• Stephanie Mencimer: "When it comes to employing Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and other social-media sites, Republicans are whipping their opponents across the aisle, creating a growing tech gulf that threatens important implications for the 2010 mid-term elections" (emphasis mine). Really? In general, I'm pretty dismissive of social media's impact on politics, although clearly they're tailor-made for organizing and fundraising. But I'd say the "enthusiasm gap" between Democrats and Republicans this election year is more a product of the party out of power having something to rally around, rather than having new tools to organize the rallying.
• Former Bush speechwriter Jay Nordlinger has been on a language tear today, excoriating liberal buzzwords like "progressive" and "sustainable," but he reserves his true ire for "social justice," which he describes as nothing less than "the most disgusting, meaningless, abused phrase in the English language." Hey, to each his own. But if it really is "meaningless," then how is it "abused?" Is there a conservative-approved meaning of the term that I am unaware of? I expected more from someone whose trade is wordsmithing.
  
• Indeed, while conservatives obsess over the words liberals use, they also obsess over the ones that are omitted. This is morally outrageous, according to the deranged Andy McCarthy, because it says "we lack the capacity even to speak of the evils arrayed against us." I've spoken before about this bizarre conceit that pointing out the existence of evil is somehow morally courageous, but even if we accept this premise, it turns out that McCarthy's evidence doesn't stand up under scrutiny. So to recap, not only is the idea that liberals refuse to identify evil incredibly stupid, but the evidence in support of it is a total fabrication.
  
• Remainders: The many conspiracy theories of Rand Paul; it's a good thing Fox News hired a sociopath to communicate with the wingnuts; 2010 Barack Obama would do well to listen to 1996 Barack Obama; Peggy Noonan is out of touch with reality; Jake Tapper is an astute observer of politics; and Rasmussen's polls skew the polling industry as a whole.

--Mori Dinauer

The South Korean naval vessel Cheonan, shown above in dry dock, was attacked on March 26 -- 46 sailors were killed. North Korea has denied any involvement, although an internationally coordinated investigation concluded that there was "overwhelming evidence" that the DPRK was responsible.

(AFP/Google)

Consumer spending is 70 percent of the American economy, so if consumers can’t or won’t spend we’re back in the soup. Yet the government just reported that consumer spending stalled in April – the first month consumers didn’t up their spending since last September. Instead, consumers boosted their savings, probably because they’re worried about the slow pace of job growth (next Friday’s report will likely show gains, but the number will continue to be tiny compared to the overall ranks of the jobless), as well as a lackluster “recovery.” They’re also still carrying enormous debt burdens. One in four homeowners is still underwater. And median wages are going nowhere.

So what’s Congress doing to stoke the economy as consumers pull back? In a word, nothing. Democratic House leaders yesterday shrank their jobs bill to a droplet. They jettisoned proposed subsidies to help the unemployed buy health insurance, as well as higher matching funds for state-run health programs such as Medicaid. And they trimmed extended unemployment insurance.

“Members who are from low unemployment areas are very concerned about the deficit,” Nancy Pelosi explained. She might have added that so-called Blue Dog Democrats have the same warped view of fiscal policy as most Republicans. They fail to distinguish between short-term deficits (good) and long-term debt (bad).

Deficit-cutting fever has also struck the Senate – except when it comes to the military, of course. Last night the Senate OK'd a $60 billion war-funding bill for Afghanistan. So far this year, the Afghan War has cost more than the war in Iraq, in part because the infrastructure in Afghanistan is so much more primitive than in Iraq that our tax dollars are needed to build it so troops and tanks can move more easily over the terrain. But spending on road-building in Afghanistan does little to boost the American economy.

Meanwhile, state and local governments continue to slash and burn. They’re laying off even more teachers, firefighters, social workers, and police; cancelling more programs for the poor and working class; and raising sales taxes. The fiscal drag from all of this will be around $150 billion in 2010.

Without consumers opening their wallets, and without government making up the difference, we’re careening toward a double-dip recession. The long-term deficit (i.e. Medicare as boomers become seniors) needs attention, but right now it’s critical for government to spend. Otherwise we have no hope of getting free of the gravitational pull of this recession.

--Robert Reich

The Senate Armed Services Committee approved an amendment that would repeal a ban on abortions for servicewomen even when those women paid with their own money. The amendment was introduced by Sen. Roland Burris and is now attached to the National Defense Authorization Act.

The previous rule, which had been reversed by President Clinton with an executive order in 1993 but then reinstated by Congress two years later, according to the ACLU, required military women to go off base for abortion care. As RH Reality Check notes:

In order for a woman fighting for our country, currently, to exercise her right to a safe and legal abortion, using her own money, she must first seek abortion care off of a United States military base (and, of course, if abortion is not legal in the country in which she is currently stationed, then what?), then she must request leave stating the reason for her leave and thirdly she must, of course, have the time and money to seek safe abortion care wherever she can find it.

Not only do women face enough barriers in the military, mothers face an extra hard time. So the military is giving women no way out.

-- Monica Potts

Adam Serwer talks with Law and Order producer René Balcer about the show's 20-year run:

What inspired you to do the torture episode?

These are issues I've been thinking about since I was 16. I lived in Canada, and I lived through a terrorist crisis [the Front de Libération du Qué in the 1960s], and I knew what it was like to have your civil liberties suspended. These were issues that concerned me. As far as the torture memos, that's an issue I've been talking about on Law & Order and Criminal Intent since 2005, 2004.

KEEP READING...

The Republican assault on the 14th Amendment puts the absolute lie to the idea that "originalism" as most Republicans understand it means fidelity to the text of the Constitution and the intent of its authors. The intent of the 14th Amendment was to end the practice of granting citizenship based on race -- no strict textual reading of the amendment would see a law denying citizenship to the native-born children of undocumented immigrants as constitutional.

But there's been another amusing crack in the GOP's adherence to originalism: Their complaint that granting citizenship based on being born here is something unique. Indeed, Rand Paul told a Russian TV station that "We're the only country that I know that allows people to come in illegally, have a baby, and then that baby becomes a citizen. And I think that should stop also."

He's not alone in making this argument. Glenn Beck has complained, "Why do we have automatic citizenship upon birth? ... Do you know? We're the only country in the world that has it. Why?" Well we have it as part of the struggle to end slavery -- maybe Beck thinks the wrong side won?

Similarly, one of the authors of Arizona's draconian immigration law, state Sen. Russel Pearce, said the U.S. is the "only country" to offer birthright citizenship.

Indeed, other Republican politicians and pundits have made this same claim over and over again. It isn't true, but it's also fascinating, because Republicans are constantly complaining that liberal judges base their decisions on "foreign law" when they study the legal systems of other countries. Yet, when it comes to the 14th Amendment, Republicans are only too happy -- applying their own standard -- to cede American legal sovereignty to foreigners, because they're opposed to birthright citizenship. What Constitution?

-- A. Serwer

Earlier this week, a group of city police chiefs from the Southwest – including Tucson’s Roberto Villaseñor and Phoenix’s Jack Harris – met with Attorney General Eric Holder to express concerns about Arizona's SB 1070 and similar immigration-enforcement measures being considered in neighboring states. The police chiefs say laws like Arizona’s place an undue burden on local law enforcement, making them less able to fight other types of crimes. 

Other law-enforcement officials, however, have expressed strong support for the law, including Arizona sheriffs Paul Babeu of Pinal County and the infamous Joe Arpaio. So law-enforcement opinion on the Arizona law is just mixed, right? 

Actually, there's a pretty predictable pattern: Those officials who support SB 1070 tend to be elected while those who oppose it tend to be appointed. It is no coincidence that the head of the Arizona Sheriff’s Association – comprising elected county sheriffs – endorsed the measure while the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police – comprising appointed law-enforcement officials – condemned it. This largely reflects the fact that SB 1070 is a) bad public policy and b) widely popular.

Electing law-enforcement officials like sheriffs is meant to bring accountability to the office and foster community relations, but as Arizona shows, the need to appeal to voters can take precedence over the actual job of fighting crime. For the police chiefs whose main objective is keeping communities safe, the Arizona law is simply a hindrance -- with no political upside.

-- Nicolas Mendoza

Gershom Gorenberg on denying Palestinians equal access to public highways:

The fight over Road 443 is representative of the history of Israel's occupation of the West Bank since 1967. The highway is mentioned in the first detailed proposal for Israeli settlement and annexation of parts of the West Bank. The road's expansion was approved as part of plans for settlement in the Jerusalem area. Route 443 can be seen as a long, narrow settlement in itself: a construction project designed to "create facts" and prevent an Israeli withdrawal. The project first violated Palestinians' property rights, then their freedom of movement. The Supreme Court, supposed guardian of human rights, has shown how weak it is when dealing with the politics of occupation.

KEEP READING...

It's a bit startling how quickly this DADT legislation got moving. I have to admire the Democrats, who, in a rare fit of effective strategy, pulled the votes in the House and Senate Armed Services Committee out of what seemed to be an invisible hat. I can only assume that this was a tactic designed to deprive the Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats of the opportunity to rally forces of resistance.

But there's still time to mount opposition, because it will not take effect until the Pentagon completes a review of its effect on military readiness.

How exactly would we measure whether military readiness was, in fact, harmed? It's pretty clear that allowing gays to serve in the military would actually improve military readiness, rather than harm it, but even if it had a detrimental effect, is that a decent reason keep the policy in place? Why do we regard the efforts necessary to protect disfavored minority groups as a drain on our resources? After all, sexual assault in the military costs us a great deal, but the solution is to stop the assaults, not to keep women out of the service.

If it harms military readiness, it is only because of discrimination and homophobia, conditions which, if they exist, need to be stamped out firmly from the top down. The idea that straight soldiers can't handle serving with gay soldiers lives on, despite its inaccuracy. Some lawmakers have such a low opinion of straight soldiers that they think straight soldiers would rather let their fellow soldiers die than defend someone who is gay.

So, instead of holding all our soldiers to a high standard of respect, tolerance, and solidarity, we just assume that the straight ones can't handle it, and force gay soldiers to lie or be discharged. It's funny -- I thought the military was all about honor. How honorable is it to have a policy where people are encouraged to lie? We already have gays serving in the military; they just have to lie about being gay. And it's not even working: "Nearly one in four U.S. troops (23%) say they know for sure that someone in their unit is gay or lesbian." Nevertheless, we spend millions of dollars enforcing the law every year, and lose valuable, committed soldiers.

I wish someone had told the White House that there already was such a report. But I suppose we'll just have to spend a few hundred thousand more taxpayer dollars to satisfy the frothing homophobes. For military readiness, of course.

--Silvana Naguib

Josh Green takes another whack at assessing financial reform, responding to my post yesterday. I may be a blogger, sarcastic, glib, condescending, sneering, cynical, and, at the same time, naive enough to think this bill is strong -- he forgets I'm also quite handsome -- but Green's reply is still wanting, I think. A few minor points before this debate proceeds inevitably to the dustbin of history.

One is that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the Federal Reserve, as outlined in the Senate financial-reform bill, is truly independent. I was worried it wouldn't be, but I'm confident (as is Elizabeth Warren) that the bill is written to grant it real independence. I'm more concerned about the carve-outs in the House bill and preemption issues -- you can't afford to lose sight of the details in a bill with as many moving parts as this. Nonetheless, while there are plenty of things to fault in the bill, by and large consumer protection isn't one of them.

Second, on a meta-note about the merits of our political class: If examples of admirable politicians abound, can you cite anyone besides Henry Waxman, the left's favorite Congressman and a real hero? (I'd be remiss if I didn't link to this post praising the memoir Green wrote with Waxman.) If we want real reform, though, we have to be realistic about how to get there. Relying on politicians isn't going to cut it -- political pressure, organizing, and voter anger is what gets votes to the table.

To that point, Green says the reason that some reforms have been left on the table is alluded to in a piece I wrote last week comparing, as Green does, the efforts to reform health care and finance. The difference between the two was decades of preparation, organizing, and funding on the side of health-care reform, and a year of scrambling to create the same infrastructure for financial reform. The only way to get the populist changes Green prefers is the kind of political action -- like the primary challenge that motivated Blanche Lincoln's strong derivatives rules -- that you need to influence the majority of politicians, who are often only as courageous as the next poll. You can't, as the old saw goes, take the politics out of politics.

In any case, I don't disagree with Green that we shouldn't over-praise Chris Dodd and Blanche Lincoln for doing their jobs. But if he thinks, like me, that the compromised health-care reform legislation includes "far-sighted reforms," then he should be able to recognize the similar promise of flawed but ultimately far-reaching and important financial-reform legislation.

-- Tim Fernholz

Yesterday, the Senate approved the Defense Authorization bill funding the ongoing wars in Iraq in Afghanistan. While there's still debate before the bill heads to the president's desk, the bill currently authorizes * another war--against the civilian and military lawyers who represented Guantanamo Bay detainees accused of terrorism. If passed in its current form, the bill would subject these attorneys to investigation based on whether or not they "interfered with the operations of the Department of Defense at Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." The amendment treats defense attorneys as being implicated by their decision to provide a zealous defense for their clients, even when they were ordered to do so. The presumption of guilt thrust onto Gitmo detainees has now been extended to their lawyers.  

Glenn Greenwald's post today highlights how absurd this is. Since 2008, the government has lost nearly three-quarters of habeas challenges, meaning that courts decided, in the vast majority of cases, that the government had no plausible reason to hold these individuals. The notion that lawyers who defended Gitmo detainees are by definition sympathetic to terrorism is absurd on its face, because most of the people they represented were determined not to be the enemy. In case after case, the Supreme Court agreed with those lawyers who advocated for due process rights for detainees, meaning that these attorneys are being targeted for upholding the law. This amendment authorizes the government to retaliate against lawyers because the government was unable to prove their case in court. Can you imagine what our legal system would look like if lawyers could be punished merely for acting lawfully on behalf of their clients? It would destroy the entire process. 

This amendment is a mark of the fight on terrorism's perverse distortion of the American legal system -- we now treat those who make our legal system legitimate, who ensure that only those who are guilty are punished, as potential traitors. It's uncanny how un-American this is -- public officials take an oath to protect the Constitution rather than the American people because lives can be lost but the loss of democracy and due process is irreparable. 

The legal architects of the Bush administration's torture regime escaped accountability for authorizing criminal behavior their allies minimized as a "policy difference." Now, under a Democratic administration, those same allies are targeting attorneys who did their duty by upholding what Thomas Jefferson called the "the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." This amendment belongs in the America of paranoid comic-book fantasy, not in the real world. 

*Correction: the Senate didn't pass the House version, and its the latter that has the provision targeting Gitmo lawyers. 

-- A. Serwer

Sex and the City began as one of the few shows on television that showcased female friendships both in the ways they really are and in the ways we want them to be, and ended as a retro, ultimately conservative show about how all women really want is a man. (Case in point: Samantha's sexed-up liberation was really all about her inability to get emotionally close to a man lest she get hurt, but Smith helped her work through that when he stood by her through her illness. Barf.)

This weekend the second movie of the franchise is out. While I rolled my eyes at the prospect and the premise of the second, I was secretly looking forward to it. That changed when it was unanimously trounced by critics. Below, a roundup of the funniest lines from all the reviews, with some aid from the roundup at MovieLine.

• "SATC2 takes everything that I hold dear as a woman and as a human — working hard, contributing to society, not being an entitled [expletive] like it’s my job — and rapes it to death with a stiletto that costs more than my car."-- Lindy West, The Stranger
• "The wedding, the characters frequently remark, with the mixture of insouciant mockery and cosmopolitan self-congratulation that seems to have become the hallmark of this weary franchise, is a gay one ... giving the four main female characters, their male companions and the director, Michael Patrick King, a chance to wink, nod and drag out Liza Minnelli to perform 'All the Single Ladies.' Her version is in no way superior to the one in 'Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel,' and it is somehow both the high point of 'Sex and the City 2' and a grim harbinger of what is to come. The number starts out campy, affectionate and self-aware, but at some point turns desperate, grating and a little sad." -- A.O. Scott, NYT
• "But Sex and the City 2 -- perhaps even more so than its 2008 movie predecessor -- is a sad and ugly example of how terrific television can mutate into something that feels a lot like torture porn. No, scratch that -- torture porn may be unpleasant to watch, but at least it’s honest about its motives. And the clothes are less of a horror show." -- Stephanie Zacharek, MovieLine


• "For all the sniggery double entendres, virtually all of Sex and the City 2 is a pale shade of vanilla. But there is this one moment … [Kim] Cattrall, in short shorts in the Arab marketplace, has a flurry of hot flashes, drops to the ground, and writhes around screaming, “I have sex, yes! I quite enjoy it!” People coming out of surgery with bad reactions to the anesthesia have been known to behave like that, which gives it some fleeting connection to real life." -- David Edelstein, New York Magazine
• "The characters’ engagement with Muslim culture is lazily conceived and often painful to watch, as when Parker gawps at a woman eating french fries under her veil, or Cattrall fellates a hookah pipe. The movie justifies these moments with a pro-female message that goes no further than acknowledging that all women, regardless of culture, love fashion and enjoy karaoke sing-alongs of 'I Am Woman.'" -- Genevieve Koski, Onion's AVClub
• "The movie's visual style is arthritic. Director Michael Patrick King covers the sitcom dialogue by dutifully cutting back and forth to whoever is speaking. A sample of Carrie's realistic dialogue in a marital argument: 'You knew when I married you I was more Coco Chanel than coq au vin.' Carrie also narrates the film, providing useful guidelines for those challenged by its intricacies. Sample: 'Later that day, Big and I arrived home.'"
-- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

-- Monica Potts

Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina is the Obama White House's fixer, handling any number of bedeviling problems and portfolios. As Marc Ambinder points out, he's been the administration's point person on changing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy and deserves considerable credit for managing the process through last night's votes.

That's a fascinating turn, since in an earlier stage in his career, Messina was a Montana political operative who managed the 2002 re-election campaign of Sen. Max Baucus. The effort has become something of a legend in political circles because of the above advertisement, ostensibly a spot on student loans but in effect a case of gay-baiting.

The ad knocked Baucus' opponent, Republican Mike Taylor, who was already trailing in the polls, right out of the race. A flier associated with the effort read, "At Mike Taylor's hair care schools, someone besides the customers got clipped." Yipes. When Taylor, whose name could not be removed from the ballot, got back in the race, Messina wrote a letter to the GOP candidate, subsequently leaked to the press, challenging Taylor to sign a clean campaign pledge: "We take you at your word that you want to turn over a new leaf and run a positive campaign."

Just eight years after this rather offensive stunt, Messina is the White House point man on one of the biggest steps forward in LGBTQ equality of our time, a symbolic integration -- symbolic because there are already gays in the military -- that has, in our history, often marked the full acceptance of a minority group into American culture. What a world.

-- Tim Fernholz

Rand Paul stopped giving interviews to national media last week in an effort to stave off the avalanche of bad press following his attack on the 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawing segregation in businesses of public accommodation. He joined Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia and Minister Louis Farrakhan in being one of only three people ever to cancel a scheduled interview with Meet the Press. The idea, I suppose, was that by keeping Paul out of the national press the campaign might be able to avoid having to answer questions about some of his more controversial stances.

The problem is that we have this series of tubes that allows communication across vast distances, which means even if you go on a Russian TV station to express your views, the rest of the media can still find out about it. In this instance, Paul expressed his disdain for the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which extends citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil:

The real problem, Paul said, is that the U.S. "shouldn't provide an easy route to citizenship" because of "demographics."

According to Paul, the proportion of Mexican immigrants that register as Democrats is 3-to-1, so of course "the Democrat Party is for easy citizenship."

He added: "We're the only country that I know that allows people to come in illegally, have a baby, and then that baby becomes a citizen. And I think that should stop also."

Look, the point of the 14th Amendment was to extend citizenship to everyone in the U.S. regardless of race. That's why it was passed. Now Paul is arguing that the children of non-citizens shouldn't get U.S. citizenship because the "demographics" favor his political opponents. It's really an extraordinary insight into the constitutional vision of Rand Paul, whose "fidelity" to the text is at its strongest when defending the right of people to discriminate on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation, and at its weakest when it protects black people's rights to avoid being discriminated against, women's rights to choose when they give birth, Muslims' rights to due process, or consenting adults' rights to choose whom they can marry. There has never been a more glibertarian candidate. 

Paul is the conservative version of that irritating campus liberal with a closet full of Che shirts -- completely oblivious to the real-world implications of his ideas, consistently mistaking enthusiasm for depth and foolishness for intellectual bravery.

-- A. Serwer

Whenever I hear the right-wingers complaining about tyranny in Obama's America, I have to shake my head, because unlike the fantasies of victimization engaged in by the Oath Keepers and their ilk, there is actual despotism in the world. Take Thailand, where the army has crushed a peasant insurgency and is now going after the group's financiers:

[Prayudh Mahagitsiri], along with 151 other businessmen, politicians, lawyers and other alleged financiers of "red shirt" protests, has seen his bank accounts frozen and been ordered to report details of all financial transactions since September to authorities. The aim, said an emergency decree signed by Gen. Anupong Paochinda, is to root out threats to "national security and the safety of citizens" and "get rid of this problem effectively and immediately." ... The government has given no evidence of misbehavior by Prayudh other than a long association with [Former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra].

While the financial and political lines of the clash in Thailand are muddled, to say the least, anytime you have the government seizing the assets of private citizens for political views (after putting down bloody protests the week before), then you can talk about tyranny. People who use that word in the United States are disrespecting the people who actually live with the specter of capricious, unchecked authority.

-- Tim Fernholz

The momentum continues:

Congress has taken two big steps toward ending the "don't ask, don't tell" ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military.

In quick succession Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee and the full House approved measures to repeal the 1993 law that allows gay people to serve in the armed services only if they hide their sexual orientation. ...

The drive to end the ban still has a long way to go. The 234-194 House vote was an amendment to a defense spending bill that comes up for a final vote Friday. While the spending bill, which approves more than $700 billion in funds for military operations, enjoys wide support, some lawmakers vowed to vote against it if the "don't ask, don't tell" repeal was included. ...

The full Senate is expected to take up the defense bill next month, and Republicans are threatening a filibuster if the change in policy toward gays remains in the legislation.

Of course they are. But given the overwhelming public support for ending the ban -- 78 percent in the most recent poll on the question, from CNN -- it's a fair bet that conservatives' attempt to, in the immortal words of William F. Buckley, "stand athwart history, yelling Stop," is almost sure to fail.

-- Paul Waldman

We have a conceit in this country that the closer power gets to "the people," the more virtuous it is. Your local town council members are fine upstanding folks, your state legislature is still close enough to be "in touch," but those people up in Washington don't know or care a darn bit about you, and are probably on the take.

The truth, however, is that Congress is probably less corrupt than at any point in our history. Real old-fashioned corruption, of the briefcase-full-of-cash kind, is extremely rare (though it still happens, as with William Jefferson, he of the $90,000 stuffed in the freezer). That isn't to say that malfeasance doesn't still occur, not to mention the many things that ought to be illegal but aren't, like taking campaign contributions from industries your committee regulates. But on the whole, today's member of Congress is far less likely to be corrupt than her counterpart of 100 years ago.

It's nice to get a reminder now and then that the real brazen stuff is more likely to occur at the state and local level, where regulations tend to be more lax and the glare of the spotlight is far dimmer. Christopher Ketcham has a terrific article (behind a pay wall) in last month's Harper's about the New York Legislature, possibly the worst in the country by just about any measure you can come up with. Here's a taste:

Over the previous decade, fourteen legislators had left office due to felony crimes, misconduct, and ethical improprieties, five of them in 2008 alone. The Republican Joseph Bruno, senate majority leader for fourteen years, resigned in 2008 amid suspicion that he had accepted $3.2 million from companies doing business with the state. That same year, Assemblyman Tony Seminerio, a Democrat from Queens who had spent thirty years in office, was caught taking $1 million in secret payments from local hospitals in exchange for promises of inside access to the legislative process. Another Queens Democrat, Brian McLaughlin, a labor leader and assemblyman, pleaded guilty to racketeering in 2008 for his role in the embezzlement of more than $2 million in state and union funds. Assemblywomen Gloria Davis and Diane Gordon, both New York City Democrats, were convicted in 2003 and 2008, respectively, of taking bribes.

And the bribery is only the beginning. Whenever some new state scandal comes up, people start arguing about which state is the most corrupt. Illinois! New Jersey! South Carolina! It's not an argument that can really be settled, because the fact is, there's a lot of corruption all over the place. And being close to "the people" often makes it easier to get away with.

-- Paul Waldman

• Conor Friedersdorf's Newsweek opinion piece on how the press portrays libertarians as extremists while letting "centrist" politicians off the hook is making two cases, one convincing, the other, not so much. On the one hand, yes -- the war on drugs, invading Iraq, and unwavering support for farm subsidies -- the examples he gives -- are "mainstream" political positions that rightly should be criticized. But while opposition to these positions is a staple of libertarianism, that doesn't mean liberals can't agree while simultaneously being in favor of, say, single-payer health care.
  
• Jonathan Bernstein writes that "if Obama sits in the White House for six years with a GOP majority in the House of Representatives that the odds are very good -- better than 50 percent -- that he'll be impeached." A good way to think about this is why wouldn't a Republican majority impeach? Did I miss the watershed moment when Republicans abandoned political theater and the pursuit of raw power in favor of passing constructive legislation? Considering what induced the Republican majority to impeach Bill Clinton, I'd say it's only a matter of time before they do the same to Obama.
• Pew: "The media devoted comparable levels of coverage to the spill and news about last week's primaries and the 2010 midterm elections (each accounted for 18 percent of the newshole), but the public showed much less interest in the political developments (5 percent followed this most closely) than the crisis in the gulf (46 percent most closely)." This doesn't surprise me. Take for instance this Chris Cillizza post from yesterday that is still talking about the "May 18 'Incumbent Armageddon' primaries" and who was best able to guess the results. I'd say that he's just being lighthearted but Cillizza's track record suggests otherwise.
  
• It's amazing to me that alleged "intellectuals" are still talking, in all seriousness, about the grave threat to Western Civilization from radical Islam. Let's think about this for a moment. How, exactly, does radical Islam overcome Western Civilization? Presumably by force, because doing so would require eliminating not only the institutions of the West but also its far-reaching cultural influence. This, in my estimation, would require nothing less than a global totalitarian government, something radical Islam plainly does not have, and explains why wannabe George Orwells like Paul Berman constantly compare radical Islam to Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia.
• Remainders: John Podhoretz would prefer if Obama's foreign policy were more bellicose, capricious, and reckless; some Americans are strongly opposed to being counted for statistical purposes, congressional redistricting; for the millionth time, the only thing stock prices tell you is the price of stock; I hadn't thought it possible that over 1,200 words could be devoted to criticizing women's basketball, but here we are; and it's impossible to take social conservatives seriously if they continue to view female sexuality independent of reproduction as unnatural and morally pernicious.
  

--Mori Dinauer

(Flickr/Deepwater Horizon Response.)

Whatever you think of Richard Blumenthal's embarrassing attempts to embellish his military record, this proposal by Orrin Hatch seems like it could backfire. The bill would amend the 2005 Stolen Valor Act, which criminalized false claims of military decoration, Dave Weigel (whose headline I'm borrowing) reports. The proposed text states that it would be illegal to make false claims of military service, including lying about having been in combat, "for the purposes of gaining recognition, honorarium, official office, or other position of authority, employment or other benefit or object of value as a result of the statement, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than six months, or both."

The first thing that comes to mind is that someone should ask Hatch if he thinks one of his colleagues should have served time in jail. The second is that fraud is already a crime, but the question of lying about military service in order to gain "recognition" or "other benefit or object of value" skirts very close to violating the First Amendment. Let's say you lie to someone at a bar about having been in combat in order to get them to buy you a drink. A drink is an object of value. So now you've committed a crime? 

-- A. Serwer

Monday is the one-year anniversary of the murder of Dr. George Tiller, one of the country's few late-term abortion providers, and Sen. Harry Reid marked the occasion this morning:

The tragedy of Dr. Tiller’s death, and of Dr. Slepian’s death – and of every atrocity like it – is independent of the issue of abortion. It’s not about the legality of abortion or funding of abortion. These are emotional debates, and ones on which people of good faith can disagree. What so shook that Kansas town was rather an act of terrorism. What reverberated out to our borders and coasts from the center of our country was the violation of our founding principle: that we are a nation of laws, not of men.

It doesn't get said enough that Tiller was in his church with his wife and friends close by when Scott Roeder finally succeeded in his efforts to kill him. So it's good that Reid took the time to remind us.

-- Monica Potts

As you may have heard, the Republican Party is enthusiastic about the fact that 32 African American Republicans, a record number, are running for Congress this year. But they may not be so enthusiastic about one of the people leading the recruiting efforts: Timothy Johnson, the vice chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party. As TAP senior correspondent Sarah Posner reports in a revealing investigative report over at Alternet, Johnson doesn't seem like the kind of guy any political party wants to associate with:

At first glance, Dr. Timothy F. Johnson appears to be everything the Republican Party -- and its allies in the religious right and the Tea Party movement -- would want in a point man for the recruitment of African-American candidates to the GOP ticket.

Tall, trim and good-looking, with a Ph.D., according to his bio, and a 21-year military career -- from which he retired as an officer, according to his resume -- Johnson presents himself as a committed Christian family man. He is a spokesman for his cause at events convened by the religious right, such as the recent Freedom Federation Awakening Summit that took place at Liberty University last month, and to the media. In recent months, Johnson has been quoted by the New York Times and the Associated Press, and has appeared on CNN.

But in the year since he won the vice-chairmanship of the North Carolina Republican Party -- the first African American to win such a high office in the NCGOP -- key elements of Johnson's personal story are being questioned.

Turns out that 1) Johnson has multiple arrests for domestic violence; 2) he may have falsified an endorsement from his ex-wife; 3) there are questions about whether he has been honest about his military record; and 4) his "Ph.D" appears to come from a short-lived, unaccredited diploma mill.

Read the whole thing here.

-- Paul Waldman

DailyKos's new poll on the Arkansas Senate race is showing Bill Halter doing better against the Republican nominee, John Boozman, than Blanche Lincoln. There are a couple of reasons for progressives not to get too excited about this. For one, Halter portrays himself in the state as being just as centrist as Lincoln, and even more "fiscally responsible." He doesn't support card-check, and there's no hint that he's really going to be any more faithful to the national organizations backing him any more than Lincoln was.

Moreover, a good number of his supporters might very well have been Republicans or conservatives who voted in the Democratic primary just to sink Lincoln, sometimes for reasons that have nothing to do with politics, writes John Brummett, a veteran political observer who writes a column for Arkansas News Bureau:

Let’s explain something: White rural conservatives and good ol’ boys aren’t much enamored of Halter now and certainly won’t be enamored of him by November after the Republicans pour several millions into the state to explain who and what he is — meaning a labor guy a tad left of this very Blanche Lincoln whom the good ol’ boys targeted Tuesday.

While there's a chance those voters don't know about the liberal groups backing Halter now, the Republican camp will make sure they know about it by the time November comes around. The DailyKos poll says that Lincoln is "dead, dead, dead." It's actually much harder for me to imagine a world in which Lincoln's rise from the dead is less likely than Halter's fall from the anti-Lincoln pedestal. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of other polls out there right now, but it's a long way to November.

-- Monica Potts

Rand Paul, the Republican candidate for Senate in Kentucky who is an ophthalmologist, has been practicing medicine for the last five years without a nationally recognized certification for his specialty. While this is not illegal, it's certainly unusual. While all physicians are required to graduate from an accredited medical school and pass a state licensing test, specialists normally seek board certifications, essentially an additional training and practice in their chosen field. Once a physician has obtained their certification, they need to renew it every ten years.

Today, Zach Roth reported that Paul created an alternative certification board for his specialty in 1999. More notable, however, is that Paul apparently allowed his own American Board of Ophthalmologists certification to lapse in 2005, which means he's been practicing for the last five years without the nationally recognized credential, an aberration within the profession.

"Over all, about 85 percent of all practicing physicians are board certified," Beth Ann Slembarski, the administrator of the ABO, says. "Ophthalmology has a higher percentage than that, we're upwards of 95 percent. Once someone is board certified, there is about less than five percent of people initially don't re-certify." Slembarksi says that doctors who decline to re-certify usually do so when they stop seeing patients, shift their focus to research, or leave the country.

I also called Lori Boukas, a spokesperson at the American Board of Medical Specialties, the national umbrella organization for certification boards. She said board certification is the "industry standard," explaining that some hospitals make it a policy not to hire specialists who lack certification and that insurance companies will exclude non-certified doctors from their coverage networks. Malpractice-insurance costs are also lower for doctors whose certification is up-to-date.

"We say to the public that board certification is something that you want to look at to make sure that they're keeping updated in their specialty, because technology and practices change," Boukas told me. The ABMS allows the public to learn if their doctor is certified on its website. Paul's father, Republican Congressman and former Libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul, is also a physician and maintains an active certification from the ABMS-recognized American Board of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

Most ophthalmologists become certified through the American Board of Ophthalmologists, a national professional organization that is recognized by the American Medical Association and the ABMS. As Roth chronicles, Paul apparently set up an alternative certification organization in response to a change in rules at the ABO that forced younger doctors to recertify every 10 years, while older doctors were grandfathered in with lifetime credentials. (A variety of certification boards adopted time-limited certification in the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to the ABMS. Today, all board certifications are time-limited.)

Interestingly, Paul dissolved his alternate board a year after it was founded, before reinstating it in 2005 -- the same year he allowed his ABO certification to expire. It is unclear if Paul has been certified by his own board.

Paul's work as a physician has been central to his campaign; indeed, the second paragraph of his election bio concerns his work: "Dr. Paul and his family live in Bowling Green, where Rand has practiced medicine and performed eye surgery for 17 years. Rand owns his own ophthalmology practice, which employs 3 full-time staff members." A call to Paul's campaign office was not immediately returned.

-- Tim Fernholz

Michael Lind on the power of science fiction to expand the mind and forever shape your view of the world:

When I was in junior high, I came across his first novel, Last and First Men (1930), an imaginary history of the future in which our descendants evolve into numerous successive humanoid species on Earth and on other planets. My reaction was that of the late science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote, "No book before or since has ever had such an impact upon my imagination: the Stapledon vistas of millions and hundreds of millions of years, the rise and fall of civilizations and entire races of men, changed my whole outlook on the universe and has influenced much of my writing since."

From Last and First Men I moved on to Star Maker, which applied the same technique on a grander -- indeed, the grandest -- scale: the evolution of our universe and others. In form Star Maker is a dream vision, in which the unnamed character's mind leaves his body in interwar Britain and journeys into space and time. First the narrator visits a rather crudely allegorical Other Earth, in the weakest section of the book. Then he witnesses the rise and fall of intelligent species in many worlds, including exotic hive minds, plant men, "nautiloids," and intelligent stars.

KEEP READING...

Congress has dealt the Obama administration a number of setbacks in its efforts to close the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. But the just-released National Security Strategy continues to assert that the site will be closed. Page 22 of the document states, "To deny violent extremists one of their most potent recruitment tools, we will close the prison at Guantanamo Bay." National Security Adviser Jim Jones' letter to Congress today, obtained by Marc Ambinder, says critics of the plan to close Gitmo fail to take into account "the assessments of our nation's senior defense officials and military commanders who are leading the war against al-Qaeda."

The news may provide some comfort to civil libertarians and human-rights groups who are growing concerned that Gitmo may yet remain open. Yesterday, at the Alliance for Justice annual luncheon, AFJ President Nan Aron said, "While the administration pledges to close Guantanamo, we cannot erase the stain on America’s actions with just a promise. We need a promise fulfilled."

-- A. Serwer

Terrible timing for me, eh? My look at the decline in public messaging around STI prevention hits the Web, and lookie here, a new CDC study shows condom use is up, particularly among those having intercourse for the first time.

Well, a couple of things. First, the study released today is focused on preventing pregnancy, not sexually transmitted infections. (Title: National Survey of Family Growth.) So while it's encouraging to see an increase in condom use, it doesn't really get into the specifics of how effective that use is. Interestingly, the survey did ask questions aimed at determining whether women who use the pill as their primary form of contraception are also using condoms. The total number of women using condoms as their primary method is 6.2 million, but an additional 2.4 million women are using condoms as a back-up or secondary method.

What sticks with me is this: Condom use is up, which is great. But you know what else is up? STIs and new cases of HIV infection. Women's infection rates for syphilis -- which was once nearly eliminated in the U.S. -- increased 36 percent from 2007 to 2008. In 2009, young women aged 15 to 19 had the highest reported rates of Chlamydia and gonorrhea.

The authors of the study acknowledge there's a disconnect here: "Contraceptive use in the United States is virtually universal among women of reproductive age ... but that does not mean that contraceptive use in the United States is completely consistent or effective." Contraceptive use doesn't mean safe sex. For better or worse, our two primary methods of contraception in the U.S. are the pill and sterilization. So while increases in first-time condom use are great, we need to make sure that they are lasting.

--Phoebe Connelly

The Atlantic's Joshua Green writes a post downplaying financial reform. His primary anger is with laudatory coverage of Congress' work on the bill, which he feels was motivated more by politics than principle (surprise!), but in the process he criticizes the legislation in ways that suggest he's not very familiar with it. His case against the legislation is simple: It isn't as big a deal as the New Deal. He writes,

[W]hatever Obama signs into law will be modest given the scope and severity of the crisis, nothing like the New Deal reforms. No bank will be broken up, no government agency punished, no Wall Street executive denied his bonus.

Ironically, enough for someone complaining about the politicization of reform, his policy critique is that members of Congress didn't adopt enough politically popular populist gestures.

Let's start with breaking up the banks. This is a legitimate critique of the bill, but not for the reason Green suggests. Oh wait, he doesn't suggest any reasons. In any case, the Kaufman-Brown amendment to cap the size of the largest banks and breaking up the largest ones was a good idea, but it would have essentially returned the financial sector to the late 1990s without changing the way that banks do business. (You can argue that a liabilities cap would create incentives for lending, but I haven't seen a ton of research on the topic.) Especially since size was not a primary cause of the crisis but rather an exacerbating factor, it's hard for me to take the bank cap seriously as a fundamental rethinking of banking.

Next he says, "No government agency punished." This is pure hand-waving. I'm curious to learn why punishing an agency would help prevent future crises. In any case, Green apparently missed that the most lax regulator, the Office of Thrift Supervision, is eliminated in both bills, or that the Fed had its consumer-protection authorities stripped away because it failed to use them. In fact, the creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency is a New Deal-level accomplishment. And, of course, the worst regulators in the crisis have already been fired, with the exception of John Dugan, who will be replaced this summer, and Ben Bernanke, whose renomination is indeed inexplicable -- but that is on Obama's head, not Congress'.

Finally, "no Wall Street executive denied his bonus." Again, how would that help the country in the future? Apparently, Green missed reports that the reform bill will cut Wall Street profits by 20 percent, and, as new rules come into affect to limit risk, likely even more. Perhaps he's angry about Wall Street profiting off government subsidies, but the fact that the banks paid back what they've borrowed, and will be taxed further to cover the entire cost of the bailouts, has escaped him. The bill also increases shareholders' and regulators' power to constrain compensation, but maybe he didn't read that section.

Green can't seem to cite anything that he would consider an actual reform other than breaking up the banks and two provisions already in the bill -- the Volcker rule and the derivatives desk ban at the largest banks. The latter will be strengthened in conference with language from the Merkley-Levin amendment, the former slightly weakened, but in concert they will change the way Wall Street does business. Does Green want to bring back Glass-Steagall, as some suggest? He doesn't say. All of this isn't to say that there haven't been good ideas left on the table -- merging the SEC and CFTC, for one -- but the far reach of these reforms, including the long-delayed derivatives regulation title, make this a comprehensive and significant piece of legislation.

Green's primary complaint, though, is that politicians acted because voters were angry, not because members of Congress are the soul of integrity. This strikes me as an argument that our political system is working -- the whole point is that voters are supposed to force legislators to take action. Does he think that New Deal reforms came about because members of Congress suddenly decided that the common good demanded reform, or because record unemployment threatened to undo the social fabric of the country? While we hope our legislators are people of principle, the idea of some golden age when politics didn't matter is ahistorical at best.

If the coverage of the legislators who crafted the bill is too glowing, that's problematic, but we don't score public policy on its sincerity or on how it compares to 80-year-old legislation. We score it on whether or not it works today, and from what we know, this bill is likely to make our financial sector safer and stronger.

-- Tim Fernholz

The LA Times reports that the Justice Department is preparing a challenge to Arizona's immigration law that will argue that the law unconstitutionally infringes on the authority of the federal government to enforce immigration laws and that it could violate the civil rights of Latinos in Arizona who are there legally. The exact details of the challenge aren't out yet, but a coalition of civil-rights groups recently filed a challenge along similar lines.

Conservatives have gotten a lot of mileage out of criticizing Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano for not reading the Arizona law before implying it might be unconstitutional. This is silly. If I said that Utah were making it a crime to be a member of the Democratic Party, even a non-lawyer would assume the law was probably unconstitutional. The Constitution gives Congress authority to "establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization" so it makes sense to assume that a state law that preempts existing federal immigration statutes might be problematic. Not reading the law before filing a challenge and not reading the law before speculating about its constitutionality are two entirely different things, and Holder would only be derelict if he did the former.

One of the primary arguments of the "read the law" chorus is that since the law has a provision outlawing racial profiling it won't unfairly target Latinos. This is basically an extension of color-blind racist philosophy into law -- namely the text of the bill outlaws racial profiling, despite the fact that it is clearly aimed at the state's Latino population. The reason you can pass a law that encourages racial profiling in spirit while prohibiting it in letter is that everyone has a concept in their head of what an "illegal immigrant" looks and sounds like. A police officer wouldn't have to make a judgment based on race alone; as the civil-rights groups' lawsuit points out, they could make such decisions based on racialized factors such as "language, accent, clothing, English-word selection" or "failure to communicate in English." Furthermore, since the amended law now compels police to inquire about immigration status while investigating city ordinance violations, there's a built-in racial-profiling alibi.

The Arizona law is, essentially, the legal version of that infamous phrase, "I'm not racist but..."

-- A. Serwer

Change.org's Criminal Justice blog points us to a study from the University of Hawaii that tells us something we probably already knew but is nonetheless useful to have demonstrated in scientific form: Criminal juries are more likely to believe dark-skinned suspects are guilty. At least, that's according to an experiment conducted by the university that is, incidentally, backed up by everything a courtroom observer has seen with her own eyes.

While this points out the disturbing role prejudice plays in jury decisions, it's important to know that the vast majority of cases are resolved long before they reach trial. In those cases, the biases of prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges are more important. The prejudice doesn't always show itself in overt ways, but it's there. A middle-class person, for example, is more likely to know what to do to show the judge how contrite he or she is and get themselves "on the right track" in the hopes of a more lenient sentence.

In Stamford, Connecticut, for example, where I used to be a reporter, the son of former Mayor Dannel Malloy (who is now running for governor) pleaded guilty to, on two occasions, being involved in drug crimes. In the first one, a confidential informant told police the son, Benjamin Malloy, was selling drugs out of his father's home, though he was charged with possession and not dealing. In the second, Malloy and friends were charged with trying to rob a suspected dealer over a small amount of marijuana in an incident originally reported as a home invasion. They had BB guns, and were possibly shot at as they fled the scene in a residential neighborhood. He received no jail time, but should he violate his probation he could face up to 10 years.

I don't think anyone should go to jail over pot, but this was a sentence many felt was light simply because he was the mayor's son. What is almost certainly true is that Malloy knew how to use the system to his advantage. He enrolled in a drug-treatment program and said in court he was addicted to drugs. He had a good lawyer, and the support of his family who said they would help him get his life on track. There were so many times in which I saw a defendant's demeanor make a difference in how the judge talked to them in court, though I can't say that that affected the sentence, and Malloy's demeanor was always apologetic. Those subtle, cultural clues make a difference in how a defendant is viewed in the court system, whether they're seen as real criminals who need jail time or fundamentally good people whose lives took a wrong turn. It's not that African American or Latino defendants were never given the benefit of the doubt; it's just that the kind of access someone has to the types of attorneys and programs who can help them the most is affected by race and class. I don't know if people understand how often judgment calls like that are made.

So while it's always nice to have a study show the role bias plays in the courtroom, it's another study I wish didn't have to be done.

-- Monica Potts

Phoebe Connelly on how the prevention message disappeared from the public conversation about sex:

In the nearly 30 years the United States has grappled with HIV/AIDS, public and private groups have struggled with how to best spread the message of prevention. Despite more than 100 years of public-health campaigns about sexually transmitted infections (STIs), the message of how to prevent them -- talking openly with your partner, using a condom properly, getting tested regularly -- still hasn't stuck. Condom use, particularly among teens, has increased over the past decade, but between 2004 and 2007, the time period of the most recent data available, diagnoses of HIV increased 15 percent, and STIs are on the rise. "Our HIV rates are appalling, given that we know how to prevent infection," says Ellen Friedrichs, a sex educator in Brooklyn.

KEEP READING ...

David Weigel flags for us an amusing case of two politicians, one a congressional candidate in Tennessee, and one a candidate for agriculture commissioner in Alabama, who are running virtually identical ads produced by the same media consultant. It's not just the stock footage and the scripts that are almost identical but the fact that the two are standing in the same field next to the same tractor, and in one candidate's ad, you can see him talking to the other candidate. But that's not what I want to point out. The ad from Stephen Fincher tells you a lot about why Americans are cynical about politics:

"Stephen Fincher will stand up to Washington," it says. "Cut taxes to create jobs. Control wasteful spending. Stop expanding government. Expand freedom instead." Really? Here's a bold prediction: No he won't. Not because he'll be seduced by Washington's ways or because he doesn't actually want to do those things. He won't do them because if he wins, he'll be a freshman congressman in a body with 434 other members, who have to deal with the Senate and the president to do whatever it is they want to do. The idea that this guy is going to single- handedly cut taxes, control spending, and stop the expansion of government is about as realistic as the idea that if we elect him, we'll all have whiter teeth and good fashion sense.

And I could be wrong about this, but it often seems like it's the most anti-government candidates who make the most sweeping claims about the national transformation that will occur if only you elect them. And then what happens? All the things the good folks in Tennessee thought were going to come about because of Stephen Fincher's election don't come to pass. They won't take this as evidence that Fincher himself ought to be voted out (especially since he'll be running against some commie Democrat), but it will certainly reassure them that government is broken and nothing can be accomplished.

-- Paul Waldman

Last June, in the aftermath of two incidents involving the shootings of two black off-duty New York police officers by their colleagues, Gov. David Paterson formed a task force to study what role race may have played in the shootings. The conclusion, reports The New York Times, is that "inherent or unconscious racial bias plays a role in ‘shoot/don’t-shoot,’ decisions made by officers of all races and ethnicities.”

But of course, the fact that as a cop, you're more likely to get shot by a colleague if you're black has nothing to do with racism, because as Ta-Nehisi Coates has written, there are no racists in America:

“There may well be an issue of race in these shootings, but that is not the same as racism,” said Zachary W. Carter, a former United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, who served as the task force’s vice chairman. “Research reveals that race may play a role in an officer’s instantaneous assessment of whether a particular person presents a danger or not.”

What's weird is that most people will read that sentence without blinking because they know exactly what he means. Racism is a bias possessed by monsters in white hoods and swastika tattoos, not police trying to do their jobs. Saying that racism plays a factor would be the same thing as saying these cops were all terrible people.

A straightforward reading of the task force's conclusion is much more frightening -- race continues to play a decisive role in the most important decisions we make, and being a good person does not make you immune. This is part of why the American conversation on race is so counterproductive -- it's almost entirely focused on excluding almost every model of rational behavior from the category of "racism," rather than examining the very real effects race continues to have on people's lives. The first priority, essentially, is reassuring white people that they aren't racist. You can see this instinct in the piece itself, Carter's quote exonerating the shooters from the charge of racism is the first quote in the piece.

This tendency isn't based on malice; it's based on experience -- white people are more likely to be accused of being racist than suffer as a result of racism. Rather than think about how to mitigate the effects of race in American society, we waste our time with hand-wringing and soul-searching over whether or not person X is a racist.  

-- A. Serwer

Sure to be on everyone's mind today is the release of the National Security Strategy, a 55-page memo that outlines the Obama administration's ... national security strategy. Foreign Policy's Josh Rogin has obtained a copy for you to peruse here. While I'll leave the broader commentary to folks like Marc Lynch, I thought Andrew Exum's comments, which appear in my RSS feed but not (yet?) is now on his blog, were worth highlighting:

Considering the financial crisis from which our country is still emerging, I am surprised there is not more in the National Security Strategy about the environment of scarcity in which the United States now operates. Strategy is, in part, about setting goals, prioritizing those goals, and matching resources to each goal. Aside from the section about spending tax-payer money wisely -- which seems more about reducing fraud, waste and abuse than anything else -- there seems to be little acknowledgment that the United States might not be able to pursue all of our national security goals as vigorously as we might like in part due to spending constraints.

I'm still trying to understand how the acknowledgment that the United States must address its deficit to ensure our future security squares with a bold statement like 'the United States of America will continue to underwrite global security'. That is an especially bold claim considering the fact that this document seems to consider security to include not just physical security but economic security, food security, medical security and addressing problems of governance and reducing poverty outside America's borders.

First, we cannot discard the distinction between short-term deficits that grow our economy in a time of recession and long-term debt that increases our fiscal problems -- the deficit we are currently running is strengthening our economy. Exum mentions his concern that "soon and very soon the annual interest on the national debt will be larger than our defense budget." Well, sort of -- this year we are spending about $708 billion at the Defense Department and fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Interest payments on the national debt will be higher than that, should we do nothing, by 2018. That's something of an academic point, however, since it's hard to imagine the defense budget not increasing in the next eight years, though it's a scenario worth imagining.

I don't point that out to suggest that Exum's overall point is wrong; rather, to prevent unnecessary hyperventilating about the debt, which, over the long-term, is a problem that can't be solved even if we zeroed out the Defense budget -- we need an approach that raises some taxes, cuts some spending, and continues our efforts to rein in medical-cost growth. While stressing the debt in relation to the Defense budget may seem like a good way to assert some prudence, our political dynamics are such that national security spending is sacrosanct and a "more brutal prioritization of efforts" will be directed at fragile domestic programs. It's worth mentioning here that Defense Secretary Robert Gates has done yeoman's work to trim his own budget of unnecessary programs and expenditures, and Exum has been a vocal supporter of those efforts.

More important to our national security goals, though, is economic growth, the ability to produce more than we did before. While the U.S. economy is still vastly larger than even our near-peer competitors, our growth is forecast to be much more sluggish, and as The End of Influence points out, it seems inevitable that the U.S., in the long-term, won't be the dominant economic player anymore. Hence the focus on developing shared global prosperity and reinforcing multilateral security structures -- by the time the U.S. is outstripped as global leader, we want those norms to be strongly set in place. That's the macro economic strategy for national security reflected in this paper.

In the near-term, though, I'd be curious to hear more about what Exum would have prioritized, particularly around the two ongoing conflicts that reflect his experience. Right now, Gates is trying to kill several contracts relating to jet engines and transport planes he doesn't want, and Congress is fighting him. Unfortunately, though, I think the politics of any major Defense Department cuts will have to come when we are not at war and when our corrupt contracting system is reformed. The nexus of political opportunism and crony capitalism may be too much to overcome until then.

-- Tim Fernholz

• It's not news that the much-maligned economic stimulus enacted last year is doing pretty much what it was designed to do: mitigate the effects of the Great Recession. And despite reports that it might even be performing slightly better than expected, I can't help but regret that it could have been designed better. More money, more focus on infrastructure, and a focus on shoring up state budget shortfalls and job creation could have dramatically improved the bill. Instead I got a $400 tax credit while official unemployment sits at 10 percent and growth is anemic. And lest we forget, a better stimulus bill that visibly turned things around would have deprived critics of pointing out the inadequacies of the compromise we got.
• Speaking of getting a return on investment, Kevin Drum tries to help people understand that contrary to the myth that Medicaid expansion will break the backs of cash-strapped state governments, the federal government will be covering at least 95 percent of the cost, not to mention the minor detail that an additional 11 million people will receive health-insurance benefits. But as with the ARRA, facts like this aren't going to dissuade the powerful narrative that "out of control government spending" is destroying us.
  
• I love these National Review "Originals" that The Corner highlights every now and then. For those who don't know (or care), this feature highlights a past issue of the magazine and some of the articles contained therein. It exists as a reminder of the magazine's glory days, when conservatism was an ideas-based movement on the ascent. I don't know what that says about the contemporary conservative movement, or for that matter, National Review, but it's amusing that conservatism remains so hardwired to revere the past that it's reduced to revering one magazine's lonely struggle against the liberal establishment.
  
• Remainders: The (financial) fate of U.S. presidents has always been tied to the state of the economy; part two on the sources of Nancy Pelosi's influence as House speaker; the line item veto is just a technical way of saying "shift power to the White House"; more principled opposition to the Elena Kagan nomination; and I'm going to go with "powerful personality disorder" to explain Wall Street's obliviousness to their own role in taking down the economy in 2008.

--Mori Dinauer