Author: Andrew Sullivan

Michael Moynihan does his damnedest to resist the conspiracy theories now buzzing around the arrest of Assange:

Before Assange was remanded to custody in the United Kingdom, awaiting a possible extradition to Sweden to face multiple sexual assault charges, his most credulous supporters switched tactics, from attacking the overly broad Swedish conception of rape to suggesting one of his alleged victims moonlights as an American agent; downshifting from Camille Paglia to Three Days of the Condor.

Here’s how an evidence-free, innuendo-filled personal attack on a rape accuser trespasses the mainstream political debate. On his Twitter feed, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann (162,000 followers) links to a rambling blog post arguing that Anna Ardin, the Swedish feminist who accused Assange of rape, is an anti-Castro activist with connections to CIA front groups. Elsewhere on the Internet, NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller, the popular liberal website FireDogLake, Bianca Jagger, and The First Post (a British news website “brought to you by The Week”) all circulated the charges without an ounce of skepticism. 

(Photo: Peter McDiarmid/Getty.)

A reminder that I'll be in a "Catholic Family Conversation" on homosexuality with Maggie Gallagher tonight at Georgetown University at 8.30 pm. Dish readers most welcome.

The latest Tom Friedman column is just baiting Matt Taibbi. Money quote:

More than ever, America today reminds me of a working couple where the husband has just lost his job, they have two kids in junior high school, a mortgage and they’re maxed out on their credit cards. On top of it all, they recently agreed to take in their troubled cousin, Kabul, who just can’t get his act together and keeps bouncing from relative to relative. Meanwhile, their Indian nanny, who traded room and board for baby-sitting, just got accepted to M.I.T. on a full scholarship and will be leaving them in a few months. What to do?

The answer: violin lessons for the boys! Of course.

Reza Aslan's plea:

Enough stalling. It’s well past time [for Mahmoud Abbas to] to declare [Palestinian] statehood and force a vote of recognition in the United Nations. Obama claims the U.S. will veto any such vote. Let’s call his bluff. Let’s find out if this president is ready to stand utterly alone on the world stage as the sole head of state refusing to recognize the existence of a Palestinian state just so he can appease an ally, Israel, that over the last year has repeatedly gone of out its way to embarrass his administration and stifle his attempts at achieving a two-state solution.

Better still: have the US vote for such a recognition and lay out its own views on boundaries. Enough with being yanked around by an alleged ally that is prepared to do nothing to help the US advance its own global interests, and a great deal to sabotage American strategy.

Howard Gleckman presents the numbers in two ways:

If you assume the Bush-era tax cuts were going to be extended anyway (what wonks like to call the current policy baseline), this deal is a sweet tax cut across the board. But if you compare it to the tax law at the end of the Clinton Administration—that is, if you assume the Bush-era revenue law expires in three weeks (the current law baseline)—this proposal is a big tax cut indeed and one that benefits very high earners much more than others. 

One expects government officials to do this; but journalists?

Josh Gerstein says that DADT could make it to the Senate floor tonight. NJ says that could doom it. Collins is looking shaky:

Collins has said she supports repeal, but won’t agree to vote for cloture on the Defense Authorization Bill containing repeal if Harry Reid doesn’t allow ample time for open debate and amendments on the bill.

In private discussions between Collins and Reid this morning, and between their staffs over the weekend, Collins has demanded that Reid allow what’s known as “unlimited debate” on the bill in order for her to vote for repeal, the aide close to the talks says.

Reid has rejected this demand, the aide continues. The problem is that this could allow any Senator to hijack the proceedings by introducing a “non-germane amendment,” thus holding the floor.

Drum is disheartened:

If this is really what’s happening, it’s a pretty sobering reminder of the power of the Republican right wing. Collins is sincerely in favor of repealing DADT, she’s not up for reelection until 2014, and she represents a moderate state. But obviously something has scared the hell out of her. She knows unlimited debate isn’t practical, and she knows that repealing DADT in the next session of Congress is all but impossible. So she’s killing this for years.

 Joe Sudbay has a list of Senators on the fence on DADT that you can call. Mark Pryor is now on board. There is a clear majority in the Senate on this, support from the Pentagon, overwhelming backing from the public … and then the fucking filibuster.

Noam Scheiber explains the reasoning behind the White House's doubling down on a post-partisan, good-government, tackle-the-tough-issues approach to the next two years. I have to say I find the rationale persuasive. And in some ways, it comes down to this: the GOP House has finally given Obama the space to be the president he always wanted to be.

(Photo: Obama campaigning for Patrick last October, by Saul Loeb/Getty.)

In the wake of the proposed tax cut deal, Nate Silver wonders how Obama's base will react:

[J]ust because liberals are disappointed with Mr. Obama does not necessarily mean they will fail to turn out and vote for him when the only other choice is a Republican. In some ways, it probably helps Mr. Obama that the country has become so polarized and that liberals view Republicans as such an unacceptable alternative, and vice versa. The prospect of a President Palin or a President Gingrich would surely motivate most liberals to vote — and even comparatively moderate Republican candidates like Mitt Romney will be under pressure to show their conservative stripes during the Republican primaries and are likely to campaign on policies, like a repeal of the health care bill, that liberals overwhelmingly object to.

Clive is very sharp in analyzing yesterday's presser. Obama both defended the deal to Democrats as the best he could do, given the extremism of his opponents, and vowed to press on with as much of the Democrats' priorities as possible … and gave a more broad-based response to why he was determined to bridge both parties, to be a president of compromise and leadership beyond the partisan fray:

People will have the satisfaction of having a purist position–and no victories for the American people… This is a big diverse country. Not everybody agrees with us. I know that shocks people. Now the New York Times editorial page does not permeate across all of America … neither does the Wall Street Journal editorial page … And that means … in order to get stuff done, you have to compromise. … This country was founded on compromise … If we were really thinking about ideal positions, we wouldn't have a union.

Clive thinks Obama has to choose between these two stools. Yes, that would be more coherent, and I'd prefer the latter Obama. But I'm just a blogger and Clive is just a columnist. We can describe ideal types – but we don't have to bring a political coalition along with us. Obama hs no such luxury. He also has to rally his own party, by arguing that his pragmatism and centrism in the end advances liberal goals. My sense is that, just like Reagan, his entire record will be viewed soon through the prism of restored economic growth. Just like Reagan, he has now goosed the economy to bolster his re-election chances; which in turn shifts the debate to his own party's advantage.

If he can grab the debt question by the horns in his State of the Union – and reframe it, a la Bowles-Simpson, through tax reform and simplification – he will re-emerge as a formidable force.