Author: Andrew Sullivan

Kevin Sullivan thinks Max Fisher's take on Iran's new hairstyle rules is misleading. This is correct:

I don't know that this idea – that Iran is a Pyongyang-style police state – meshes with the accounts of most respected Iran scholars or analysts who have spent significant amounts of time in the country. Private life is an incredibly precious thing there, something even this dreadful regime must handle (and regulate) with care. There's a sort of unspoken agreement that the regime can put the public face of its choosing up for window dressing, but an Iranian's home is his or her own, more or less. Of course people are monitored and bugged, but I don't know that Fisher can verify just how pervasive that activity really is beyond anecdotal accounts.

And Levi had to lose his, of course. The first of many surrenders …

The New York Times is, for some reason, unafraid to use the word "torture" to describe the acts committed by Chicago cop, Jon Burge. I guess Dick Cheney didn't call. But the eventual conviction of this criminal gives some small shred of hope that justice might eventually be done in the cases of Bush, Cheney, Addington, Yoo et al. There was no public outcry – as so often, the public is only too happy to pull a Noonan when screams in cells can be kept off our radar screens. The press did this, notably John Conroy of the Chicago Reader, a true journalistic hero in this corrupted age. Now that Burge has been convicted, Conroy offered this statement:

"I think Burge is a guy who was failed by his supervisors. I think that if the first time Burge as a detective pulled somebody in and roughed him up in some way, if his lieutenant said to him, 'Burge, you do that one more time and I'll have you guarding the parking lot at 11th and State,' I don't think it would've happened again. He was a good enough cop without it. He could've gone just as far without the torture. It just required some supervision, somebody to say, 'We don't do that here,' and there's no Jon Burge—Jon Burge is not notorious, he's a well-regarded cop and serves his career and retires to Florida and all's well with the world.

I think everybody wants Burge to be a monster, and he's not. He's a creature of our own devising, in a way. He's a product of the Chicago police system at the time—and now, too—which does its best to protect errant cops unless they're caught red-handed."

But what happens when your commander-in-chief doesn't just turn a blind eye to torture, but endorses it? Well, we know all too well.

Lee's Summit, Missouri, 8.30 pm

The paper does do so, as long as it is not committed by white men with enormous power:

"My children are not animals," she said, meaning Javon and his two older brothers, both also behind bars. One is awaiting sentencing for armed carjacking; the other, a trial in a torture-kidnapping case.

"The police is always trying to pin stuff on my kids that they didn't do," she said.

Torture is what street criminals do; it is not, by definition, what Charles Krauthammer's friends authorize. It's really quite simple when you keep those rules in mind and never ask any questions.

Philip Rucker takes the temperature of Republican strategists:

[They] are already praising the video. For a political figure used to an off-the-cuff style, Palin's video has a professional and polished feel that could strengthen and broaden her emotional appeal among female voters. One prominent GOP media consultant described the video as "brilliant," adding: "I wish I'd done it."

Glynnis MacNicol further analyzes the ad:

Truth be told it almost manages to make Palin look presidential, or at least a serious candidate.

It plays to Palin’s strengths without being overly kitschy (apparently pink elephants are the new pitbulls wearing lipstick) and as Mika Brzezinski noted this morning there’s not even a hint of Palin portraying herself as a victim of the media. So perhaps she’s figured out that that’s always a losing card.

Equally interesting is the fact this video makes no mention of any of the women Palin initially dubbed the ‘mama grizzlies.’ This video is all about Palin. The closest it comes to acknowledging another candidate is at the very end when she notes “there’s a WHOLE stampede of pink elephants crossin’ the line and the ETA — stampeding through — is November 2nd, 2010.”

Mike Allen notes: “The emphasis on women could help expand Palin’s appeal toward the center, helping the Republican Party with its demographic peril.” And it certainly seems as though Palin has decided marshaling the power of those 18 million cracks is her best bet. If there was any doubt that Palin wants to be a player in 2012 (and I’ve certainly had plenty) this video pretty much clears it up.

James Gibney wants to end it:

I don't think we should use the threat of aid cuts to try to bully Mubarak into reforming Egypt's political system, or Netanyahu into making concessions in Israel's talks with the Palestinians. Instead, for larger strategic reasons, we should just flat out cut aid to both countries and redirect some of the money toward other goals that have gone neglected.

Agreed. But, as James knows, the merits of the case from the point of view of American interests barely matter.

Great news:

In a significant step toward an AIDS vaccine, U.S. government scientists have discovered three powerful antibodies, the strongest of which neutralizes 91% of HIV strains, more than any AIDS antibody yet discovered.

Looking closely at the strongest antibody, they have detailed exactly what part of the virus it targets and how it attacks that site.

The antibodies were discovered in the cells of a 60-year-old African-American gay man, known in the scientific literature as Donor 45, whose body made the antibodies naturally. Researchers screened 25 million of his cells to find 12 that produced the antibodies. Now the trick will be for scientists to develop a vaccine or other methods to make anyone's body produce them.

There are three major areas in which spending cuts have to happen – on a massive scale – if the US long-term fiscal crisis is to be tackled. We all know what they are: Medicare, Social Security and defense. No other programs come close to these in terms of spending. So one might expect a presidential candidate like Sarah Palin who says she favors restraining spending to outline how she would slash these programs, especially as she refuses to contemplate any tax increases at all. She has said nothing, of course, but she has said that defense is off-limits:

“Secretary Gates recently spoke about the future of the U.S. Navy. He said we have to ask whether the nation can really afford a Navy that relies on $3 [billion] to $6 billion destroyers, $7 billion submarines and $11 billion carriers. He went on to ask, ‘Do we really need . . . more strike groups for another 30 years when no other country has more than one?’ ” Palin said. “Well, my answer is pretty simple: Yes, we can and yes, we do, because we must.”

This is not an argument – but then Palin has no ability to make an argument. But we have been warned. Her administration will reflexively back the Pentagon in every spending measure. Fruit-fly research? Good luck with that.

It is indeed odd that the neoconservative chorus got a 20 year CNN correspondent fired because she admired an ayatollah for backing women's rights, while they do not mention this:

Jordanian King Abdullah II sent a condolence letter to Fadlallah’s family in which he expressed his sorrow for the marja’s death, saying the late cleric had devoted his life to serving his country, along with his Arab and Islamic nation. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki paid tribute for late Fadlallah, who provided the “Islamic library” with “tens of books in jurisprudence, interpretation and Islamic culture … He devoted his life for serving big Islamic causes in the front line during contemporary cultural and political struggle arenas,” said Maliki.

While acknowledging the big loss in the Islamic world, Maliki said Fadlallah would remain a living example “that we all adhere to.”

So the ultimate success in Iraq for the neocons is to have a prime minister pledging to follow the example of a man whom they call a terrorist. Here's Juan Cole's explanation for this strange discrepancy:

The whole conundrum only makes sense from an Israel Lobby point of view.

It is better, the Israel lobbies in the US think, for al-Maliki to be in charge of Iraq than for Saddam Hussein to have been. Al-Maliki doesn’t actively funnel money to the Palestinians and is distracted by internal Iraq faction-fighting now that the Iraqi state and army have been destroyed. So that the new Shiite political elite in Baghdad reveres a figure like Grand Ayatollah Fadlallah is overlooked.

But with Ms. Nasr, it is not a comparative issue, it is an absolute one. No figure in US media is allowed to show any understanding of or appreciation for any aspect of the life and works of someone the Lobbies have decided must be demonized and vilified (and in Fadlallah’s case, preferably killed).

Does anyone have a better explanation? And, once again, can anyone find an example of a journalist fired for offending Arabs or Muslims?

Several readers have remarked that there are no black or Hispanic or indeed any minority faces in the Palin presidential campaign web ad that has just been unveiled. This is odd because there are usually a token few thrown into the mix. Frum notes this too (although a reader of his finds a sole Indian-American woman in the background around 45 seconds in):

Now listen carefully to the audio, which twice warns of a “fundamental transformation of America,” twice emphasizes a threat to children and grandchildren from malign unnamed forces. I think she’s talking about healthcare. I hope so. But she never does say so.

A reader adds:

The Arizona law is the first salvo in this new politics. In Pennsylvania, where I now live, a Republican state representative from the remote, predominantly white, north-west  region, is proposing a similar law. It now seems quite apparent that the Republican party as a whole, does not even bother to appeal to minorities. This SarahPAC web video exemplifies that attitude. I looked at it a few times, it was web video appealing to the middle-class white woman. We live in uncertain times, people are scared and scared people are more likely to reveal their nascent bigotry. Sarah Palin appeals to their insecurities as the "great white hope" and she does not even bother to hide that. Our press, instead of holding her accountable for playing this racially charged

divisive politics, continues to give her a free pass.

I'd be blunter than Frum.

I think of Palin's politics as entirely cultural. It is about resisting the new America, epitomized by Barack Obama's racially mixed pragmatism. It is about banishing the Bush-Cheney years by demonizing the man hired to clean up the appalling mess. It is about dreaming of an old America  – the America before the New Deal, before mass immigration of non-whites, before the civil rights era, before Darwin up-ended fundamentalist nuttery. It is a kind of new fundamentalism – animated by no policies that one can determine (has anyone ever heard Palin cite how she would balance the budget?). And yet it's very potent, because it makes up for its minority status with a ferocity and passion that infuses all truly radical populist movements and can swamp lethargic majorities when necessary. 

And in this context, we have to realize that the US no longer has a truly adversarial press. It has a commercial press that is entirely driven by fear of losing readers and/or viewers. Remember that the MSM allowed Palin – then a total unknown – to go an entire campaign without an open press conference. She knows they're patsies. She's much less afraid of them than they are of her. And rightly so.