Author: Andrew Sullivan

The crisis could be spreading:

Wild bees are at risk of catching diseases from their struggling domesticated brethren, according to a recent study published in The Journal of Applied Ecology.

The study, led by evolutionary geneticist Lena Wilfert of the University of Exeter, adds a new layer to the crisis known as colony collapse disorder (CCD), which has precipitated an alarming drop in honeybee populations worldwide. … [T]he use of pesticides isn’t the only anthropogenic driver behind the transmission of pathogens into the wild. Wilfert’s team also found that many commercial beekeepers are creating ideal conditions for virulent diseases to emerge. “High densities within breeding facilities and in commercial pollination operations increase the contact rate between infected and uninfected conspecifics, thereby lowering the threshold for disease emergence,” the authors explain.

Helen Briggs reports from across the Pond:

Vanessa Amaral-Rogers of the charity, Buglife, said the results of the study showed an urgent need for changes in how the government regulates the importation of bees. “Wild honey bees can no longer be found in England or Wales, thought to have been wiped out by disease,” she told BBC News. “Now these studies show how diseases can be transmitted between managed honey bees and commercial bumble bees, and could have potentially drastic impacts on the rest of our wild pollinators.”

A study last year on a sample of commercial bumble bee hives imported into the UK found 77% were contaminated with up to five different parasites, with a further three being found in the pollen that was brought in with them, she added.

More Dish on the bee problem here and here.

Adam Segal sees new cyber laws as a real possibility:

Could this finally be the year when the Congress passes cyber legislation? I think yes. Public awareness of the threat is at an all-time high. The Sony attack has created pressure for Congress to act (though it is not clear that any of the legislation would have prevented the North Korean hackers from breaching the company). Moreover, there is bipartisan support for cybersecurity legislation. … [W]hile disparaging most of the President’s agenda, prominent Republicans like Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee have pointed to cybersecurity as an area where “we can get some agreement.” As in the past, privacy concerns will make or break the legislation, but we should expect to see real signs of progress.

Katie Benner examines the cyber proposals in Obama’s SOTU:

The Obama ideas with the most potential to bolster corporate security are his threat-sharing measure and the corporate disclosure rule.

As I’ve written before, collaboration is considered to be one of the best defenses against cybercrime, but a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey found that only 25 percent of businesses currently share information about attacks. Obama wants to encourage companies to share threat data with the government in order to get liability protection. … The disclosure rule isn’t useful because it increases security per se, but because it gives companies an incentive to pre-emptively beef up their defenses.

However, Timothy Edgar declares that no “proposal in Obama’s State of the Union address would truly hold companies accountable for cyber insecurity”:

If you are looking for effective ideas on this score, you would do better to listen to students here at Brown University where I’ve lately been teaching.

One student’s idea was to build on existing “bug bounty” programs in which software companies pay researchers money for uncovering security flaws by turning the federal hacking law on its head. Today, all intrusions—even “white hat” penetrations for security research—are illegal unless the system owner consents. A company with lousy security may threaten a security researcher with a lawsuit or jail time for pointing out a gaping hole in its defenses. What if Congress reversed this perverse law, requiring companies to pay ethical hackers for demonstrating vulnerabilities?

Charles C. Camosy’s forthcoming Beyond the Abortion Wars tries to chart it. Calling the book “fascinating and compelling,” Jim A.C. Everett applauds it for cutting through the spin:

In this book, Camosy masterfully traverses the ‘battleground’ between the ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ camps in order to show that this battleground is in fact no such thing. In fact, as Camosy notes, the majority of the American public actually agree on a middle-ground position on abortion. Despite what one might think from reading certain media outlets and Twitter wars, there is actually a large consensus in the public regarding abortion. This insight is deceptively powerful. By demonstrating the areas of agreement, Camosy is able to help guide us beyond the abortion wars to allow a way forward for a new generation.

Commenting on the House GOP’s Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would have prohibited abortions after 20 weeks (except in cases of rape or to save the mother’s life), Camosy points to one key factor in crafting legislation that appeals to this middle-ground – “that Roe has, in effect, already been overturned”: 

In a 2010 article she wrote in the William and Mary Journal of Women and the Law, Caitlin W. Bormann says quite directly that the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey “established a new, less protective, constitutional standard for abortion restrictions.” Instead of defending privacy, Casey focused on making sure that abortion restrictions didn’t impose what it calls an “undue burden” on women. This standard, she says, “immediately enabled states to invade women’s privacy in new ways.”

Bormann says the Roberts court “has interpreted Casey expansively”, resulting in “erosions of the privacy boundaries” that were once protected by Roe. Indeed, she says that certain privacy rights to abortion were “eviscerated” by Casey, especially as interpreted by the all-important swing voter on the Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Writing in the New Yorker, Jeffery Toobin agrees. Would Kennedy uphold a state law with a 20-week (or earlier) ban? Toobin points out that in Gonzales v. Carhart (2007) this swing justice upheld federal law against late-term abortions with a very different sensibility from his opinion in Casey. Kennedy wrote, “The State may use its regulatory power to bar certain procedures and substitute others, all in furtherance of its legitimate interests in regulating the medical profession in order to promote respect for life, including life of the unborn.” What counted as an undue burden for him when he helped decide Casey in 1992, Toobin noted ominously, looked very different to Kennedy fifteen years later.

In a bizarre bit of political theater yesterday, Senate Democrats tried to force their GOP counterparts to go on the record about whether or not climate change is a hoax:

The Senate overwhelmingly voted, 98-1, in favor of an amendment stating that “climate change is real and not a hoax.” In an amusing twist, the chamber’s most notorious climate denier, Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, signed on to the amendment at the last minute, mostly because it didn’t attribute a cause to global warming. “The climate is changing. The climate has always changed,” Inhofe said. He then criticized supporters of man-caused climate change by saying that the real “hoax” was “that there are some people that are so arrogant to think” that they can change the climate. (The only senator to oppose that statement was Roger Wicker, a conservative from Mississippi.)

Phillip Bump sighs:

It was a nifty, if insincere, bit of politics. There’s no question that a vote against a flat statement that climate change is real could have been problematic for candidates down the road – especially for those various Republican senators quietly preparing for the big election in 2016. With Inhofe’s re-framing the question, the Democrats, trying to engineer a gotcha moment, ended up empty-handed on the vote, with neither the satisfaction of nailing down opposition to scientific consensus and without a point of leverage for future discussions of addressing the warming planet.

Nonetheless, Rebecca Leber applauds the Dems’ strategic trolling:

The Washington Examiner’s Zack Colman reported Monday that Republicans are regrouping to consider a new strategy on climate. “They’re going to try to drag their feet as long as possible, but there are certain things out there that could bring the predominant GOP position to light,” Ford O’Connell, a GOP strategist and former adviser to John McCain, told Colman. “They want to at least have a unified position and they want to be able to have their ducks in a row. And if they have a solution, they want to have one that has the least impact on the economy.”

That the GOP is strategizing about climate change is itself an admission that they don’t have a climate plan. And until they actually come up with one, they’ll be easy marks for the environmentally minded Democrats who are laughing at their expense.

Obama hasn’t met his goal of doubling exports:

But this Congress could make progress:

There wasn’t a lot of overlap between the proposals in President Obama’s State of the Union address and those in Iowa Senator Joni Ernst’s Republican response. But here’s one thing they both advocated: trade deals. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, one of the big deals the administration is negotiating, has suddenly become one of the hottest topics in Washington, as it appears to be one of the few topics on which President Barack Obama and Republicans might be able to reach any sort of agreement in this session of Congress.

Edward Alden considers the benefits and drawbacks of more trade:

Trade does have a chance of passing, and should. The stakes are high. The United States needs to be deeply engaged in Asia in particular to help build an economic future for the region that is not dominated solely by China, and to make sure the United States has the most open access possible to the fastest-growing consumer markets in the world. President Obama, after many years of hedging on trade, has now clearly made that commitment. The White House has set up a whip operation to build support on the Hill, and the president has signaled that he is willing to work closely with Republicans to muster the votes he needs.

But there will be minimal support from Democrats. Most of the Democratic opponents are not protectionists wanting to run way from competition. Instead, they see a game being played in which too many Americans have little chance of winning. While highly educated Americans have been enormously successful in the more open global economy, building some of the world’s most innovative and dynamic companies, far too many are simply unprepared for that competition.

He argues that, if “even some of the proposals that President Obama urged last night were enacted by Congress, it would be far easier to expand support for trade liberalization”:

An American workforce that was better prepared for the rigors of competition would be far more enthusiastic about taking on new competitors. But until the United States addresses more of its competitive challenges head on – and that means in part new initiatives from the government in Washington — support for trade will continue to be far weaker than it should be.

Kilgore isn’t impressed with the upcoming Bibi-Congress love-fest:

To be clear, the Speaker of the House can invite anybody he wants to address Congress, and the president cannot do much about it. So while the invitation is not a breach of protocol for Boehner, it’s a really bad idea for Bibi. Not only will it further alienate the people who actually conduct America’s foreign policies; it will also expose Netanyahu’s habit of indiscretion in seeking to manipulate partisan divisions in this country in pursuit of his own interests. I’m sure his defenders will make the plea that Iran’s nuclear program represents an “existential threat” to Israel, making all normal diplomatic rules disposable. But since everybody agrees that Iran’s a major global problem and disagree on how to deal with it, Netanyahu would be better advised to make his case in private. But bullying and excessively Machiavellian maneuvering do seem to be a basic part of his personality, I’m afraid.

Aaron David Miller thinks Bibi is mostly just focused on keeping his job:

Any time an incumbent has an opportunity to use the powers and prestige of office to burnish his prime ministerial image, particularly that close to an election, so much the better. It won’t be determinative. Israelis didn’t ride in on a bale of hay yesterday; they’re all too familiar with their politicians’ politicking.  But in a close election, being feted and supported by your country’s key ally with a focus on critical security issues in an age of jihadi terror, well…..that’s not a  bad photo op. And if Bibi wins? We probably can expect to see more of him as both Democratic and Republican candidates for president of the United States fight for the title of Israel’s best friend.

Along those lines, Larison grimaces:

The frequency with which Israeli leaders have been addressing Congress in the last decade is remarkable in itself. This will also be the third time overall that Netanyahu has addressed Congress as Israeli prime minister, and the second time in four years that he will have done so. It will be the third address to Congress by an Israeli prime minister within a decade, and fifth since 1995. No other country’s head of government has spoken so often to our Congress in the last twenty years. (It is not an accident that the last five appearances have taken place while the GOP controlled the House.) That might make sense if Israel were actually a treaty ally of the United States, but it isn’t. It also might make sense if the relationship with Israel were extraordinarily valuable to the U.S., but the U.S. gets almost nothing from this relationship except political and diplomatic headaches. It is one more example of how one-sided and strange the U.S.-Israel relationship has become.

Meanwhile, Juan Cole fumes over Bibi and the hawks’ ongoing and blatant attempts to block the Iran deal:

The US Joint Chiefs of Staff looked at this issue and have decided that only an Iraq-style invasion, occupation and regime change could hope to abolish the nuclear enrichment program. If that is what it takes, the US and Israeli hawks are perfectly all right with it. It would be good times for the military-industrial complex, and Israel’s last major conventional enemy (though a toothless one) would be destroyed. An irritant to US policy and a threat to Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, our big volatile Gasoline Station in the Sky, would also be removed.

Iran is three times as populous and three times as large as Iraq. So I figure this [war] enterprise would cost at least 15,000 troops dead, 90,000 seriously wounded, and altogether $15- 24 trillion dollars over time (including health care for the 90,000 wounded vets). Given the size of the country and the nationalism of the population, it could be much more like the US war in Vietnam than Iraq was, i.e. it could end in absolute defeat.

And again, Mossad isn’t game either.