The Dish

Pingdong, China, 12 pm

Chait takes on one of Thiessen's talking points against the DOJ lawyers:

Maybe the U.S. government has never previously granted such due process to captured enemy combatants. This is because, as Republicans point out ad nauseam in other contexts, this war is unlike previous wars. The enemy wears no uniform, obeys no international conventions of warfare, and so on. We didn’t need to provide habeas corpus rights during World War II because, when we captured a man in a German army uniform, we could be pretty confident that he was actually a German soldier, not some hapless goatherd sold into our custody by a jealous village rival.

Shafer vents:

In a perfect world, a publication is edited for readers. In the imperfect world that we inhabit, too many publications are edited for the benefit of their staffs and their friends and associates. The Washington Post op-ed page, which hoards its space for its own, is one of the worst offenders.

But what's revealing to me is that some of the toughest criticism of the Post's chummy neocon-drenched, establishment op-ed page came from … the WaPo's own Ezra Klein, rattling the bars of Dan Froomkin's former cage:

I don't really understand why my op-ed page, or all the other op-ed pages, waste so much real estate publishing talking points from politicians.

These carefully vetted bits of politi-speak are not interesting op-eds (and the least interesting, I should say, are those written by members of the White House), and they are frequently misleading. They also make the op-ed page a confusing place: Pieces written by writers and experts are published for a different reason, and written for a different purpose, than those written by political actors.

Which isn't to say that politicians shouldn't have a place to make their arguments. But with the rise of the Internet, they can put their arguments online (Ryan, to his credit, does exactly that, and his willingness to respond has led to profitable exchanges between him and his critics). If they want more space, or more publicity, it's been my experience that readers really enjoy probing interviews with politicians, and op-ed pages could certainly use members of their editorial boards to conduct those interviews. It'll also improve the reader experience, because only the politicians who think their arguments are strong enough to withstand questioning will enter the fray. That is not, I think, how these op-eds work.

But that argument, when you really unravel it, is a case for abolishing op-ed pages altogether. Before, of course, they abolish themselves by irrelevance.

The NYT reported today:

Benedict himself has been under scrutiny, after the German church suspended a priest this week who had been allowed to work with children for decades after a court convicted him of molesting boys. In 1980, Benedict, then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, allowed the priest to move to Munich for therapy after allegations of abuse. The priest returned to pastoral work, but last week another church official took responsibility for allowing that move. Some church analysts have questioned whether Cardinal Brady will resign, saying that would only provoke questions about why the pope, who also failed to report a priest accused of abuse to civil authorities, did not also resign.

Here is one small detail of what happened. Benedict was told that the priest in question had raped an eleven-year-old boy by forcing him to perform oral sex on him. He did not report the priest to the civil authorities, he merely sent the priest to therapy, the priest was subsequently convicted of child abuse, but after his prison sentence was allowed to continue in the priesthood until the past week.

Benedict was not just directly implicated in this case, he was subsequently responsible for all sex abuse cases as head of the CDF and in that position supported a policy of maximum secrecy.

How do you retain moral respect for someone who was told that someone under his direct authority had raped a child and did not report that to the police and make sure that person was never allowed near kids again? We are told that the standards then were different, that we shouldn't apply our new and deeper understanding of the horrors of child abuse to days gone by.

Please: raping children is not a hard call for a Christian. Today or at any time in history. Covering it up is evil. If defending the perpetrators, rather than saving the victims, is not immoral, what is?

So when will this Pope resign? And what happens to the church hierarchy's moral authority if he doesn't?

Nate Silver on why the left is suddenly unified behind the bill:

Personally, I think the reason for the increase in support is mostly this: the Democratic leadership, and particularly President Obama, are now fighting for this bill tooth and nail. They didn't necessarily have to do this; they could have thrown in the towel, passed off some bipartisan crap that didn't do much to help the uninsured, and called it a day. That's what Rahm Emanuel wanted to do, as Chris Bowers points out. But that isn't what Obama did: instead, he's gone all-in on the thing, potentially staking his Presidency on the outcome. Liberals like the idea of being the scrappy underdog — being the fighter — and Obama, after a strangely aloof performance on the health care bill throughout 2009, has been fighting the good fight.

But look what's happened to moderates too. Obama's measured performance these past two months, his civility and his outreach to the GOP has won them over as well as the liberals. And the right has become more isolated this year.

Meep meep?

"Although [the Volcker rule] will never be implemented, we need to be honest about proprietary trading. I spent 25 years as a prop trader, many on this site have spent decades at it and we KNOW – although we never admit to it – what it does to markets.

We want volatility, that's the lifesblood — the key to making real dough and when we have control of the product as well as the mechanism of the trade — well, honey — that's the best, we are unstoppable and can ratchet those trades back and forth every day and plan to buy boats and big houses.

Anyone in the industry who doesn't make the connection of prop trading with wildly overpriced assets, boom/busts, huge leverage, increased risks — many systemic — and COLLAPSES and CRISES — is not making the leaps between obvious cause and effect here. And WE should, because we have been engaged in it and know that it's true.Meanwhile, nothing will change, so I'm buying more Morgan Stanley — that's also the truth.Position: MS" – Daniel Dicker, Senior Contributor, TheStreet.com.

The story of Ireland's cardinal Brady is just beginning to permeate the US MSM. Yesterday, for the first time, he issued what seemed to be a heartfelt apology for once ordering two children to keep silent after they were sexually assaulted by a priest. But abuse survivors remain adamant he should resign, and one of his key defenders, Monsignor Maurice Dooley, yesterday threw gasoline on the fire with remarks on BBC Ulster. Asked whether he would report sex abuse by a priest today, the Monsignor said:

"I would not tell anyone. That is his responsibility. I am considering only my responsibility. My responsibility is to maintain the confidentiality of information which I had been given under the contract of confidentiality. There must be somebody else aware of what he is up to, and he could be stopped. It is not my function. I would tell (the priest) to stop abusing children. But I am not going to go to the police or social services in order to betray the trust he has put in me."

Dooley wrote the same in an op-ed in the Independent of Ireland. In Ulster, the following is reported today:

The Catholic Church faced further allegations of covering up child sex abuse in Ireland today after claims that a girl abused by a priest was sworn to secrecy in an out-of-court settlement as recently as 2000. The victim went public with her claims that she was abused over a 10-year period by an unnamed priest, but said she was bound to secrecy in a legal deal which involved the Bishop of Derry Seamus Hegarty.

The latest case involves a woman who said that a decade of abuse by a priest who had befriended her family began in 1979. She told her parents only on the day of her 18th birthday after becoming overwhelmed by events. A spokesman for Bishop Hegarty said today he was aware of the case, but would not be commenting until a detailed review of the file had been carried out.

Columns like this one are popping up:

A good friend of mine is one of them. She is a young woman who has survived an appalling start in life — and the most horrific abuse — to go on and build a real future for herself and her family.

She is utterly magnificent. And only occasionally does she allow herself to be swept back to thinking about the horror of her childhood. Inevitably she was forced to relive that again this week. I imagine the same has been true for most victims.

Where does all this end?

There is no doubt that the secondary victims of the rogue priests include the Church itself and the vast overwhelming majority of the good men and women who serve within it. The decent majority have been stained by the crimes of an evil minority.

Kagan claimed yesterday that the Obama administration is snubbing allies. In response to this line of argument, Larison hits the nail on the head:

One of the most irritating memes in conservative commentary these days is the idea that Obama subverts allies and aids rivals. They have been pushing this one right from the beginning. This is a pretty blatant accusation of treachery and/or naivete, and it isn’t true. Naturally, this latest quarrel with Israel has become another entry on the indictment against Obama for the supposed “squeeze” he puts on allies. The only trouble with this argument is that there is no real squeeze. There is a lot of talk that I assume everyone involved knows will lead to nothing. It’s as if all of the parties know that the entire quarrel is a charade, but now that it has started it has to be played out.

Incredibly, despite the absence of any meaningful consequences for Netanyahu’s government from Washington, the administration is supposedly being very “hard” on Israel while it is being equally “soft” on Iran. There is an Iran gasoline embargo bill pending in Congress, where it has overwhelming support, and it seems unlikely that Obama would veto it if the bill came to his desk. On the other hand, the administration is throwing a public fit over the treatment of the Vice President during his visit to Israel and not doing much more than that. No honest person could conclude from this that it is Israel that has been getting the squeeze.