Month: October 2009

Greenwald notes what he calls "most despicable domestic political event of the year." For the GOP to target Muslim Hill interns seems particularly unhinged to me.

Steve King's letter to the president for asking Kevin Jennings to work for him repeats the debunked claim that Jennings counseled a 15-year-old to use a condom if he had sex with another man. Here's the letter:

Equally troubling is Mr. Jennings' self-described history of ignoring the sexual abuse of a child. In his book, One Teacher in Ten, Mr. Jennings recounts a 15-year old student confiding in him that he had a sexual relationship with a much older man. Mr. Jennings' only response was to ask if the underage boy used a condom. As a mandatory reporter, Mr. Jennings was required by law to report child abuse, including sex crimes. Mr. Jennings cannot serve as the "safe schools" czar when his record demonstrates a willingness to overlook the sexual abuse of a child.

But we now know that a) the boy was 16 years old, i.e. of legal age at the time; b) that he never had sex with anyone; and c) that he has nothing but good things to say about Jennings in retrospect (and at the time). Perhaps the advice was wrong, as Kevin (a friend and political sparring partner of mine since our Harvard days together), has himself suggested. But to send a letter to the president that repeats what is clearly untrue strikes me as a classic part of the usual strategy of trying to accuse gay people of child-abuse. And King knew the charge was untrue, because we know Greg Sargent told his office, and even Fox News corrected its smear.

A curiously moving auto-tuned Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking – already a viral sensation:

We're beginning to find out. The neocon campaign to kill any Jewish-American alternative to the Israel-Never-Does-Anything-Wrong crowd is also in full force, with Schumer pulling out of a J-Street event he'd already apparently agreed to. Goldfarb celebrates the exit of another Democratic  Republican congressman, Mike Castle.

Steven Metz says a "civilian surge" is impossible:

We could belly up and provide the resources for a serious expeditionary civilian corps. But a few hundred or even a couple of thousand people is not enough. We would need many thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of advisers with linguistic skills and cultural knowledge willing to leave home and live under risky conditions for years at a time. And we are not talking about 20-somethings paid a pittance and fueled by idealism, but skilled professionals demanding serious pay for their expertise and sacrifice. (The difficulty that the State department had convincing even its hardened professionals to volunteer for duty in Iraq showed what a challenge this is.) Of course, if the pay is high enough, the experts will come. But, at a time of massive government budget deficits and a persisting national economic crisis, this is simply not in the cards.

What, then, is Plan B? If we are unwilling to pay the price for a serious civilian capability–and admit that foisting the job of development and political assistance on the military is a bad idea–the only option is to alter our basic strategy. We could find a way to thwart Al Qaeda and other terrorists without trying to re-engineer weak states. We could, in other words, get out of the counterinsurgency and stabilization business. This is not an attractive option and entails many risks. But it does reflect reality. Ultimately, it may be better than a strategy based on a capability that exists only in our minds.

This is my Tory fear: that there are some things that cannot be done. Ad there are certainly things that cannot be done when the imperial power is bankrupt. One of them is transforming Afghanistan into a place where al Qaeda will never be able to take sanctuary with Karzai as the head of government – and with an intervening power still there after eight years. We had a window. We blew it. Move on.

Hadi Ghaemi, director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, highlights the protesters being sentenced to death in Iran (there are also reports that a gay Iranian was hanged last week):

The international community's focus on the nuclear issue and the P5+1 negotiations with Iran are taking place against a backdrop of serious human rights crimes in Iran. The Obama administration is so enthralled by the possibility of finally getting Iran to the negotiation table and extracting concessions, that it is all but ignoring the human rights crisis, the post-election violence, and now the rising number of political death sentences. It is a folly to consider the nuclear negotiations and human rights concerns as mutually exclusive. They are indeed inter-related as state-sponsored violence and human rights violations are closely interwoven into Iran's foreign policy calculations at the moment. It remains to be seen if Iran has indeed achieved a form of nuclear deterrence–if, by having even appeared to join the nuclear club, it will be immune from pressure about human rights.

(Photo: young gay Iranians hanged for alleged sexual "crimes" three years ago in Iran. AFP/Getty)

“Hey Kanye, are you bobbing your own head to your own music in your own house?” – Aziz Ansari, recalling an evening he spent with a gay fish.

Eli's latest, somewhat wrily delivered, scoop:

“While there were preliminary indications that Kashmiri may have been dead, there is now reason to believe that he could be alive,” a senior U.S. official told The Washington Times on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing intelligence matters. “It’s not always an open-and-shut case.”

Below is a video of a vicious gay-bashing in Queens. It's below the fold because it's painful to watch. But the most amazing part of the news segment is an interview with one of the suspect's buddies, who accused the victim of "coming on" to his friends and thereby deserving a beatdown – near to death. As he denies there was any anti-gay bias in the attack, he wears a proud Leviticus tattoo above. Video and news segment after the jump: