and interrelatedness." 

The relationship between the technocracy described above and Ivy League elitism is complicated.  Schambra's description of the good politician demands impossible standards of both intellect and disinterestedness.  That is why the President character on the West Wing is a combination of Jesus and a nonsatirical Cliff Clavin.  The Ivy League degree can serve as a signal that the possessor has the intellect needed to "take up society itself as a problem."  The problem of course is that one is beginning with unrealistic expectations of both government and politicians.

 But one can be a technocrat or a believer in technocracy (the West Wing had a pretty large audience) without an elite college background.  One can also be a believer in limited but effective government while being a Harverdian (to use Seth MacFarlane's expression.)  Which is to say that one can prefer Ouachita Baptist University's Mike Huckabee over Harvard's Obama and Brown University's Bobby Jindal over the University of Delaware's Joe Biden.

According to NLT blogger and Heritage Foundation legal scholar Robert Alt, then-Dean Kagan axed Constitutional Law as a core requirement at Harvard Law: 

"My understanding is that she instituted three new courses to the required curriculum and, in so doing, got rid of a requirement to take constitutional law," Robert Alt, senior legal fellow and deputy director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation, told CNSNews.com.

"Currently, at Harvard, constitutional law is not required for first-year law students, or even for graduation," Alt added.

Evidently she felt that law school education should focus instead on public international law, international economic law, and "complex problem solving."  See this Harvard news release.  In defense of Dean Kagan, it might be said that no Con Law is better than terrible Con Law, but this is a peculiar argument to use for a Harvard, is it not?

It is the 50th anniversary of the Harper Lee modern classic, To Kill a Mockingbird.  A question recently raised is whether the Tea Party movement should make racial preferences/affirmative action an issue.  Whatever they choose to say, they should embrace this book, on school reading lists for almost 50 years. Hero Atticus Finch is devoted to the rule of law in a way foreign to our current oppressors and Supreme Court nominees.  Conservatism, whether of the more traditional sort or the more activist Tea Party variety, is focused on restoring the rule of law--saving it from bureaucracy, command-and-control economics, hijacked Congresses, runamok judges, and idolators of foreign gods.

So, at Tea Party rallies, everyone come with your copy of To Kill a Mockingbird.  Singing "We Shall Overcome" would not be a bad idea either.

A related item is lefty Jacob Weisberg's distinction between western (property rights-Tea Party) conservatives and southern conservatives--the first he characterizes by Goldwater and Palin, the latter by George Wallace.  The westerners (here he mentions Harry Jaffa) used to have intellectual credentials, but now they are "anti-intellectual."  Of course Weisberg wants moderation on the right.   

DC denizens have just through Monday to take in The Sacred Made Real, an exhibit of paintings and sculpture from the Spanish Counter Reformation.  Wheat&Weeds excerpts Mary Eberstadt's review of the reaction to it.  I've been to the small exhibit twice--and here I thought of Zubaran as a skillful painter of lemons.

Can't make it there?  Then try this W&W-recommended virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel instead.  (Be sure to play with the controls in the lower left hand corner.)  I still like to brag about my Charlton Heston-autographed print of the ceiling.

Andrew McCarthy introduces his new book on radical Islam at the Heritage Foundation.  Of particular interest is his argument that its efforts flatter left-liberal weaknesses and misunderstandings of religious liberty. 

But Robert Reilly makes an argument of a different order--a serious theological examination of radical Islam that notes its similarities to western philosophic tendencies that have been around for centuries.  Yet the solipsism of even mainstream Islam is difficult for Westerners to fathom, though it has extraordinary political consequences.  In the video of Bob's presentation note in particular the extensive comments from the audience of an Egyptian scholar of Islam who supports this analysis.  His name is Bassam Tibi, of Cornell University, and some of his books can be found here.  Order Reilly's Closing of the Muslim Mind  here.

One story Bob recounts from his time in Iraq relates a chaplain's insistence on wearing his cross--contrary to the official policy that proscribes religious insignia.  The chaplain (regarded as a kind of imam) got the trust of Iraqis, who respected people of faith.

Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on whether to confirm Judge Robert Chatigny to the Second Circuit of Appeals.  As I explain here, Chatigny provides the perfect example of why Obama's "empathy" standard for judges is extremely dangerous and improper.  In an infamous 2005 case, Chatigny, a federal district court judge in Connecticut, fully displayed the "depth and breadth" of his empathy.  Ignoring his judicial duty to be impartial, he attempted, by asserting bizarre, unprecedented legal arguments and even bullying attorneys, to remove a serial rapist and murderer, Michael Ross, from death row.  Why?  Because Chatigny thought that Ross's "sexual sadism" was "clearly a mitigating factor."  In fact, Chatigny railed, Ross was the "least culpable of anyone on death row" because of his sadistic tendencies.

Obama stated that he would seek judges who empathize with certain groups: the poor and the disabled, for example.  He did not mention sadists. 

Yet there is nothing in his theory that prevents judicial favoritism for this particular group.  In fact, if we take seriously the words of Obama's SCOTUS nominee, Elena Kagan, who stated that judges should have empathy for the "despised and disadvantaged," it would seem that empathy for "despised" murderers would fit neatly within Obama's theory and Kagan's as well.

Bottom line: once we declare that a judge should be guided by the whims of his empathy, we cannot demand that he direct his empathy to the party that we happen to think most deserving of it.  Chatigny's empathy for the "Roadside Strangler" should serve as a resounding reminder of the need for judges to look not into their "hearts" for guidance in a case, but to the law. 

Avik Roy informs us that the gold standard isn't just for nutjobs.  I'm not in favor of a return to the gold standard, but I was glad to see an articulate defense of that position on NRO.  In fact, NRO's The Agenda domestic policy blog is terrific.

Jeffrey Goldberg is very fair-minded critic of Israel's less than fair-minded critics.  This selection of his interview with Peter Beinart does a good job of demonstrating Beinart's loss of perspective.  Beinart mischaracterizes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's position on Palestinian statehood (which Beinart also distorted in his NYRB essay), but Beinart goes way out on a limb and manages to call Hamas a "nasty movement".  Pitiful.  If you want a go-for-the-throat attack on Beinart there is Noah Pollack over at Commentary.

And speaking of Jeffery Goldberg, he interviews Marcy Winograd, who is running against liberal, but pro-Israel Jane Harman in the Democratic primaries.  Wow.  Here is Goldberg asking her about military options for fighting terrorism:

Goldberg:  Is there anything you would do against terrorism militarily?

Winograd:  I would join the International Criminal Court.  I believe in diplomacy and the rule of law.  When people are perpetrating acts of terrorism they should be tried before the world in the world court or tried in absentia.

Winograd favors an immediate American withdrawal from Afghanistan and increasing aid to women-led NGOs in Afghanistan.  Goldberg asks about the uh... practical problems inherent in this strategy:

Goldberg:  But if we left Afghanistan, wouldn't the Taliban shut down these women-led NGO's?

Winograd:  Well, that would be the point of investing in women-led NGO's, to make them stronger and help women emerge in leadership positions politically.

So we will try terrorists in absentia (or rather hope that the world court does so for us) and hope that women will rise to positions of political leadership in a Taliban-led Afghanistan.  Oh, and she wants to get rid of Israel - though through binationalism (one state for all of present-day Israel, Gaza and the West Bank in which Jews will soon be a minority) rather than extermination.  And she implies Henry Waxman might not be a loyal American.  She now has the support of Howard Dean and got 37.5% of the vote when she ran against Harman in 2006. Maybe Beinart can write an essay blaming AIPAC for Winograd's alienation from Zionism and lack of basic common sense.    

Real Clear World asks the question, and finds the nations which most approve of U.S. leadership all located in one spot: Sub-Saharan Africa.

So, why do these poorest of nations exceedingly admire the leadership of the richest of nations? Surely, the election of Obama - an African-American whose father was a Kenyan - has not hindered perceptions of the U.S. But the lion's share of our good graces on the African continent is the legacy of the Bush years.

PEPFAR (AIDS reduction), debt forgiveness, food and health aid packages, recognizing genocide in Darfur and establishing an Africa-oriented military command have been the most significant pro-African policies of any nation in history.

It's refreshing to see foreign appreciation for America's good-will. It is by no means universal.

President Obama met with Senate GOP in a closed-door meeting yesterday which, by all accounts, turned somewhat testy.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) accused Obama of acting "duplicitous" in calls for bipartisanship. "I told him I thought there was a degree of audacity in him even showing up today after what had happened with financial regulation." Corker met daily with Democrats on financial reform, relying on promises of bi-partisan compromise, only to be excluded from the final negotiations.

As seems customary to his character, Obama bristled at GOP policy objections. According to Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.):

The more he talked, the more he got upset. He needs to take a valium before he comes in and talks to Republicans and just calm down, and don't take anything so seriously. If you disagree with someone, it doesn't mean you're attacking their motives -- and he takes it that way and tends then to lecture and then gets upset.

Obama seems to be the thinnest-skinned president in recent history. Ironically, for a lawyer and politician, he is deeply uncomfortable (even angered) by the slightest disagreement or prospect of debate. 

Brooks concludes from Yuval Levin's fine work:

We Americans have never figured out whether we are children of the French or the British Enlightenment. Was our founding a radical departure or an act of preservation? This was a bone of contention between Jefferson and Hamilton, and it's a bone of contention today, both between parties and within each one.

Both Jefferson and Hamilton, whatever their great differences, were in heated agreement on the radicalism of the American Revolution.  We're not Descartes' children, nor are we Hume's.  Brooks is right that European standards have infected our political discourse (e.g., "realism" vs. "idealism" in the study of international relations).  But, as critics of the State Department have long asked, is there an American interests section here?

The Dalai Lama laments religious intolerance in today's New York Times, seeking a "mutual understanding" among faiths. The theme is neither novel nor controversial, though perhaps always in need of retelling.

But the devil's in the details. The Dalai Lama notes "vigorous signs of [intolerance's] virulence":

In Europe, there are intense debates about newcomers wearing veils or wanting to erect minarets and episodes of violence against Muslim immigrants. Radical atheists issue blanket condemnations of those who hold to religious beliefs. In the Middle East, the flames of war are fanned by hatred of those who adhere to a different faith.

He then indentifies "compassion" as a "common ground" among faiths which can bring "harmony" to humanity.

Again, the broad theme is obvious to Western audiences. But are faiths truly equivalent in their offenses of intolerance and prioritization of compassion? Invoking 9/11, the Dalai Lama chastises "those who paint Islam as a militant faith" and "blindly follow the lead of some in the news media and let the violent acts of a few individuals define an entire religion."

While laboring upon the deficiencies of other faiths (to the exclusion of seeking similarities) would prove counter-productive, a simple-minded aversion to reality is equally inadvisable. Muhammad was a military general of many battles. His relics in Istanbul include his sword, shield, armor, horse barding, throne and a letter informing an infidel king that the impending slaughter of his tribe was owed to his refusal to convert.

Surely there is compassion in Islam, but the Dalai Lama reinvents history and insults the intellect by scolding those who recognize militant aspects at the core of Islam which differentiate the faith from other world religions. 

Tax incentives have an impact on hiring decisions.

South Korea has halted all trade with North Korea and announced it will seek U.N. sanctions (which N. Korea has previously threatened to interpret as an act of war). The White House responded decisively, promising "unequivocal" support to S. Korea. The U.S. has vowed to back all measures requested of the U.N., bolster S. Korean defenses and initiate joint military exercises.

This is undoubtedly the most resolved and militant posture yet adopted by President Obama. The White House has thrown its weight behind a S. Korean decision which N. Korea promised would lead to war.

The U.S. has thus called N. Korea's bluff. The next play goes to China, which must consider how to vote on a potential Security Council resolution to punish N. Korea. Thus far, every player at the table has upped the ante during his respective turn - and no one has flinched yet.

UPDATE: North Korea has threatened military action in response to the alleged trespasses of South Korean ships into Northern waters during the past week. N. Korea's military is now "on combat alert."

Seems the North doesn't want to wait its turn. I assume calmer minds will simply ignore this fist-pounding, but such likely-baseless claims and temper-tantrum posturing is revealing of the school-yard-bully-mentality governing North Korea.

UPDATE 2: North Korea has severed all ties with South Korea, closing off the country's air and water ways, expelling South Koreans from "a joint industrial complex just inside the North where about 120 South Korean companies employ about 40,000 North Koreans," and "totally abrogat[ing] the agreement on nonaggression between the north and the south and completely halt[ing] the inter-Korean cooperation."

Abrogating the agreement on nonaggression. I believe that makes the third time this week North Korea has declared war on South Korea.