A firestorm has engulfed what was once a great university — and in the process it has destroyed the reputation of a great coach.

It’s been less than a week since we learned that former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was charged with either sexually abusing or raping eight boys over a 15-year time period. In addition, Tim Curley, the athletic director, and Gary Schultz, the senior vice president for finance and business, were charged with perjury and failing to report to authorities what they knew about the allegations. And last night, the Board of Trustees fired Graham Spanier, president of Penn State, and Joe Paterno, the legendary coach of the Nittany Lions.

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Environmental activists are claiming victory, but they shouldn’t crack out the champagne yet. Based on the timing and thin reasoning, President Obama clearly seems to have based this decision on election strategy as opposed to environmental interests. Now he can wink at the unions while telling the environmentalists that he hears their concerns, and keep both sides hanging on until after the presidential election.

That’s 20,000 jobs down the drain:

For months, the conventional wisdom had been that a presidential permit for Keystone XL was inevitable; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in October 2010 that she was “inclined” to approve it because it was better to get oil from Canada than from less-friendly nations. The State Department then released a final supplemental environmental assessment in August stating that TransCanada’s proposed route is the preferred option.

But the environmentalist protests led by 350.org activist Bill McKibben, as well as opposition in Republican-friendly Nebraska to the proposed route, seem to have led the administration to delay the decision.

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The markets yesterday panicked regarding the prospect that, now that the Greek debt crisis has eased slightly, we might be heading for an Italian crisis. The Dow was down 3.9 percent, following Asian and European markets, while interest rates on the 10-year Italian bond went over 7.25 percent. That’s not in Greek territory yet (Greek 10-year bonds were recently paying over 28 percent), but it is more than three times what Germany pays to borrow money.

Italy has basically the same problems Greece has. Its government has spent more than it has taken in for years, borrowed the difference, and cooked the books to hide the truth. Meanwhile, as in Greece, tax evasion is a national sport.

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Reza Marashi, a former intern and then employee at the State Department (alas, not with the title he has since assumed, according to his former State Department colleagues) writes an op-ed in the New York Times today in which he says:

During my tenure at the State Department, we tried twice to push the idea of sending U.S. diplomats to Tehran. Both the Bush and Obama administrations decided against it.

Actually, the Iranians vetoed the proposal. In October 2008, Interior Minister Ali Kordan said he will ”never issue authorization for opening of a U.S. interest section in Iran.” Only at the National Iranian American Council and at the New York Times would partisanship reach such a level as to reverse blame for the failure of that proposal.  Will The Grey Lady issue a correction? Don’t hold your breath.

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In preparation for the Republican foreign policy debate later this month, Mitt Romney has been highlighting his plans for dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions. On Tuesday he released an outline of his strategy, and he goes into more detail in a Wall Street Journal column today:

I want peace. And if I am president, I will begin by imposing a new round of far tougher economic sanctions on Iran. I will do this together with the world if we can, unilaterally if we must. I will speak out forcefully on behalf of Iranian dissidents. I will back up American diplomacy with a very real and very credible military option. I will restore the regular presence of aircraft carrier groups in the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf region simultaneously. I will increase military assistance to Israel and coordination with all of our allies in the region. These actions will send an unequivocal signal to Iran that the United States, acting in concert with allies, will never permit Iran to obtain nuclear weapons.

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The departure of Dennis Ross removes one of the most experienced foreign policy hands and Middle East specialists from the ranks of the Obama administration. There will be those who will lament the fact that with Ross gone there will be no high-ranking figure in the State Department with his understanding of the issues and background on the conflict and conclude that Foggy Bottom will be the poorer for his absence. But they will be wrong.

Though Ross’ intentions may have been as pure as the driven snow, his was a unique record of failure. From his start as one of James Baker’s little helpers during his campaign of pressure on Israel in the administration of the elder George Bush, through his final days as one of the architects of Barack Obama’s attempted ambush of Benjamin Netanyahu last May, Ross’ career must be seen as inextricably tied to a peace process that promised much but delivered little but sorrow. After so many mistakes and missteps, the surprise is not so much that Ross is leaving the government but why a person linked to so many foreign policy disasters was allowed to hang around the corridors of power so long.

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If there was already a growing consensus that most of the international community was prepared to live with a nuclear Iran, the publication of a new report this week from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) detailing Tehran’s progress toward a military application of nuclear power has done nothing to overturn it. Though the IAEA report has made it a bit more difficult for Iran apologists to argue that their pursuit of nukes is entirely peaceful, the prospects for multilateral action on the issue are perhaps even less likely than before.

Far from shaming Russia and China into backing off their opposition to serious sanctions on Iran, let alone the use of force, the report appears to have redoubled Moscow’s determination to thwart American policy on the issue. The Putin regime’s public rebuke of the report and U.S. efforts to use it to ramp up support for more sanctions has in effect pre-empted any diplomatic solution to the world’s Iranian nuclear dilemma. Iran’s truculent response to the IAEA report is more than just the usual bravado from the ayatollahs. Though the Obama administration has stated that it is determined to pursue tougher sanctions, the Iranians are laughing at this vow because they know that Russia’s backing gives them blanket immunity from any UN resolution.

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The Republican members of Congress frantically struggling to get released from Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge should save themselves the effort. Not only is it a fruitless battle, it only plays into the narrative that Norquist is some kind of puppet-master orchestrating the supercommittee gridlock:

The sheet of paper they signed years ago, the lawmakers say, is no longer valid.

“My driver’s license expires. The milk in my refrigerator expires. My gym membership expires, and I find the website to be a little deceptive,” LaTourette said.

Norquist immediately dismissed the claim, which was echoed by several other House Republicans.

“Does that even pass the laugh test?” Norquist told The Hill. “A promise not to do something doesn’t have a time limit.”

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It happens to all of us: your train of thought suddenly evaporates, a name or a word just won’t bubble up to consciousness when you need it. A singer forgot the words to “The Star Spangled Banner” before a ball game last summer. Most of us just laugh it off and dismiss it as a “senior moment.”

But presidential candidates are held to different standards. Under intense scrutiny, their every word is weighed, their every reaction judged, their every gaffe endlessly discussed both in the media and in the court of public opinion. That’s why I always find it so irritating when someone calls a president stupid, as liberals invariably do when the president is a Republican (except Nixon: he wasn’t stupid, he was evil). No one remotely stupid could possibly survive the endless gauntlet of a presidential campaign, with thousands of reporters, photographers, and cameramen praying for them to commit a major gaffe, and laying traps to help them do so (such as asking who the prime minister of some obscure country is).

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The latest stream of reporting on the congressional “supercommittee” paints the picture of a bipartisan team simultaneously on the verge of major progress and total collapse. “They’re right at the edge of a cliff,” Republican Senator Lamar Alexander told the Wall Street Journal. “They can either ascend the mountain or fall off the cliff. We want them to ascend the mountain.”

The supercommittee was a way for the two parties to buy more time to reach a longer-term solution to the recurring debt ceiling impasse. But the committee’s mandate included a Thanksgiving deadline which, if reached without a deal, would trigger $600 billion in cuts to defense spending. Republicans have come up with two interesting ways to avoid those cuts this week:

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Reports of Joe Paterno’s lightning-quick fall from grace this week are dominating today’s news. Dramatic, and perhaps telling of the realities of big-time
college sports, it doesn’t necessarily tell us much about the modern American university writ large.

The response of Penn State students to the firing, however, speaks far louder.

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Herman Cain lucked out during last night’s debate, after his remark about “Princess Nancy” was overshadowed by Rick Perry’s blockbuster implosion. But Cain’s nickname for Nancy Pelosi is getting some press this morning, and some see traces of sexism in it:

Then he said it: “Princess Nancy,” a comment directed at former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Not “Queen Nancy.” But “Princess Nancy.”

There’s something about the dismissiveness of it that seemed to strike women the wrong way. Consider the instant Twitter reaction of Dana Perino, the former spokeswoman for George W. Bush and a conservative in good standing: “Ay yi yi, former Speaker Pelosi called a princess in the debate? Not fair. We may disagree on policy, but she earned the Speaker title.”

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As the Obama administration seeks to pressure Iran without undertaking any measures which might disrupt the international oil market, antagonize European commercial interests, or disrupt diplomacy, the latest idea is to work through Beijing to pressure Tehran. Ilan Berman outlined this option well in a recent New York Times opinion piece.

The problem is that the idea of leveraging China against Iran is not new, not fresh, and has been tried before without success. During the latter half of the George W. Bush administration, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her aides actively sought to work through China, which has economic leverage in Iran, to affect Iranian behavior. It did not work. Dennis Ross, President Obama’s point man on the issue, embraced the same idea as his own and has tried to implement it over the past three years, again without success. Certainly, we can keep trying to encourage China to use its leverage against Iran, but we’re grasping at straws if we make a tired, ineffective strategy our next great hope.

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It is said when considering whether to promote an officer, Napoleon always asked whether the man had luck. The French emperor believed luck to be a personal attribute and not just a matter of pure chance. Whether or not he was right, luck seems to be the main reason why Mitt Romney finds himself in a strong position this morning as he seeks the Republican presidential nomination.

Romney’s record on health care and a host of other issues where he has made compromises over the years is too moderate to please most Republicans. Considering that the party is now more conservative than ever, Romneycare alone should have been enough of a burden to sink his presidential hopes. But as his more conservative rivals have, one by one, had their candidacies exploded by gaffes, poor performances and even poorer judgment, Romney’s path to the nomination appears to have been assured by circumstances that can only be considered a matter of good luck rather than the product of his own virtue or talent. As we watch Herman Cain be crippled by sexual harassment allegations and his reaction to them and Rick Perry’s latest debate “oops,” it’s time to acknowledge that despite his shortcomings, Romney has the luck that Napoleon considered essential to success.

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Yes, Rick Perry seriously hastened the demise of his campaign last night. Yes, it was one of the most uncomfortable TV moments since Tom Cruise assaulted Oprah’s couch, and definitely the worst debate fumble in recent memory. But some commentators have been unfair about the cause of Perry’s gaffe.

“Ultimately, Rick Perry is going to be remembered as the man too stupid to win this Republican nomination,” wrote Jonathan Chait last night.

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Those who have embraced President Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq have repeatedly assured us that Iraq is strong enough to stand on its own, and that we need not fear that Iran will fill the vacuum.

While the news seems only to be in Farsi at this point, perhaps they might want to consider this story from Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency. It seems that Hedayat Darvishvand, the commander of a unit of Revolutionary Guards, has been killed in an explosion in Samarra, Iraq. Let’s not worry too much about what an IRGC commander is doing in an area from which the United States has pulled back. Perhaps he was just shopping for candy with which to celebrate the Eid?

The Wall Street Journal reported that William Daley, hired 10 months ago as White House chief of staff, would see a shift in his “core responsibilities.” On Monday, Daley turned over day-to-day management of the West Wing to Pete Rouse, a veteran aide to President Obama. “It is unusual for a White House chief of staff to relinquish part of the job,” according to the Journal.

Indeed. But the Obama White House insists it wasn’t much of a change at all. “Bill’s still going to be the sort of global presence there, and I don’t really think a whole lot has changed,” a senior White House advisor told Anne Kornblut of the Washington Post.

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