Month: March 2010

No one does it better than Mark Halperin. Every single thing he cites in his latest brain-dead critique is, I believe, tangibly false, and the moronic attempt to grab some pageviews by a counter-intuitive and utterly dumb analogy – Obama is like Bush, guys! Aren't I clever? – is Beltway hackery at its worst.

This administration has resolutely pursued policy before politics on the economy, the wars, and health insurance reform; has some real cabinet stars – Duncan, Gates and Geithner come immediately to mind – who have actually done the right thing rather than the politically expedient thing; and the president remains a completely different brand in the public mind than the Congress.

Halperinism really is part of what's deeply wrong about Washington. Obama really is the only thing that's still right.

The Daily Caller features a segment from Al Jazeera:

T-shirts with hard-hitting messages relating to the Israeli spy agency Mossad (“Don’t mess with Mossad!”) have been selling like hot cakes throughout Israel. And the agency’s official Web site is reporting a “soaring” number of people applying to be agents.

"If anyone's curious what I look like with a beard, it's this ?:^(0) " – Conan O'Brien, king of late night the Internet.

Conan makes Sarah Killen a star.

At War was live-blogging all day yesterday. Musings On Iraq's advice:

[It’s] important to remember that this year’s voting is only the most public expression of Iraq’s attempt to build a democracy. More important is that institutions and the rule of law develop so that the general public can benefit from the freedoms a democracy is supposed to provide. That will take much longer, and Iraq is struggling on that front.

Iraq’s justice system for example, lacks due process, and its jails are famous for beatings, torture, overcrowding, and poor conditions. The deBaathification campaign launched by the Iraqi National Alliance and the Accountability and Justice Commission that it controlled just on the eve of balloting was another instance of the lack of rule of law as the Commission was not appointed by parliament, the charges against the banned candidates was never made public, and the court that dealt with the appeals changed its opinion due to political pressure. That doesn’t mean that Iraq cannot eventually establish a working democratic system, but that claims that it has already arrived are premature, and that it will be a long and arduous process that can see reversals, and even be cut short. Iraq’s people and government do have a chance to move in a positive direction however, which is in stark contrast to most of the countries that surround it that are governed by monarchies and autocracies

Jonathan Bernstein tries to recall big last minute failures. He "can't think of any historical precedent for a failure this large in a House vote — a major policy with the full support of the president and the majority party leadership that got this close without winning."

My feelings here.

This weekend on the Dish, Andrew returned from his blogatical to tackle Clive Crook's conventional wisdom on Obama, the latest tentative attempt at Iraqi elections, and Palin's political genius. He also took another long look at the state of conservatism and highlighted some wise words from David Foster Wallace.

Obama's latest victory in the war on terror here. John Sides asked the central question of Dems on HCR, Greg Scoblete trounced Jonah Goldberg over Iraq, Kevin Sullivan countered Wehner over the same, and Tom Ricks replied to Andrew. More Iran debate here. More awfulness from Cheney here – to the point where even Paul Mirengoff was aghast.

Lehrer and others talked depression while Andrew addressed drugs. A reader narrated a dramatic story from the Chilean tsunami. Assorted weekend fun here, here, here, here, here, and especially here. 

— C.B.

The mouthpiece for the pro-torture right and triangulating left, the Washington Post, has been puffing up the genius of Rahm Emanuel in recent weeks. Eric Holder himself has been publicly lamenting that he has not been "political" enough in his job, as attorney-general. In other words: Washington as usual. And look, there is a genuine debate about whether military commissions – now rid of the torture and more blatant framing of the Cheney years – or civil courts should be used to try terror suspects. I prefer the great example of demonstrating what makes the West superior to those regimes based on Islamist theology, i.e. civil courts. But decent military commissions are not some terrible fate, if handled properly and if the defense lawyers have real tools at their disposal. It was only the rigged, coerced kangaroo courts of the Cheney years I objected to.

But whatever your view, this must not, it seems to me, be a politicized decision. It should be a matter of justice. And to go from a Rove-driven Justice Department to an Emanuel-driven Justice Department is not the change most of us who supported Obama wanted to see. Or believe in.

Google by the numbers.