Author: Andrew Sullivan

A deal appears to have been reached after eight months of stalemate. Marc Lynch analyzes:

This outcome has to be seen as a real letdown from the much-touted idea that the Iraqi people had voted for change in March 2010. But those hopes faded so long ago that I wonder if anyone even remembers them. After the long months of political paralysis, I suspect that most people will just be happy to have a government which can start addressing the many long-neglected issues facing Iraq. It is fortunate that despite the political paralysis, the state has largely continued to function and violence has not really increased overall despite a series of widely reported spectacular attacks. Hopefully the new government will now be able to move forcefully, quickly regain some political momentum, start addressing outstanding vital national problems, and work with the U.S. on its responsible military drawdown. At this point, that's enough.

It seems as if the Iraqis are pushing brinksmanship to heretofore unknown parameters. I remain pessimistic that this government will work as an effectively multi-sectarian entity. But, as always, if events prove me wrong, I will gladly change my mind. And I sure hope I am wrong, or, in the best possible scenario, 60 percent wrong and 40 percent right.

Yglesias comes out as another liberal finding reasons not to tackle the long-term debt now:

The budget deficit isn’t currently a problem, but it almost certainly will be in the future and that’s when congress will act to deal with it […]  It would be wise and just and moral for the 112th Congress to pass a judicious long-term debt reduction program, but it doesn’t seem even remotely realistic. Is there any precedent for a country doing deficit reduction pre-emptively in the way everyone seems to be suggesting we should?

Is anyone surprised by this?

The live, 25-minute interview that Rush Limbaugh just conducted with George W. Bush was, not surprisingly, marked by excessive flattery and deference and a complete lack of follow-up questions. If anything, it resembled the weekly radio show of a college football coach, in which a professional-sounding host is paid to good-naturedly lob softballs and never — ever — offend the interview subject.

The closest Rush came to putting the former president on the spot was his response to Bush's defense of his "comprehensive immigration reform" initiative (a term that Rush himself, perhaps for the first time ever, used without sarcasm). "Many people," Limbaugh told Bush, "thought the Democrats wanted to register these people as new Democrat voters." Bush said he was aware of this but that he thought comprehensive reform was "good policy" anyway.

If there was one dominant theme in Limbaugh's questions, it was the mean-spiritedness of "the Democrat Party" — and the admirable, almost superhuman restraint that Bush has shown in not lashing back at his foes.

The interview encapsulates the conservative incoherence of the past ten years. Their partisanship made them – for the most part – blind to Bush's attack on real conservatism in his presidency. The fiscal catastrophe, the "deficits-don't-matter" lunacy, the off-budget nation-building endless wars, the budget-busting Medicare entitlement, the executive power supremacy, the descent into war crimes: all of this violated core conservative principles, and, even now, the alleged guardian of such principles, Rush Limbaugh, slobbers pathetically in front of a president he should have been debunking from the get-go.

(Photo: Tom Pennington/Getty.)

About those poppy seeds …

The birth of a couple’s first child is supposed to be a joyous occasion — and for the first three days, it was for Elizabeth Mort and her partner Alex Rodriguez. But then the commonwealth of Pennsylvania took their young daughter away after the hospital where she was born reported the mother for testing positive on a drug test. Her drug of choice? An "everything" bagel from Dunkin’ Donuts.

"The best thing in my life had been taken from me and there was nothing I could do to get her back," Mort says. For five excruciating days, officials with Lawrence County Children and Youth Services (LCCYS) kept mother away from child, all based on a positive drug test they didn’t even bother to investigate — and which the hospital never even informed the mother about.

Scott Morgan seethes over the story.

An election and a test.

Andrew Exum has posted several poems about military service today. Here's "Back" by Wilfrid Gibson:

Kevin Drum complained that the Simpson-Bowles plan "turns suddenly vague and cramped when it gets to Medicare." Not so. Here's Don Taylor:

My bottom line is that the health aspects of the 'Chairman's mark' are tough, good and balanced policies. I like the health aspects more than I like the Social Security aspects of the plan … The most important aspect of the chairman's mark for health policy is that it provides a route to a doc fix in the very short run and draws bright attention to the role of tax expenditures generally, and the tax preference of employer paid insurance, particularly. It also moves to expand the [Independent Payment Advisory Board] IPAB in ways that will allow for the nitty gritty of health policy to move out of Congress, and into a more expert driven model. I think this is good. I also think the notion of some sort of cap in growth rate in health care is good (not sure if GDP + 1% realistic in 10 years) and is the type of thing that Congress should be doing.

Goldblog calls out Bibi:

I don't believe Israel should not give up control of its holiest sites — would Muslims give up control of Mecca? — but the neighborhoods of East Jerusalem aren't holy, at least in my understanding of the notion. A peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs — which, along with the neutralization of Iranian eliminationist ideology and practice, is the only thing that will guarantee Israel's long-term existence as a Jewish state — requires a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem. Bibi Netanyahu knows this, of course, but he won't tell his coalition partners such a basic truth, which is why they a) remain in his cabinet, and b) continue to build apartment blocks that will serve to stymie the creation of a contiguous Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem.

An important distinction:

[T]he building of new apartments in the settlement city of Ariel only underscores another central fact of the conflict, that settlements are in many ways a diversion from a more basic issue, which is the issue of borders. Instead of talking about settlements, the parties should be talking about the future borders of Palestine. The borders will define which settlements remain, and which ones have to go. This is why it was a mistake of the Obama Administration to fetishize settlements, and make a freeze a pre-condition of negotiations. Of course, this was merely a tactical mistake. Netanyahu, I fear, is making a strategic mistake, by refusing to frame,  out loud, and in a way that, yes, might threaten the stability of his governing coalition, his vision for an eventual peace.

A great spoof from Britain:

(Hat tip: TDW)