The Dish

"So what exactly will Dr. Paul do with all this money he is raising? He insists he has no desire to run as a third party candidate. But so far there’s little indication that Republican voters are much interested in supporting a candidate whose message is that the terrorists have a point," – the New York Sun.

Good news for the independence of uniformed military lawyers:

Geoff Morrell, Pentagon press secretary, said William "Jim" Haynes, the Defense Department’s general counsel, decided on Monday to shelve the idea. Morell said the military services’ legal departments had also expressed concern about the proposal in internal Pentagon reviews.

"In light of the feedback that [Haynes] received, he thought that it was wiser to try a different approach," Morrell said.

Charlie Savage gets mad props for highlighting this. And if you haven’t read his book on the comeback of the imperial presidency, check it out.

A reader writes:

In your endorsement, you outline your case against continuing military action in Iraq, which you now say you were wrong to so strenuously favor in the first place. But your reasons for now opposing the war, namely that WMDs were not found, that the Bush administration was incompetent in its prosecution of the war, and so on, are fundamentally different than Paul’s. His view of the war is that it is, and always was, fundamentally illegitimate and unconstitutional. As he puts it on his campaign website, "no war should ever be fought without a declaration of war voted upon by the Congress, as required by the Constitution." That position is not reconcilable with your views on the war, either in 2002 or now. Indeed, Paul’s broad foreign-policy isolationism is so incompatible with your general foreign policy views that I can only conclude that your endorsement of Paul is an emotional one, and not a serious one.

Another reader writes:

…your choice seems to turn on the Iraq issue and I must share why I disagree here.  The nature of America’s future involvement in the country can no longer be evaluated against the original aims of the invasion, all of which are (and probably were in March 2003) out of reach.  But McCain recognizes this as much as anyone else.  He is not under the illusion that we will live a thriving democracy behind us, or find caches of weapons of mass destruction, or catalyze the growth of liberal democracy throughout the Middle East.  His goal is to leave Iraq with a functioning government and the ability to defend itself after the departure of American troops.  Any prudent statesman must choose between those limited goals and a withdrawal that assures a humanitarian crisis and instability at the heart of a geopolitically crucial region.  I am not too certain that your importuning for a prudent withdrawal is any different that Sen. McCain’s definition of victory.  But I am certain that a hasty and dangerous withdrawal is more likely under an Obama or a Paul presidency than a McCain one.  And so I must back the senior Senator from Arizona.

Another adds:

Do you really think Paul has the gravitas of a McCain?

Do you think Paul has the weight to change the system? Do you see Paul dealing with the future prime minister of Russia? You wrote your latest book about renewing the conservative movement. Who better to do that than McCain. You want balance budgets: You’ll get it with McCain. You want a sane environmental policy: You’ll get it with McCain. You want someone who will unite the county under moderate-conservatism (which would be better than Obama uniting the country under liberalism): You’ll get it with McCain. At the very least, you should’ve done a dual endorsement. You could at least say that McCain would an acceptable choice in the GOP primary.

Another reader writes:

I think you have overlooked (or at least given insufficient weight) to one point.  McCain is far more likely to be able proceed with War Crimes trials against those guilty of torture.  And alone among the candidates from either party, he can do so without the distraction of charges of doing so for political reasons.  Even if he goes all the way to the top.

The United States has long contented that we do not need to belong to the International Court because our own laws are sufficient to deal with war criminals. We really, really need to demonstrate the truth of that position.  McCain at least gives us a shot at doing so.  I just can’t see it happening under any of the other candidates.  Including Paul.

Dave Weigel gets a bucket of cold water. On the other hand.

Just hoping and praying ….

This blog is a hoot. Money quote:

Yesterday I was standing in the check-out line at the supermarket, and between furtive glances at Soap Digest magazine (too embarrassed to buy, too intrigued to look away) I had an epiphany: I plum don’t like fraternizing with lower- or middle-class people.

Obviously I’m somewhere between lower- and middle-class myself, on a good day. But other people of this sort really get on my nerves, whether they’re huddling around one another for warmth in the freezer aisle or organizing a rodent hunt.

Three cheers for Senators Gordon Smith and John Kerry. They have introduced a bill that will finally drag the US out of the Jesse Helms era and end the embarrassing situation in which the US, unlike every other civilized country, is still aligned Saudi Arabia, Libya and the Sudan with respect to travelers and immigrants with HIV. I obviously have an interest here because this could open the path for me to pursue the dream of my lifetime – to become an American citizen. But it’s a no-brainer from any perspective. There’s no reason that HIV should be treated as an air-borne infectious disease on the lines of smallpox rather than as a medical condition such as Hepatitis-C in determining the right to visit, work or immigrate to the US. The malaria-style designation was made by Jesse Helms almost two decades ago – and has never been rescinded. This is also a great legacy for the Bush administration – and its AIDS commissioner, Mark Dybul – as a sign of the way that the mainstream right has gone from paranoia to reason and compassion on HIV and AIDS. It’s also typical of Gordon Smith: a Republican who has long since shown that conservatism and bigotry are not one and the same. Money quote from Kerry:

"It’s incredible that the federal government still tolerates a ban that not only restricts AIDS experts with the disease but also refugees who are seeking asylum in our country. My legislation will end this draconian law. The attempts to fix this law through a complex waiver system, while admirable, still don’t do anything to rectify the discriminatory underlying problem. That is why I have introduced this legislation to permanently strike this unfair provision from the books."

The trouble has always been the lack of an active constituency in the US to get rid of this law. In the end, international pressure may have been instrumental – especially after China – China – recently gave up this draconian policy. It was getting embarrassing that future international AIDS conferences could never occur in the US because too many people would have been barred from even entering the country. If you care about this issue and would like to thank Smith and Kerry for their support, click here for Smith’s office and here for Kerry’s. It would mean a lot if you could add your voice.

Of course this is an emotional issue for me. All I’ve ever wanted is to become an American. Having HIV has not been an easy ride. But perhaps the worst thing about finding out fourteen years ago that I was positive was simultaneously realizing that my  dream of becoming an American was over. Now, perhaps, it isn’t.

But no Obama surge … yet.

Josh Marshall echoes Ruffini:

Incredibly phony, endless flipflops and with the Mormon issue that will probably keep him from ever dominating the GOP’s evangelical base. But a fairly strong campaigner and probably no boffo scandal that makes you scratch your head and wonder what the guy was smoking.

So, all humor aside, despite his campaign’s being in the doldrums and facing real danger in Iowa, by process of elimination, it still seems to me that Mitt Romney’s the man to be in the GOP.

"So you have to have a strategy that embraces from day one until February 5. And if you lose one, regroup for the next one. Lose another one, depending on how you come in, you have a strategy for the one after. And then losing and where you come in is also part of it," – Rudy Giuliani.