The Answer To Immigration Woes

May 28, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Immigration, Iraq War | Leave a Comment 

Max Boot opines on a USA Today profile of Forat Aldawoodi an Iraqi citizen turned American soldier:

There are lots of people like Aldawoodi around the world who have great respect for America and would be eager to join our armed forces for a chance at citizenship. If we facilitate that process — as the armed forces are starting to — we will in return get many valuable members of the military and of society in general.

I am not much swayed by diatribes about how Rome fell because of its supposed overreliance on mercenaries. That’s not true and even if it were it’s of no relevance today because I am not suggesting turning over our defense to mercenaries. All I am suggesting is that we supplement our existing soldiery with more foreign-born volunteers who, like many illustrious predecessors, aspire to become Americans. One of Rome’s strengths was actually its ability to assimilate foreigners and that is one of America’s strengths as well — one we should do more to take advantage of.

And The Problems With Twitter Continue

May 28, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under International Affairs, News media | Leave a Comment 

Social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter have there upsides of course, but they also have national, international incident, paranoia, and confusion written tweeted all over it. The latest case in the Bundestag is no exception:

It is already being dubbed “Twittergate”. The internet communication craze that has swept the world has caused a political furore in Germany, where the country’s parliamentary elders will on Thursday launch a probe into twittering MPs who broke decades of tradition and leaked news of the president’s re-election.

The probe, which has already led one MP to resign from a parliamentary post, underscores the rapid spread of 140 character “tweets”, which are growing in popularity at a faster rate than social networking site Facebook.

Users of Twitter grew from 1.6m to 32m worldwide over the past year, according to Comscore, the web measurement company.

News that Hörst Köhler had been re-elected as German president on Saturday was published on the micro-blogging service almost 15 minutes before the result was officially announced.

Julia Klöckner, of chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU, told her Twitter “followers” on that afternoon: “People, you can watch the football in peace. The vote was a success.”

She later apologised for the “somewhat premature timing” of a message.

Ulrich Kelber, of the SPD, was even more specific, prematurely uploading the result of the vote-count to his micro-blog: “The count is confirmed: 613 votes. Köhler is elected.”

The Social Democrats, whose candidate for the presidency failed, were initially incensed by the Twitter leaks. Yet both SPD and CDU have since played down the matter.

Although the winner came as no surprise, the breach of protocol has upset seasoned members of parliament.

Parliamentary elders, the ultimate guardians of proper legislative conduct, are due to meet over Twittergate today.

Critics insist that only the Bundestag president has the constitutional right to declare a new head of state. He customarily uses more than the 140 characters permitted in a tweet.

“I have absolutely no sympathy for things like this, because it will end up undermining the dignity of parliament,” said Peter Ramsauer, head of the CSU parliamentary party.

Reconsidering The Raptor?

May 28, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Asia, Military, North Korea | Leave a Comment 

While Defense Secretary Robert Gates decision to end the F-22 program is based on his opinion that America needs to ration its defense resources to fight counter-insurgencies, the recent North Korean provocation does give heed to the conventional argument. Ironically enough, the USAF will deploy 12 Raptors to Okinawa in a move that follows the PRK’s nuclear test last Monday:

The U.S. Air Force will deploy 12 advanced F-22 Raptor fighters in the coming days to a base in Okinawa, Japan. The move had been planned in advance and was not related to recent rumblings from Pyongyang, a U.S. Forces Japan spokesman said.

The South’s largest newspaper Chosun Ilbo quoted defense sources as saying the South has been preparing for contingencies such as artillery or missile strikes near a contested sea border off the west coast of the peninsula.

There are 183 Raptors in the current fleet. Only four more will be built for fiscal year 2010.

Featured Articles — May 28, 2009

May 28, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

Sotomayor Choice is Delicate Matter for the GOP By David Broder, The Washington Post
It is as close to certain as anything gets in Washington that Judge Sonia Sotomayor is on her way to the Supreme Court. What impact she will have there is far harder to predict.

Israel’s Cuban Missile Crisis – All the Time By Victor Davis Hanson, National Review
Why would the Iranian government spend billions of dollars on trying to develop a few first-generation nuclear bombs (as nearly everyone believes is the case) when the country is so poor that it has to ration gasoline?

The hazards of overreacting to Kim Jong Il’s nuclear tests By Robert D. Kaplan, The Atlantic
North Korea, the Next Iraq?

‘Empathy’ Is Code for Judicial Activism By Karl Rove, The Wall Street Journal
Mr. Obama said he wanted to replace Justice David Souter with someone who had “empathy” and who’d temper the court’s decisions with a concern for the downtrodden, the powerless and the voiceless.

Big Three confront rough road By David Cole and Sean McAlinden, Detroit News
The crisis in Detroit and for the rest of the world’s auto industry is intensifying as a depression level of auto sales continues to pummel the industry. If the government isn’t careful about how it handles General Motors Corp. and the rest of the industry, it could make the problem even worse and further collapse the country’s economy.

The Mellowing of William Jefferson Clinton By Peter Baker, The New York Times Magazine
Bill Clinton loves to shop. On a March day in an elegant crafts store in Lima, the Peruvian capital, he hunted for presents for his wife and the women on his staff back home. He had given a speech at a university earlier and just came from a ceremony kicking off a program to help impoverished Peruvians. Now he was eyeing a necklace with a green stone amulet.

The Principled Opposition By Fred Barnes, The Weekly Standard
Enter Robert George. A professor of politics (and a lot more) at Princeton–he holds an endowed chair once held by Woodrow Wilson–George wants to bring intellectual vigor to the Republican party and the conservative movement, especially on social issues like pornography and marriage. “We need to connect our intellectuals with our activists,” he says.

Death of A Dissident By Natan Sharansky, Washington Post
Fathi Eljahmi, the most prominent democratic dissident in Libya, died last Thursday. Eljahmi had endured seven years in unspeakable conditions in the Libyan prison system. His crime? He spoke out, unflinchingly, for freedom of speech and democratic reforms. Two days before his death, with Eljahmi already in a coma, the Libyans sent him to Jordan. The U.S. State Department lauded his “release” as a welcome development.

Quarantine possibilities By Michael O’Hanlon, The Washington Times
In the effort to understand North Korea’s decision to test a nuclear weapon this week, several theories have been advanced.

‘We Used to Murder People at Night When the Soldiers Weren’t Around’ By Daniel Steinvorth, Der Spiegel
When members of the special Turkish police unit Jitem arrived at night, Kurdish inhabitants of southeast Turkey knew there would be another disappearance. Investigators are now looking into the activities of this allegedly disbanded secretive organization from the 1990s — and the ‘death wells’ where its victims were hidden.

If this great reform is to be durable, we need to pin our politicians down By Timothy Garton Ash, Guardian
A very British revolution will be the task of a new generation in parliament. We voters must give them their marching orders.

The Line of Fire By Shannon O’Neil, Foreign Policy
How Venezuela came to claim the region’s highest murder rate.

Very Cool Cats, Very Cold

May 27, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Art, Environmental issues | 2 Comments 

National Geographic photographer Steven Winter gave a sold-out lecture last night at the Society’s Washington HQ about his six-month high-altitude high-adventure pursuit of the elusive (think pale-on-white above 12,000 feet) and endangered (probably only 3,500 left in the world) snow leopard.  

His amazing shot of  a snow leopard in a snow storm won 2008’s award for Best Wildlife Photograph.

Winter’s biography begins with some attention-getting details: “I’ve been stalked by jaguars in Brazil, charged by an 11-foot grizzly in Siberia, trapped in quicksand in the world’s largest tiger reserve in Myanmar and slept in a tent for six weeks at 0 below zero tracking snow leopards.  I have flown over erupting volcanoes and visited isolated villages whee residents had never before seen a blond foreigner —- or a camera.”

Inspired, like many, by the romance and adventure of Peter Matthiessen’s practical and mystical 1978 classic, Winter had answered an editor’s memo asking for “dream assignments” by requesting the rarely seen —and even more rarely photographed— snow leopard.

In addition to his photographic skills, Winter turned out to be an engaging and enthusiastic lecturer.  Unfortunately an equipment glitch (“it worked this afternoon”) prevented the audience from seeing a short Nat Geo film he made about the snow leopard expedition.

But TNN readers can see it  here.

Blog size and resolution can’t begin to do justice to Steve Winter’s striking photographs.  Check out the snow leopard gallery at National Geographic’s website.  And Winter’s own website introduces his wider body of work.

Freedom Comes With Limitations

May 27, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under International Affairs, Middle East | Leave a Comment 

Michael Slackman of The New York Times profiles parallel lives and the psychology of how and why political repression frequently has the reverse effect:

for his work against the death penalty and in support of prisoners’ rights. In Syria, Michel Kilo was locked up after calling on President Bashar al-Assad to build citizenship and rule of law. In Egypt, Saad Eddin Ibrahim was imprisoned because of his work in support of democracy.

As Mr. Jahmi did, they each chose to continue to speak up when they were released.

“If I abandon my cause, then I will let them accomplish their goal,” Mr. Kilo said in a telephone interview after being released this month after three years in prison.

“No, I have not been broken,” he said, his voice still frail and weak.

Ayman Nour, a former presidential candidate and sharp critic of President Hosni Mubarak, served four years in Egypt’s Tora Prison after being convicted of charges widely regarded as politically inspired. But the night of his release in February, he appeared on Egypt’s most popular television talk show and resumed his attacks on the government.

Are these dissidents extraordinary? Are they crazy, perhaps, or egomaniacal, as some critics have said? Or are they all too human, fighting to maintain a sense of personal worth that the state has tried to strip away?

There are, of course, many reasons different people in different cultures choose the path of most resistance. But the most compelling, the activists themselves say, particularly in a Middle Eastern culture that honors martyrdom, is that prison becomes a defining and hardening experience, cementing their convictions and removing any temptation to compromise their beliefs.

Curiously, Middle Eastern leaders make the same mistake that they often warn the West about: humiliating their people, many of whom then find personal meaning and dignity in fighting back. “What’s interesting is the role the regimes play in keeping the likes of Kilo or Fathi permanently committed to their conflict with the government,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division.

Very often, freedom comes with so many limitations, Ms. Whitson said, that the dissidents feel more productive behind bars. Mr. Nour, for example, recently told a visiting class of journalism students from Northeastern University that he wanted to go back to prison, because he had greater impact there than on the outside. He told the students he had not been allowed to practice law, to work in politics, or even to open a bank account.

Speaking from his home in Damascus, Mr. Kilo said: “There is no doubt that when it comes to political power we are weak, but from our intellectual point of view we are not wrong, we are not defeated. I have not been defeated. But can any policeman come and take me and put me in prison right now? Sure he can.”

Spinning The Dial

May 27, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Media, Music | Leave a Comment 

As I have noted before, when I am, at last, put in charge of everything*, one of my first actions will be to double funding for NPR’s arts programming.

Half of the additional dollars will be realized by abolishing the news division; and I’ll scrounge up the other half from somewhere as a bonus for a job well done and an incentive to keep up the good work.

During only half an hour of this afternoon’s drive time “All Things Considered,” there were two segments that demonstrated the invaluable —and incomparable— service that NPR at its best provides.

The first was a piece on “People Really Like Milk” —  the kind of children’s song that only an adult can truly appreciate.  You’d have to be tune deaf —or lactose intolerant— not to smile at Billy Kelly’s catchy ode to the drink that comes from a big thing that says moo.

Here’s the link:  ”People Really Like Milk”

The spotlight may have been focused Mr. Kelly’s way a tad too soon — because as his myspace page indicates, the video he is creating for “Milk” looks promising but is still a work in the earliest stages of development.

The second terrific piece, elegantly written and produced by critic John McDonough, was about the upcoming (on Saturday) centenary of the birth of the King of Swing, Benny Goodman.

You can read it here; and hear it here.

*A moment which, purely in terms of the good of mankind, should come very soon; and which, in purely actuarial terms, had better come very soon.

Hedging The Biden Visit

May 27, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Middle East, Terrorism | Leave a Comment 

Hezbollah, whose March 14 political movement is expected to run down to the wire against the anti-Syrian and Saad Hariri lead March 8 alliance in Lebanon’s upcoming June 7th elections, is already hedging American isolation (and for that matter VP Biden’s signals) should the terror group gain a majority of seats in parliament: Hezbollah Says It Is Talking to European Union and I.M.F.

Lebanon’s current governing majority, which has tried unsuccessfully to disarm Hezbollah, has depended on heavy financial support from the West and oil-rich Persian Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia. In Beirut last week, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said future American support to Lebanon, which includes military aid, would depend on the elections’ outcome.

European governments have not issued any such veiled threats, and Western leaders have recently shown a greater willingness to engage in political dialogue with Hezbollah’s patrons, Iran and Syria. Britain’s Foreign Office said in March that it would re-establish relations with Hezbollah’s political wing.

The European Union provides about $84 million a year to Lebanon, and the International Monetary Fund provides about $114 million, aid that will be coming up for reauthorization soon.

The monetary fund has not negotiated a possible loan with members or sympathizers of Hezbollah, Simonetta Nardin, a spokeswoman for the fund, said in an e-mail message. But the agency routinely meets with the main political parties in Lebanon and with members of Parliament, Ms. Nardin said. Future loans with the monetary fund were not discussed, she said.

The practical effects of an election victory by Hezbollah and its allies would be limited because they already play important roles in the cabinet, and any new government would almost certainly preserve a “blocking minority” for the opposition.

But a victory would be symbolically important, especially for Arab states concerned about the influence of Iran and Syria. Saudi Arabia has provided at least $2 billion to Lebanon’s central bank since 2006, along with many other aid programs. Lebanon’s public debt is more than $45 billion.

Judge Sotomayor’s Baseball Ruling: Fair Or Foul?

May 27, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Sports, Supreme Court | Leave a Comment 

On his Punch blog today, ABC News’ Jake Tapper brings baseball maven George Will to the plate regarding Judge Sotomayor and her role in ending the baseball strike.

As White Sox fan and President Barack Obama introduced Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor yesterday he praised her judicial record generally — and in one specific case.

“During her tenure on the district court, she presided over roughly 450 cases,” he said. “One case in particular involved a matter of enormous concern to many Americans, including me: the baseball strike of 1994 and ‘95.”

To laughter, the president said, “in a decision that reportedly took her just 15 minutes to announce — a swiftness much appreciated by baseball fans everywhere — she issued an injunction that helped end the strike.”

“Some say,” the president said, “that Judge Sotomayor saved baseball.”

This was a reference to when then-District Judge Sotomayor ruled in favor of the National Labor Relations Board against Major League Baseball’s owners during the MLB players’ strike.

Operating outside negotiations, owners changed the rules on salary arbitration and free agency and hired replacement players. The NLRB sued the owners to stop making those changes. Sotomayor ruled against the owners and players returned to work.

But baseball fanatic, conservative columnist and ABC News contributor George F. Will takes issue with the notion that this was “saving” baseball.

“The president is a gentleman and a scholar and a great ornament to our society, but he’s not a great baseball historian,” Will told us.

“He says that when she ended the baseball impasse that was interrupting play in 1994 and 1995, she saved baseball,” Will says. “Far from it. What she did was overturn in a sense, the essence, the underlies, the essential theory of American labor relations, which is the parties should slug it out because they know best and whoever wins, wins.”

Will says that “in fact, what she did was take sides, took union’s side against the management, and in so-doing, wasted 262 days of negotiations. That, far from saving baseball, consigned baseball to seven more years of an unreformed economic system, which happened to be the seven worst years in terms of competitive balance.”

Sotomayor, Will says, “delayed the restructuring of baseball. So I would say that far from her saving baseball, as the president says, that in fact, baseball thrives now because we got over the damage that her judicial activism did in that strike.”

A Matter Of Opinions

May 27, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Supreme Court | Leave a Comment 

Hmmmm.  Is George Washington University Law Professor (and major TV legal pundit) Jonathan Turley speaking truth to power?  Or is he taking the soft bigotry of low expectations for a trial spin around the block?  Either way, he appears to treat the confirmation as a foregone conclusion.

“The Susan Boyle Of The Photography World”

May 27, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Art, Barack Obama | 1 Comment 

 

Barack Obama: The Freshman — an exhibition of Lisa Jack’s 1980 photo portraits of Occidental College freshman Barry Obama opens tomorrow night at LA’s  M+B Gallery

The Daily Beast sets the story up very nicely:

The fact that Lisa Jack, who photographed Barack Obama during his freshman year at Occidental College, chose to hold onto the photos during the brutal presidential campaign restores a little of one’s faith in humanity. But now that Obama is safe from any faux-outrage over the portraits—in which he oozes a pre-calculated cool complete with cigarette in hand—the photos are on exhibit in Los Angeles. Jack remembers meeting the young Obama in 1980, and being impressed with his confidence. He “was a cool dude,” she said. And even then Obama had an instinct for the image he wanted to project. He came to the photo shoot with a stylish bomber jacket, cigarettes, and banded hat. Jack first published some of the photos in Time in December, choosing that magazine over tabloids that likely would have paid handsomely. “I could have made a boatload of money, probably, but I wanted to do it right,” Jack said.

The Once And Future Photographer: Lisa Jack returns to the campus of Occidental College where she photographed freshman Barry Obama in 1980. (Photo by Lawrence K. Ho, LATimes.)

The LA Times today has a story by Mike Boehm about the fortuitous —and, the way things seem to be going these days, serendipitous— career of Lisa Jack, who forsook her first love for the sake of paying the bills.

Jack, now a psychology professor and therapist, can thank Obama for putting her back on her road not taken. She says a lack of money forced her to pass up graduate studies in photography; instead she went into banking, then branched into psychology. While earning a doctorate from USC, Jack did an internship in Minneapolis and stayed on there, launching a private practice and teaching at Augsburg College. After her unexpected debut show opens, she’s eager to test her eye again with other photo projects.

“I’m the 49-year-old woman who wanted to be a photographer but didn’t follow through. I’m the Susan Boyle of the photography world.”

Her life and Obama’s intersected at the Cooler, a campus snack shop. The young woman from Rye, N.Y., loved her psychology courses but cared enough about photography to find mentors on the faculty who tutored her in independent study courses. With a blanket thrown over the couch she recalls as “a plaid horrible thing,” the living room of the apartment she shared in a nondescript quadruplex near the campus in Eagle Rock became Jack’s makeshift photo studio. Students from her circle of friends and acquaintances would pose for portraits that she would hand in as her weekly assignments.

That day a friend was telling her about a student named Barry she ought to photograph “because he’s so cute.” Moments later, the man himself walked in. He agreed to the shoot.

  A friend recommended that aspiring photographer Lisa Jack photograph fellow Occidental student Barry Obama “because he’s so cute.”

Featured Articles — May 27, 2009

May 27, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

What’s a Liberal Justice Now? By Jeffrey Rosen, The New Republic
When talking about the Supreme Court, Barack Obama has resisted the familiar ideological categories that have defined our judicial battles for the past several decades. He has made clear that despite his progressive inclinations, he is not a 1960s-style, Warren Court liberal — someone who believes that the justices should boldly define constitutional rights in an effort to bring about social change.

Questions for Sotomayor By Naomi Rao, The Wall Street Journal
Yesterday President Barack Obama announced his nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter. She is federal circuit court judge Sonia Sotomayor. What sorts of questions should senators and the American people ask a nominee to the Supreme Court?

The GOP’s Suicide Mission By Mark McKinnon, The Daily Beast
Memo to my party: Blasting targets like Sonia Sotomayor and Colin Powell is a surefire strategy to guarantee our extinction.

First, Take a Deep Breath By Fred Kaplan, Slate
Obama shouldn’t respond too quickly, or too aggressively, to the North Korean nuclear test.

Rethink Before You Reset By Daniel Kimmage, Foreign Policy
You can look back to as far as 1920, when Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz of The New Republic picked through the New York Times’ coverage of the Russian Revolution and found articles riddled with ludicrous predictions of the Bolshevik regime’s imminent collapse. “The news about Russia is a case of seeing not what was, but what men wished to see,” they concluded.

Trapped in a Metropolis of Suffering By Horand Knaup in Dadaab, Der Spiegel
The Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, home to 270,000 Somali refugees, is the world’s largest. Created 18 years ago as a stopgap, new fighting is driving thousands of additional refugees into the already overcrowded, overstretched cam

iPhoning It In

May 26, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Art, Technology | 1 Comment 

Gizmodo, the gadget blog that is to technology as Gawker is to New York media and gossip and Wonkette is to Washington politics and gossip, provides the colorful backstory of the cover of the new New Yorker:

Artist Jorge Colombo took about an hour to fingerpaint an intricate Times Square scene on his iPhone using Brushes, a $4.99 iPhone drawing app. Now, it’s the June 1st cover for The New Yorker.

I’m guessing the editors of the magazine saw some kind of weighty symbolism in such a stunt, but landing a New Yorker cover is the kind of honor that would define an entire career for many illustrators. That’s not to say this kind of thing isn’t impressive—it really, really is—but I can’t help imagining some dusty, 93-year-old editor at the top floor of the Conde Nast building seeing his first iPhone in the hands of an intern, losing his monocle over this amazing new tech-nol-o-gee, and impulsively ordering something, anything to do with this MAGICKAL DEE-VICE to be put on the cover, now.

Here’s a time-lapse video of the artist at work on another of his iPhone Brushes app New York fingerpaintings:

Jorge Colombo was born in Lisbon in 1963; he moved to the USA in 1989; after living in Chicago and San Francisco, he has been settled in New York since 1998.  He has an interesting website (with a link for the purchase of some very affordable limited edition prints of some of his New York fingerpaintings).

He drew this cover on his iPhone in about an hour while standing outside Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in Times Square.  As the magazine reports: 

“I got a phone in the beginning of February, and I immediately got the program so I could entertain myself,” says Colombo, who first published his drawings in The New Yorker in 1994. Colombo has been drawing since he was seven, but he discovered an advantage of digital drawing on a nighttime drive to Vermont. “Before, unless I had a flashlight or a miner’s hat, I could not draw in the dark.” (When the sun is up, it’s a bit harder, “because of the glare on the phone,” he says.) It also allows him to draw without being noticed; most pedestrians assume he’s checking his e-mail.

Another of Jorge Colombo’s iPhone Brushes app fingerpaintings — a busy corner of the concourse at Grand Central Station.

The Sotomayor Nomination: Grassroots, Netroots Redux

May 26, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Obama administration, Supreme Court | Leave a Comment 

Considered purely as a matter of practical political strategy, the nomination of Judge Sotomayor is nothing short of brilliant.

Despite her apparently high reversal rate, and although some of her more colorful obiter dicta will be resurfaced to haunt her, it’s hard to imagine that —or how— she will be denied confirmation.

First, her biography manages to be more stirring, inspiring, and distinguished even than the President’s.

Second, in an arena where precedents count, she was nominated —at the recommendation of  Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan— by POTUS Bush41 in 1992, and unanimously confirmed for the federal bench in the Southern District of New York.  In 1996, when President Clinton nominated her for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, the Republican-controlled Senate confirmed her by a vote of 67-29-2.

Third, in terms of personal and political bases covered, where a nominee is considered oustanding if they’re at least a twofer and extraordinary if they’re threefer, Sonya Sotomayor is something like an octofer.

But, win, lose, or draw for Judge Sotomayor, the practical political ramifications of the nomination will guarantee that the President emerges a winner.  At one stroke, he has managed not just to shore up, but to revivify and rally his recently disillusioned left wing.  The grassroots and the netroots are about to rise again and shake hands all across America.

On The Daily Beast reporter-analyst Richard Wolffe considers some other aspects of the President’s masterful feint to the left:

The White House is planning to revive President Obama’s 13 million-member grassroots campaign network, largely dormant since last year’s election, as it rolls out it first Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, today.

Senior Obama aides tell The Daily Beast that the network, which revolutionized fundraising and online political networking during the 2008 campaign, will be an important factor in a series of high-profile struggles unfolding over the next two months. Besides the Supreme Court fight, the senior aides say they expect to bring universal health-care to the president’s desk, while simultaneously making significant progress on global-warming legislation, including a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases.

By drawing fire to its Supreme Court nominee, Obama’s aides believe that health-care and environmental politics may face less-intense opposition.

All three initiatives would move ahead before Congress disappears for its month-long August recess, and all three face intense opposition from a conservative movement desperately seeking to rally its own supporters.

The revival of Obama’s grassroots machine represents not only an effort to neutralize any Republican onslaught, but also something of a diversionary tactic. By drawing fire to its Supreme Court nominee, Obama’s aides believe that health-care and environmental politics may face less-intense opposition.

Clemons: Patience Is Prudent

May 26, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Asia, China, International Affairs, North Korea | Leave a Comment 

Steven Clemons, who used to direct the Nixon Center, believes that Obama should continue his patience so as to avoid a stalemate with the P.R.K. during a potentially destabilizing leadership crisis.

Reaction To The Sotomayor Choice

May 26, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Supreme Court | 1 Comment 

The Associated Press has just sent out some quotes from some of our leading legislators concerning President Obama’s choice of Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court.

I was rather amused to find Sen. Barbara Boxer praising Obama for “recognizing that diversity on the bench is essential.” Of course, she was referring to the President’s selecting an Hispanic American to be on the Court for the first time, but the fact that a Roman Catholic was chosen somewhat diminishes the high court’s diversity on the religious side.

Until 1916, when President Wilson chose Louis D. Brandeis to become the first Jew to sit on the court, its membership had been entirely Christian, and, though a Catholic or two was usually on the bench (such as Roger Taney or Edward D. White, in different eras), the other Justices were Protestant, most belonging to one of three denominations: Episcopal, Congregational, or Presbyterian.

The nation is not as overwhelmingly Protestant as it once was, but it’s still true that a little over 50% of Americans identify themselves as such in opinion polls, whether or not they set foot in a church on occasions other than someone’s wedding or funeral.

If Judge Sotomayor, a Roman Catholic, is confirmed, she will join the Court’s five other justices of that faith – Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scali, Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito, and Chief Justice John Roberts. Thus, about 78% of the Court’s membership will be Catholic. (About 25% of Americans belong to this faith.)

Two Justices are Jewish – Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who grew up attending a Conservative congregation, and Stephen Breyer, whose affiliation is Reform (though, in the best ecumenical spirit, he is also the father of an Episcopal priest). The departure of Justice Souter, an Episcopalian, leaves John Paul Stevens, who belongs to no specific denomination, as the remaining Protestant on the Court.

Though liberals today were keen to applaud the choice of an Hispanic-American to sit on the Court, and happy to anticipate a possibly grateful reaction from Latino voters in 2010, the last few hours have seen some uneasiness among pro-choice bloggers where the judge’s Catholic affiliation is concerned. Judge Sotomayor has never ruled directly on the question of abortion rights, but during her time on the 2nd Circuit she did decide the case of Center For Reproductive Law and Policy v. Bush. This case concerned the question of whether the Federal government had the right to withhold funding of foreign organizations that performed abortions or advocated them. Judge Sotomayor found that the government did have this right, basing her decision on carefully considered precedents. But it isn’t clear whether her decision in this case would have much of a bearing on whatever views she might have regarding the interpretation of Roe v. Wade. Perhaps, when the judge is questioned by the Senate Judiciary Committee, the nation will get a better idea of how she may decide Roe-related cases if confirmed.

“No Victor No Vanquished”

May 26, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Middle East, Terrorism | Leave a Comment 

The above is a common Lebanese phrase that connotes the often fragile peace that marks the Levantese country’s fractious politics. It could mean nothing, Michael Totten says, if the anti-Hezbollah bloc uses a Der Spiegel report indicting the “party of God” as the culprit in Rafik Hariri’s murder just ahead of the June 7 elections:

Leaders of the “March 14” bloc could hardly ask for a more effective political weapon against Hezbollah during the run-up to the election next month, but they also couldn’t ask for one that’s more dangerous. Jumblatt is right to invoke the incident that ignited the worst war in his country’s history. Accusing Hezbollah of assassinating Hariri – and, by implication, of assassinating a number of journalists and members of parliament in the meantime – could easily do to Lebanon what Al Qaeda’s Samarra mosque bombing in 2006 did to Iraq.

“[I]f (the majority) uses the report against Hezbollah,” said former Carnegie Endowment scholar and Hezbollah expert Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, “then of course we’re going to see instability in Lebanon, and that’s putting it mildly.” “One word,” said Fadia Kiwan at Saint Joseph University, “could set the streets on fire.” “If the Special Tribunal for Lebanon comes out and confirms the report,” Carnegie Middle East Center Director Paul Salem said, “we could be facing an all-out civil war.” “If these rumors are true,” my own source in Lebanon added, “expect some extremely dark times ahead in Lebanon. After all, the Sunni street hates Hezbollah enough to begin with. Once Hezbollah is officially accused of assassinating Hariri, all bets are off.”

All this raises the question: if Lebanon could plunge into war should “March 14” cite an unsourced report prematurely, what might happen if the UN officially indicts Hezbollah later?

A furious revolution drove out Syrian occupation soldiers when Assad was the suspected culprit. It was possible, though, to revolt against Syria without using violence. Assad’s army was foreign and could be pressured to go home. Hezbollah lives in Lebanon. Hezbollah is already home. Hezbollah cannot withdraw. Hezbollah can only be disarmed or destroyed. And undefeated armies rarely, if ever, surrender their weapons.

Lebanese are good at compromise. “No victor, no vanquished” is the formula used to break deadlocks. The system breaks down, of course, when one faction tries to vanquish another. If Hezbollah is indicted for murdering Hariri and others, the country will be thrown into crisis. For it is neither possible nor desirable to compromise with, or compete in democratic elections with, a terrorist army that “votes” by murdering its political opponents with car bombs.

Sotomayor Not One For Calling Balls And Strikes

May 26, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Supreme Court | Leave a Comment 

Ted Frank at National Review provides a fitting metaphor parallel reality to the Frank Ricci case:

We’re hearing that Sotomayor “saved baseball.”  That’s nonsense.  Judge Sotomayor ruled on a NLRB petition seeking an injunction against the owner’s 1995 lockout of the players.  As I noted at the time, the court hearing the matter would be making a straightforward ruling on labor law: and the owners were plainly in the wrong legally by their conduct in the labor negotiations.  Any judge randomly assigned to the case would have made the same ruling.  Indeed, a three judge panel of the Second Circuit, in an opinion by conservative Judge Ralph Winter, unanimously upheld Sotomayor’s grant of the injunction.

To say that the judge in the case saved baseball (or expressed sympathy for highly paid baseball players, as Kathryn snarks below) is making the very mistake that separates conservative viewpoints on the role of the judiciary from Obama’s view of the judiciary as activist.  A judge acts as an umpire, making the calls of balls and strikes: neither the judge nor the umpire is supposed to decide that one party is more sympathetic than the other and deserves the benefit of the ruling.

Charles Krauthammer offers — as always — some contrarianism about the identity politicking Sotomayor to the burst of enthusiasm from the Dem camp:

The American Future: A Review

May 26, 2009 by Joshua Treviño | Filed Under Book Review | 1 Comment 

Simon Schama is a great scholar, a great writer, and a great historian. Among his many works, The Embarrassment of Riches is the finest history of the Dutch Golden Age in English; and Citizens is among the best surveys of the French Revolution in any language. He is that most rare and privileged creature, the celebrity-scholar, who has proven his mastery in multiple subjects — he teaches in two departments at Columbia University, and boasts an academic pedigree from both Cambridge and Oxford — and is therefore allowed free rein in any. For the most part, he sticks with what he knows: a History of Britain, the Power of Art. This is for the best, because when he does not, it shows. Nowhere does it show more clearly than in his latest book, The American Future, already available in the United Kingdom, and slated for a May 2009 release in the United States.

The American Future is a sort of ersatz companion book to a four-part documentary series by the same name that Schama is starring in for the BBC. As of this writing, it has only recently aired (and it will assuredly make its way to PBS in due time). The description offered by the BBC would be nice if applicable to the book: “Simon Schama travels through America to dig deep into the conflicts of its history as a way to understand the country’s contemporary political situation.” Perhaps the television series both digs deep and arrives at some understanding. In print, The American Future does neither. It is, in fact, the worst Schama book this reviewer has ever read.

This does not necessarily mean it is not worth reading. Simon Schama’s worst is better than most people’s best. Yet because he is such a sterling historian elsewhere, it is all the more disappointing to see him phone it in here. The structure of the book purports to examine the American past as a means of discerning its future, and he does this in ways that vary wildly from interesting to absurd.

Much of the book is taken up with a narrative history of the august and rightly respected Meigs family, who managed to participate in the whole sweep of American history, mostly with rifle in hand, from the colonial era to the present. (The most recent Meigs of note commanded NATO forces in Bosnia in 1998-1999.) Yet Schama’s implicit argument, that the Meigs family history is a reasonable metaphor for the American experience, falls flat. He attempts to transform Montgomery C. Meigs, the Union quartermaster-general in the Civil War, into an emblematic American figure of that era. It works in the most awkward way, inasmuch as it works best if you don’t know much about that war. If you do, you know that though that Meigs was a deeply interesting man, he was eclipsed by far more interesting men in a period suffused with them. Shelby Foote on several occasions stated that the two towering figures of that war were Nathan Bedford Forrest and William Tecumseh Sherman; and he makes a better case in a few sentences than Schama manages in an entire book.

Even as he strains — or doesn’t — to make a case for his chosen narrative set-pieces wrested from American history, the reader of The American Future is left with the troubling sense that Schama has perhaps not done his due diligence in sourcing and research. There are the odd, Edmund Morris-style digressions into first-person recollection that cannot possibly be anything but fiction: “Sonofabitch,” Schama has yet another Meigs think just before dying at the Battle of the Bulge, “if it was this cold then you think the mud would’ve frozen … Clean it out, get into Deutschland, finish them off, good guys win, bad guys, very bad guys, lose.” Did any soldier actually think this? It is perilously close to tinny Hollywood rhetoric — what a British expat professor thinks an American infantryman speaks like — and if Schama made it up, shame on him. And if he has documentary evidence that the fallen Meigs of World War Two expressed these thoughts, shame on him for presenting it as his own weird reconstruction.

The reader’s confidence in these episodes, strewn throughout the book, is further marred by the occasional factual error. “[T]he second president of the Texan Republic was a Tejano,” Schama writes, though depending on how you count it, Sam Houston and Mirabeau Lamar were not Tejanos of any sort. There never was a Tejano president of the Republic of Texas: Schama is probably referring to Lorenzo de Zavala, who was interim vice-president of the Republic during the Texas War of Independence. Or rather, one of Schama’s graduate students is probably referring to de Zavala. This is emblematic of the minimal attention the author appears to have given this work, which stands in such regrettable contrast to his earlier, justly famed efforts.

It should be acknowledged that there are some interesting ideas in The American Future. Schama highlights the contrast between the present-day American disavowal of nation building, and the explicitly nation-building purpose of the pre-Civil War American military. He does it in a ham-handed way, and obscures his point with a fondness for illustrative anecdote that illustrates very little, but it is there. Similarly, his treatment of the Cherokee removal of the 1830s (via another Meigs, of course) is moving and vivid. In these brief passages, The American Future shows us what it could have been: a moral argument about American history, or an exploration of contradictions in that history. Schama neglects both routes in favor of anecdote upon anecdote.

We are presumably to plow through these anecdotes as a means of arriving at what the BBC promises, “a way to understand the country’s contemporary political situation.” Nothing like this emerges. We go from a touching account of a colonial Meigs romance, to a dusty Texas chow hall, to Thomas Jefferson’s Koran, to a somewhat dubious recounting of the time the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan educated a young Simon Schama into the pageantry of American democracy. None of it is linear, and little of it is thematically coherent. Out of this great, wonderful mess of history, Schama tries to say, the American character emerges, and its contradictions are with us still. Well, yes: but Walt Whitman said it better, and briefer, and much earlier.

Lurking throughout The American Future is the specter of Barack Obama, not yet President-elect when the book was written. It is no surprise that Schama sees Obama as the culminating figure of all that history: the embodiment of what is good, true, and worthwhile about our country. No doubt he is, from the perspective of an expatriate Briton, celebrity academic, and longtime Manhattan resident. So be it: but the acknowledgement makes The American Future less an explanation of America, and more an explanation of what Simon Schama wishes America was.

Featured Articles — May 26, 2009

May 26, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

Obama nominates Sonia Sotomayor By Mike Allen & Jonathan Martin, Politico
President Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor, a federal appeals court judge in New York, as the first Hispanic to sit on the Supreme Court Monday, calling her “an inspiring woman who I believe will make a great Justice.”

What to Do About North Korea By Dan Blumenthal and Robert Kagan, The Washington Post
The North Korean launch of its Taeopodong-2 missile and its second nuclear test have laid bare the paucity of President Obama’s policy options. They have exposed the futility of the six-party talks and, in particular, the much-hyped myth of China’s value as a partner on strategic matters.

We Have A Chinese Problem, Not A North Korean One By Gordon G. Chang, Forbes
Hours after the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea detonated its second atomic device, Beijing condemned the test. “The DPRK conducted another nuclear test in disregard of the common opposition of the international community,” a Foreign Ministry statement, issued May 25, noted. “The Chinese government is firmly opposed to this act.”

Dick Cheney’s Second Act By William McGurn, The Wall Street Journal
By goading a sitting president into responding to his arguments on his terms, Dick Cheney won the contest with Barack Obama last week before either said a word. And his re-emergence onto the public square seems to be driving everybody nuts.

And the Angels Rejoice By David Brooks, The New York Times
The president has taken former rivals and has joined them in the holy bonds of mutual fantasy and has taken a divided nation and has given us photo-ops to remind us of our common humanity.

Liberated and Unhappy By Ross Douthat, The New York Times
In the 1960s, American women reported themselves happier, on average, than did men. Today, that gender gap has reversed. Male happiness has inched up, and female happiness has dropped.

Who Controls the Internet? By Ariel Rabkin, The Weekly Standard
In order to please our European allies and our Third World critics, the Obama administration may be tempted to surrender one particular manifestation of American “dominance”: central management of key aspects of the Internet by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Other countries are pushing for more control.

The country’s voters have never endorsed religious extremism. By Fouad Ajami, The Wall Street Journal
The drama of the Swat Valley — its cynical abandonment to the mercy of the Taliban, the terror unleashed on it by the militants, then the recognition that the concession to the forces of darkness had not worked — is of a piece with the larger history of religious extremism in the world of Islam. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari was the latest in a long line of secularists who cut deals with the zealots, only to discover that for the believers in political Islam these deals are at best a breathing spell before the fight for their utopia is taken up again.

How North Korea’s Test Impacts the World By Joshua Stanton, The New Ledger
North Korea’s announcement of its second nuclear test in three years is the only the latest setback for the view that North Korea could be appeased into the loving arms of the fictitious oxymoron some call the “international community.” An essential element of this view is the belief that China is acting in good faith to help America contain North Korea’s nuclear contagion.

A Fast Way to Lose the Arms Race By John Bolton, The New York Times
The Obama administration’s plans for arms control are deeply troubling for the country. Why rush to sign treaties that will only make America weaker?

An Egyptian venue By Thomas W. Lippman, The Washington Times
President Obama is going to Egypt next month to deliver a major speech about U.S. relations with Islam and the Muslim world, but Egypt is a big country and its capital, Cairo, is an immense metropolis. What site will be the forum for this landmark event?

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