Month: September 2010

Chris Good wonders what Obama will do:

One can … envision a coalition of younger and marginalized voters being disappointed in Obama if Prop. 19 passes and he decides to sue. Call them the Shepard Fairey coalition. In 2008, Obama was cool among this crowd; if he attacks Prop. 19, a lot of that mojo will disappear. Being seen as a buzzkill never helped any politician among young and disaffected voters, much less Obama, who rode their support to victory.

(Image: From Print's 2009 design contest. The goal was to imagine what "a legal pack of marijuana cigarettes [would] look like.")

Justin Elliott wants to know if the photos of American soldiers posing with body parts from dead Afghans will be released. Last year Obama signed an amendment to stop the release of photographs "in response to a FOIA lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union that would have forced the government to release pictures of military detainee abuse." But:

That amendment to the FOIA law … applies only to photographs taken between Sept. 11, 2001, and Jan. 22, 2009 (the second day of Obama's presidency). The alleged killings of Afghan civilians by the Stryker soldiers occured in 2010, so the pictures in this new case were presumably taken after the period covered by the law.

We've filed a FOIA  request for the pictures and, naturally, we will keep you posted.

Joel Wing updates us on the political impasse in Iraq:

With Ramadan over, many analysts believed that Iraq’s politicians would finally get around to forming a new government. Instead, it appears like that might still be weeks off. There has been little actual movement besides the nomination of Vice President Mahdi by the National Alliance in early September 2010. Otherwise the various lists have just been posturing, and providing a never ending series of leaks to the media about scenarios that don’t pan out. As ever, the main hold up is the opposition of the National Alliance and National Movement to a second term for Maliki, as well as State of Law’s refusal to allow him to be replaced by Allawi. As long as the two refuse to budge, there will be no progress in Iraqi politics.

Dave Weigel posts a video of Sheehan hitting a new low by calling 9/11 "an inside job." He asks conservatives to pay attention:

There really was a political/cultural moment when Sheehan, whose son died in Iraq, was an un-touchable, credible activist. Conservatives who attacked her at the time, like Glenn Beck and Mike Gallagher, were criticized for being so gauche. But Sheehan was adopted into other left-wing causes and the broader left really dumped when she ran a quixotic third party campaign against Nancy Pelosi in 2008. I am not, not, not making a one-to-one comparison here, but there is a lesson for tea party activists who are currently and unquestioningly the toast of the conservative elite and the GOP.

A guide.

Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 6.55 pm

Reihan Salam laments the dearth of visas we're giving to highly skilled immigrants but argues against amnesty for folks here illegally:

During the 1920s, the United States passed an immigration law that reflected raw ethnic politics. In essence, the descendants of northern European migrants sought to privilege their co-ethnics over would-be migrants from southern and central Europe. This restriction helped pave the way for the Great Compression, the egalitarian midcentury period celebrated by many on the left, and it also put the brakes on rapid demographic change that sparked cultural and political conflicts like the Prohibition wars.

Now, in a strikingly similar vein, the rising political influence of Mexican Americans — a salutary and inspiring development in most respects — is having a strangely similar impact on our immigration debates.

Non-Mexican migrant communities don't have the demographic or political weight to advance policies that would benefit their co-ethnics, would-be migrants from highly-indebted poor countries have few strong political allies in the U.S., and backers of more skilled migration risk being accused of ethnic insensitivity, as the vast majority of college-educated Mexicans choose to stay in their native country while skilled European and Asian workers tend to be somewhat more footloose.

He's reacting to a column by Ezra Klein, who had different conclusions.

Jim Burroway exposes some seriously depraved homophobic defamation.