Upon the news that Honduras had ousted its chief executive, President Obama — as is his wont — dithered and dawdled, then decided he would stand with the UN, Hugo Chavez, and the mullahs of Iran and back President Zelaya’s return.

I’m no expert on Honduran law and custom, but it could be useful to think of what happened in Honduras in the context of the American Constitution. Like the United States, Honduras has three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial. And all three were involved in recent events.

In the United States, the Constitution achieves a balance of powers. No one branch has absolute power — each can check the actions of another, and any two can override the third. Congress and the Supreme Court can remove the president, the president and Congress can remove and replace Justices, and the president can refuse to enforce laws until the court strikes them down.

In Honduras, the president was taking action toward amending the country’s Constitution in a way that many believed was illegal. Among those who considered it such were the nation’s Supreme Court and legislature, who acted to prevent the constitutional changes. And even the nation’s attorney general and military leaders — nominally elements of the Chief Executive branch — also sided against their titular leader.

President Obama, by backing President Zelaya, is siding with a leader who has lost the faith of most of his own government and a great deal of the people by attempting to illegally rewrite the nation’s Constitution to suit his own ends. I don’t think this is the kind of “Change” in American foreign policy many Americans were Hoping for.

The initial stage of Operation Khanjar (”Strike of the Sword”) appears to be going well in Afghanistan — but that doesn’t mean much.

Some 4,000 marines and 650 Afghan soldiers are sweeping into insurgent strongholds in Helmand Province. They have encountered little resistance so far, which suggests that Taliban fighters are doing what smart guerrillas always do: melting away in the face of superior enemy forces. The pattern in Afghanistan has always been that NATO forces march into villages then march out, leaving the Taliban to regain effective control.

The difference this time is that the marines don’t plan to leave. Just as in Iraq, they are planning to establish small combat outposts next to villages that will allow them to dominate the terrain they are now occupying. That will present insurgents with a difficult choice: either (a) cede the ground to the marines or (b) attack them and try to dislodge them. The likelihood is that they will soon try option B. That will mean heavy fighting and more casualties than the marines have so far suffered. (One marine was killed in the initial operation.)

But assuming that marines stick it out — and with the marines that’s a pretty safe assumption — they will inflict heavy casualties on their attackers and gradually gain control of the situation. The Taliban will have to shift their operations to other areas — and then those too will be targeted by NATO forces.

That is, in essence, the classic “spreading oil spot” strategy of counterinsurgency. It is a slow, difficult process, and we shouldn’t read too much into early reports of success. There will be much hard fighting ahead, but the likely result will be, just as in Iraq, a gradual extension of governmental control and eventually a decrease in violence. The key to success is to deploy enough forces to drive out the Taliban altogether from substantial swathes of the countryside rather than simply pushing them from one area to another. Whether there are enough troops on the ground to attain that goal remains to be seen, even with a total of 21,000 American reinforcements on the way. But the strategy is a sound one and should over time gradually improve the situation.

This morning, a story out of England showing the weaknesses of their health system is drawing attention: a three-year-old girl, born with a critical heart defect, desperately needs corrective surgery. She underwent open heart surgery when she was nine days old, but her heart is in trouble again — she’s already had one stroke, and is in failing health. Therefore doctors scheduled her for another operation.

Then canceled it because of a lack of bed space. Then they rescheduled it, and canceled it a second time for the same reason. And a third time. Her parents are hoping that the fourth time will be the charm.

The story is reminiscent of a recent development out of Canada. An infant was born prematurely in Hamilton, Ontario (population: 500,000) and needed to be treated in a neonatal intensive-care-unit. Unfortunately, such bed space (or incubator space, more accurately) was lacking in Hamilton. The call went out: was there anywhere in the province (population: 13 million — the largest in Canada) where the infant could be cared for? Did any hospital in the land of guaranteed free health-care have enough space for a tiny baby?

Nope. Instead, the only hospital that could save the infant was in Buffalo, New York (population: 300,000). This example shows what England lacks for making its health-care system work: a bigger neighboring nation without socialized medicine to pick up the slack. So, if the United States adopted the Canadian model, who’s going to be to us what we are now to Canada? Who’s going to be our emergency go-to nation for health care?

Mickey Kaus wonders whether employers after Ricci are caught in a tough spot when they juggle the risks of a disparate treatment lawsuit (e.g., throw out the test that minorities fail, thereby penalizing whites) and a disparate impact lawsuit (from aggrieved minorities if they stick with test results). The real answer, as Justice Scalia suggests, is to revisit the very constitutionality of the entire disparate impact jurisprudence. But in the short run there are two answers.

First, other than providing sanctions and instituting some “loser pay” reforms, employers will just have to buck up and defend nuisance suits when they refuse to discriminate by putting their finger on the scale to favor minorities with boisterous special interest groups behind them. Employers in the 1960’s also complained that customers wouldn’t frequent integrated restaurants. But we don’t buy the whole “people will make a fuss” defense. We have rejected in “customer preference” cases for years the notion that overt discrimination is permitted because the economic consequences of avoiding discrimination may be very steep.

Second, employers can and do “validate” these tests and provide themselves with more than enough data with which to defend the disparate impact suits. Again they still might be sued, but if they construct appropriate tests and defend the results, they shouldn’t face a “damned if they do, damned if they don’t” dilemma.

But Kaus is right that employers face, not only on this front but from a myriad of potential statutory and common law claims, a legal minefield in hiring, firing, and promoting employees. We should be concerned about the adverse impact – on the economy as a whole and on those employees lacking civil rights advocates to cajole employers on their behalf. The ultimate solution is both to revisit disparate impact jurisprudence and reform the civil litigation rules. Oh — and shining a bright light on the intimidation by the likes of PRLDEF, MALDEF, La Raza, and the NAACP is a useful endeavor as well. If employers actually do fear being caught between contradictory discriminatory claims, they would be wise to do their utmost to expose and combat the kind of racial hucksterism that Justice Alito so aptly described in Ricci.

One of the most interesting things about hiking in a desert with two friends and a limited water supply is that at a certain point early on, one of the hikers becomes the Watcher of the Water, constantly warning the others about not drinking too much. At some point, however, that person gets sick of the role. Suddenly left without the constant warning and the confidence that somebody’s making sure the water lasts, inevitably one of the other hikers takes on the role as principal water griper. It’s an intuitive response to genuine danger.
Something similar may be happening between the U.S. and Europe.

Emanuele is clearly on to something, and the developments since his post have only made clearer the role-reversal. Today there are reports indicating that the U.S. is actively blocking tough financial sanctions against Iran in the upcoming G8 summit requested by the Europeans.
Americans are unaccustomed to the decline of empire, but we might be seeing signs of a broad-scale correction of a fairly radical distortion that dates to the Cold War — an abandonment of the U.S.’s long-held role as Watcher of the Water. Americans have long bristled at the fact that it is they who provided the muscle to deter the Soviets, while the Europeans benefited from American investment in the problem, and had the luxury to advocate more universalist, passive, and peace-seeking ideologies. But from an American perspective, there was no choice back then: The Soviet nukes where every bit as much a threat to the U.S. as to Europe.

Today, however, Iran is not aiming ICBMs at the U.S., and the Europeans are far more at risk from an Iranian bomb than are the Americans. What the new American administration calls “engagement” may be little more than a form of strategic disengagement, a way of saying that an Iranian bomb is simply not their problem. With the protective big brother nowhere to be seen, many Europeans realize that it may actually be up to them to stop the bomb.

Is this the beginning of a new era, a kind of strategic American isolationism under the guise of peacemaking, a fundamental shifting of the clash of civilizations? Here in Israel, we sure feel that way. (If today’s Israeli naval maneuvers are any indication, Israel may indeed be taking steps to “go it alone.”) Maybe Europeans are starting to sense it as well.

Sean Wilentz’s cover story in the New Republic reviews seven recent books on Abraham Lincoln and reflects on the “almost cultish enthusiasm” for comparing Barack Obama (who has been president for little more than five months) to the greatest president in American history.

The intellectuals’ rapture over Obama, their eagerness to align him with their beatified Lincoln, has grown out of a deep hunger for a liberal savior . . . . Although Obama’s supporters at times likened him to the two Kennedys, and at times to FDR, the comparisons always came back to Lincoln — with the tall, skinny, well-spoken Great Emancipator from Illinois serving as the spiritual forebear of the tall, skinny, well-spoken great liberal hope from Illinois.

Wilentz writes it is natural that electing an African-American president brings Lincoln to mind, but that “the hunger pangs of some liberals have caused them to hallucinate.”

Obama’s legendary announcement in Springfield was the purest political stagecraft, but it was happily regarded as a kind of message from history. . . . One hears that the rhetoric that carried Obama to the White House is Lincolnesque, which it most certainly is not, either in its imagery or its prosody. One hears even that Obama is not just an extremely talented and promising new president but, as Henry Louis Gates Jr. writes, that he is “destined” — destined! — “to be thought of as Lincoln’s direct heir.”

Wilentz further notes the irony of Obama obtaining the Democratic nomination by manipulation of caucus rules in early states and later obtaining the backing of the “super delegates,” and then winning the presidency in part through a massive funding advantage over the Republican candidate.  There is “something, well, rich about the candidate beloved by the good-government reformers relying on the party insiders to get nominated and rejecting public financing in order to get elected.”

Five months into his presidency, it is increasingly apparent that Obama is the heir not of Lincoln, but of another president who initially inspired high hopes with his intelligence (he graduated from Annapolis and worked on nuclear physics with Admiral Rickover) and literary skills (he was the author of a well-received autobiography with the audacious title “Why Not the Best?”), but who lacked experience (serving only one term as a governor before becoming president), and who fundamentally misread the country’s Communist and Islamic adversaries.

As Obama heads off to Russia without his secretary of state, and Iran’s fists remain clenched despite videos and speeches, even liberal historians are starting to hedge their bets.

The Washington bureau chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Ron Kampeas, has posted a screed against neoconservatives on that organization’s web site. “For eight years we in Washington lived in a bizarro world where the most obvious conclusions were not just ignored, but mocked, actively suppressed and made akin to treason,” he said. Now, “neoconservatives are losing,” because of “their failure, or their abject inability, to say ‘I was wrong.’” He writes, “The Bush administration had not merely an aversion but a psychotic fear of saying ‘We wuz wrong.’”

If anything is “bizarro,” it is Mr. Kampeas’s own accusation. There are at least two significant cases where President Bush himself admitted he was wrong. One was his speech on the surge, in which he said, “Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me. It is clear that we need to change our strategy in Iraq…Our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed.” Oh, and the president also ousted his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, (after such “neoconservatives” such as Max Boot and William Kristol had called for him to do so) to underscore the point.

On Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Saddam’s own denials of whose existence appear to be Mr. Kampeas’s jumping-off point as unquestionable fact, Mr. Bush also acknowledged error. “Much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong,” Mr. Bush said. “As president, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq. And I’m also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities.”

On the WMD question, Mr. Kampeas apparently puts more faith in Saddam’s denials to the FBI under interrogation, as reported by the Washington Post, than in the assertions I reported by Moshe Yaalon and by Ariel Sharon that Saddam’s chemical weapons were transported to Syria before the war. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s web site reports that the wire service is funded by some of the largest Jewish charities, including the United Jewish Communities, Hadassah, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, all of which do much valuable work, as does the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. You have to wonder whether they really want to publish this sort of stuff, or employ a Washington bureau chief who thinks it.

Even before the jobs numbers: “The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 33% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-five percent (35%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -2. . . . Overall, 53% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance so far.”

And it’s not only Rasmussen.

The markets have figured out Obama’s economic plans: “U.S. stocks made a sharp retreat Thursday, with losses steepening after the New York Stock Exchange extended the trading session by 15 minutes. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 registered their third straight weekly loss, the longest weekly losing streak since early March, when stocks began their four-month rally. The Dow average closed down 214.3 points, or 2.5%, at 8,289.8.”

Meanwhile, Israelis like Netanyahu just fine according to a poll after his first 100 days.

A “card check” bill might not be coming after July 4 after all.

Voters are not waiting around to see what he does: they already don’t like Al Franken. His favorable/unfavorable rating is 34-44%. Well, still better than the Governor of New Jersey.

Gerald Seib joins those who have noticed all “the ways the world has conspired to help Mr. Romney.” Well, only if the Republicans actually want someone with economic expertise, knowledge of the automobile industry, experience running a presidential campaign, “air miles and shoe leather .  .  . invest[ed] to help fellow Republicans,” a polished TV presence, and no hint of scandal.

On the Washington Post access scandal I agree entirely with Ezra Klein: “From every angle, it’s dirty: It compromises us with the government officials we should be covering but who are doing us a financial favor by participating. It compromises us with the lobbyists we should be covering but who are now funding our business in return for access to the newsroom and the administration. There’s literally no way to look at it that doesn’t leave us in a terribly unethical position.”

And with Christine Pelosi too: “The Washington Post Salongate is yet another example of hypocrisy: after complaining in editorials and exposes about special interests silencing the public interest, the Post perpetuated the same behavior. They should liveblog their salons and charge sponsors just like any other conference.” And disclose the invite list so we can tell with whom the Post is in bed.

Maybe Bill can headline one for Joe Sestak also: “The Obama White House and Sen. Charles Schumer have worked diligently to try to clear the Democratic primary field for Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. in the Empire State, but to no avail. And Bill Clinton appears to be complicating matters by headlining a fundraiser for Gillibrand foe Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) in Manhattan on July 20.”

As we suspected, the Republicans are raising a fuss over the delay in turning over Sotomayor’s PRLDEF documents: “A spokesman for Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions says documents provided by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund show that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor played a ‘deeper than previously thought’ role in controversial positions taken by the PRLDEF. And Sessions’ office says the White House and PRLDEF have still not turned over all the material requested by the Senate Judiciary Committee for Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing.”

Michael Gerson reminds us on Iraq: “This is one of the most extraordinary reversals of fortune in the history of American warfare. In 2006 and 2007 — after years of rising violence and disappointed expectations — much of the public and Congress had concluded, as Sen. Harry Reid did, that ‘this war is lost.’ Some, such as then-Sen. Barack Obama, recommended an almost immediate American withdrawal.” But we thankfully neither of them controlled U.S. Iraq policy at the time. As Gerson notes, “[W]e did not fail. Our military adapted. Our leaders and country persevered.”

Sens. Jon Kyl, Evan Bayh, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham sent a letter to the president on his upcoming trip to Russia. It reads in part:

As you travel to Russia next week we strongly urge you to put preventing Iran from achieving a nuclear weapons capability as the top priority in your discussions with Russia’s leadership.  Negotiations over bilateral arms control, missile defense in Europe, civilian nuclear cooperation, WTO accession and other issues in the U.S.-Russian relationship must be conducted with an eye towards Russian policy on Iran.  We believe that the United States should not make unilateral gestures without specific understandings that Moscow will support tougher measures against Iran if Tehran does not soon suspend its enrichment program….

Preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability is and must remain a top foreign policy objective of the United States.  Given the unfolding events in Iran following its presidential elections, when and if engagement with Tehran can happen is an open question.  Meanwhile Iran’s nuclear program continues.  Our ability to impact that program will increase if Russia signals its support for tougher measures against Iran.

It is odd and a bit sad that a bipartisan group of senators would feel compelled to write a letter to the president telling him not to take the eye off the ball on what is arguably the principal national security challenge we face. It would be as if a bipartisan group wrote to Ronald Reagan pleading with him not to forget the Cold War when he met with Gorbachev.

But they are right to be concerned over Obama not being very concerned. Aside from grudgingly offering a few crumbs of rhetorical support for the protesters after days and days of paralysis, he has again gone mute on Iran. One senses he’s simply hoping the whole “protest thing” will just blow over so he can go back to working on the Grand Bargain with the mullahs.

This trip will show us wheher president is still on the “Not George W. Bush!” tour and is loath to insist that other nations recognize our legitimate national security interests. He’s more than willing to talk about limiting American industrial output to placate global-warming alarmists and he is reluctant to dictate to others (with the exception of Israel. of course). But he’s not one to require others to conform or alter their behavior to further our fundamental interests. Alas, one suspects a “you are on our team” reminder would not make much difference. Nor, I fear, will the “remember the Iranian nuclear threat” plea.

Well, Vice President Joe Biden—recently put “in charge” of Iraq policy—has just completed his first survey of his new domain. And he was warmly welcomed.

It’s almost as if those who received the Vice President were unaware of his previous stances on events in that nation.

Biden, while in the Senate, voted against the first Gulf War, back in 1991. He balanced that out by voting for the second one, in 2002. And at one point, managed to unite nearly all Iraqis—in opposing his plan to partition the nation into three states. He also publicly and vocally opposed the “surge” strategy of last year.

Perhaps Obama chose to put Biden in charge under the theory that he simply can’t be wrong any more—he’s used up all the possible errors. Or he thinks that things are going so well, even Biden can’t mess them up. Or he knows that things are about to go south, and wants someone he can shift the blame to.

Such is the lot of the White House press secretary that he will stick to the White House line, no matter how dumb it sounds. Robbert Gibbs was up at bat on Thursday and went down swinging. In the process he pointed out just how untenable the White House spin is. The Hill reported:

Despite losing almost a half-million jobs in June, the economy is showing signs of recovery, the White House said Thursday.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the president joins the American people in being “impatient for results” as Republicans are howling that Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan has done nothing to halt job losses.

“There’s a sense that beginnings of stabilization are taking hold, and hopefully the worst job loss is behind us,” Gibbs said, adding the president was “deeply disappointed by the continued job loss” as the national unemployment rate moved up to 9.5 percent.

Gibbs said he “absolutely” believes that number is “definitely headed to 10 percent.”

[. . .]

Under intense fire from Republicans who have questioned from the beginning whether the stimulus plan would work, Gibbs said flatly Thursday that “the stimulus plan is working.”

We are recovering. But unemployment is getting worse. And the stimulus is definitely working. Got it? It sounds like they haven’t a clue what to do and don’t want to admit they have been concocting a disaster. And we shouldn’t pick on Gibbs. The president and the rest of the administration are no better:

President Obama on Wednesday told a town-hall meeting that the stimulus has “done its job.” But Mr. [Jared] Bernstein on Thursday offered a more cautious view. Monthly job losses aren’t as bad as they were from December to March, when payrolls were trimmed by more than 600,000, Mr. Bernstein said. “That’s not a success story — mission not accomplished,” he said on Fox Business Channel, but “the worst is behind us.”

Except that unemployment is going to ten percent.

It is quite reminiscent of the White House predicament on Iraq before the successful implementation of the surge. In both cases, the White House’s denial of reality and double talk only contribute to the sense that the president is cut off from reality and too stubborn to change course. To his credit, George W. Bush did recognize it wasn’t working and turned things around. Will Obama? Well, first he would have to admit that what he’s tried so far hasn’t “done its job.”

Congress and the public are reeling from sticker shock over the cost of health care. So what can they do? Well, cover less people and then bring the cost down. But wait. We’re going to turn our health-care system inside out to cover only a fraction of the uninsured?  

It looks that way:

Senate Democrats and President Obama, trying to assuage fears about the cost of health reform, yesterday touted new estimates that put the price tag for one bill at $611 billion over the next decade. But the measure drafted by the Senate health committee falls far short of Obama’s goal of providing insurance to virtually every American. Analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, released in a letter yesterday, shows that it would cover just 39 percent of uninsured Americans in 2019 — or about 21 million of the 54 million people expected to lack coverage if no change is made.

In some sense, this seems worse than biting the bullet to cover the vast majority of the uninsured. After all, we started from the premise that the great problem here was “cost-shifting” from the uninsured to those who are insured. But if we are going to be left with more than 30 million uninsured, we won’t have addressed that issue—or the social-welfare goal of providing universal coverage. And really, can’t they come up with a cheaper way to cover less than 40% of the uninsured?

There is bipartisan disdain for this approach:

Republicans pounced on the figure, and even many Democrats complained that it was far too high a price for such little improvement. Committee staffers reworked the bill—and added a new provision requiring most employers to contribute to the cost of health insurance—to arrive at the lower estimate. Under the new proposal, any business with more than 25 workers would be required to offer coverage or pay a $750 penalty per employee.

Care to guess how many small businesses will keep their headcount at 24? Lots.

None of this suggests there is much consideration shown for how all this will play out in the real economy and in the arena of public opinion. When you consider that we are now bleeding jobs, think for a moment how monumentally silly is a health-care plan that encourages every small business to keep its payroll low.

The NRO editors remind us of the strange rhetoric Obama employed upon hearing North Korea would be shooting a missile at Hawaii:

“Well, first of all, let’s be clear. This administration — and our military — is fully prepared for any contingencies,” he assured Harry Smith of CBS News. “The t’s are crossed and the i’s are dotted in terms of what might happen.”

Yes, I’m sure the ruthless efficiency of a proofreader is just what sends a shiver up the spines in Pyongyang. But the actions that the editors catalogue speak louder than the mousy verbiage. He has proposed $1.2B cuts in missile defense while North Korea embarks on an ICBM program and the mullahs in Iran bare their teeth. And as the president heads for Russia, we are reminded:

Also in jeopardy is a missile-defense system currently planned for Eastern Europe. The NATO-endorsed program, which would include about ten interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic, aims to protect Europe and the United States from the emerging menace of Iran. In February, rocket scientists in the service of the ayatollahs demonstrated their sophistication when they put a satellite into orbit, using the same ballistic technology that can launch warheads. Yet Russia has objected to this proposed defensive system on the preposterous grounds that it would create a deterrent to its own massive arsenal. Moscow’s real concern is the expansion of Western influence in former Soviet satellite states. Unfortunately, Obama has given every indication that he’s ready to abandon the program.

If there were ever a policy — cutting back on missile defense — more inappropriate to the moment I’d be hard pressed to come up with it. (Er, well, there is neutrality on regime change in Iran and bullying of Israel, but this is a close third at least.)

The president seems ideologically wedded to recreating the nuclear freeze movement of the 1970’s and 80’s. But the times call for a far different approach. Now is not the time for unilateral cuts or timidity. Unfortunately, that is what we have.

Remember the days when Americans came from Mars and Europeans came from Venus? That was the gist of Robert Kagan’s book by the catchy title, Of Paradise and Power. It might be too early to tell, but it looks as though these days they are playing role reversal. Here’s Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel on Iran:

“I know from the time of the GDR (East Germany) how important it was that people around the world made sure that the people stuck in (Stasi prisons) Bautzen and Hohenschoenhausen … were not forgotten,” Merkel told parliament.

“Iran must know, particularly in the age of modern communications, that we will do everything in our power to ensure that these people (arrested in Iran during the recent turmoil) are not forgotten about,” she said.

So, what used to be referred to as “surrender monkeys” from Europe dare compare Iran to Communist-era East Germany — one of the vilest regimes beyond the Iron Curtain. I promise you, it is not a compliment. So much for staying out of Iran’s internal affairs and not “meddling.”

And the martial, battle prone Martians? Well, you know… they are not meddling. Their hand is stretched. And unclenched. And all the rest of it.

It’s a puzzling moment in history, when the leader of the free world cannot call a spade a spade, and needs the usually shy Europeans to stand up and remind us of the moral imperative to call tyranny for what it is. We live in that moment now.

John Bolton has a compelling and courageous analysis in the Washington Post today, making the case that Israel should bomb Iran’s nuclear installations and do so quickly. He argues that diplomacy has no chance of working, leaving only one serious option on the table if Iran is to be prevented from going nuclear. He adds a new and important point:

Significantly, the uprising in Iran also makes it more likely that an effective public diplomacy campaign could be waged in the country to explain to Iranians that such an attack is directed against the regime, not against the Iranian people. This was always true, but it has become even more important to make this case emphatically, when the gulf between the Islamic revolution of 1979 and the citizens of Iran has never been clearer or wider. Military action against Iran’s nuclear program and the ultimate goal of regime change can be worked together consistently.

The only variable he doesn’t mention is whether Israel has the intelligence necessary to inflict significant, long-term damage on Iran’s nuclear program. Israeli aircraft surely have the capacity to reach Iranian installations (though it would be interesting to speculate on what route the Israeli Air Force would take: Saudi Arabia? Iraq? Turkey?). But does Israel know where the key Iranian facilities are located and does it have munitions that can put deeply-buried Iranian bunkers out of action? Those seem like the most important factors to me — more important than the possibility of Iranian retaliation or of deteriorating relations with the Obama administration — for prime minister Netanyahu and Israel’s Security Cabinet to consider as they contemplate the possibility of action.

If Israel’s intelligence agencies can provide reasonable assurance that the Israeli Air Force can derail the Iranian program for, say, six years, then the case for action becomes inescapable. But if they can only delay Iran for six months, is it really worthwhile to risk all the consequences that would come from an air strike? Perhaps so; perhaps the loss of Israeli prestige and deterrence advantage from Iran going nuclear would be so great that even a symbolic strike is worthwhile. But obviously, the case for action becomes much stronger if the Israeli Air Force can cripple the Iranian program rather than simply delay it for a very short time.

Of course, no intelligence agency can answer such questions with any precision. Certainly America’s intelligence agencies, with their terrible track record regarding WMD in Iraq and other countries, cannot be counted upon to give an answer that will provide much assurance to policymakers. We can only hope the Israelis have better information to allow them to reasonably assess the situation and act accordingly. Bolton is certainly right that counting on negotiations under the present circumstances is to admit defeat and allow Iran to go nuclear — a scenario far more terrifying than the threat of Israeli military action.

Politico has a shocker:

The Washington Post has offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, non-confrontational access to “those powerful few”: Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and — at first — even the paper’s own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.”

With the newsroom in an uproar after POLITICO reported the solicitation, Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said in a staffwide e-mail that the newsroom would not participate in the first of the planned events — a dinner scheduled July 21 at the home of Publisher and Chief Executive Officer Katharine Weymouth.The offer — which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters — was a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.

It is hard to conceive of anything more inappropriate and rife with conflicts of interest than such a stunt. It is made all the worse by the rank hypocrisy.

It was in January 2001 that the Post excoriated politicians for selling access:

Money always has twined itself through politics, but in Washington there used to be some sense of restraint about it. The speaker of the House, for instance, might have thought twice before openly selling access to himself to the highest bidders. Today, shamelessness has taken the place of restraint, as a report by The Post’s Juliet Eilperin yesterday made clear. Want to attend an inaugural reception with Speaker J. Dennis Hastert? You can, for $ 10,000. Maybe you would rather watch the Super Bowl with him in Tampa? That will be $ 10,000 also — though for that price you can enjoy the company of Northern Virginia Rep. Tom Davis too.

There is simply no explanation for the appalling judgment that led the newspaper to leap from journalism to pimping access, like some low-rent lobbyist that lacks even the proper disclosure for its actions. In a perfect world, those responsible should resign.

For those who decry the downfall of mainstream journalism, this suggests that the response is: “Not fast enough.”

It looks as though Ahmadinejad’s grip on power is not that strong. As Amir Taheri writes in today’s New York Post,

Four years ago, he won as a populist candidate who owed no debt of gratitude to “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei (who had tacitly endorsed another candidate). His prestige was further enhanced when, in a second round of voting, he crushed former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, a grandee of the Khomeinist nomenklatura. Ahmadinejad could claim that he was his own man, relying on no establishment cabals.

The June 12 election changed all that. Whatever the truth of allegations about massive fraud, the fact is that many Iranians, perhaps a majority, believe that Ahmadinejad didn’t win. To many, his re-election seems merely the result of plotting by a power clique centered on Khamenei.

He and his protector may still come up on top. But their failure to have quashed the opposition, three weeks after the elections, suggests that they now stand on shaky ground.

Supporting the opposition has been depicted as “meddling” and that may well be accurate. But keeping our hands stretched to the regime is also starting to look the same — given that the “business as usual” posture adopted by engagers ends up strengthening the tyrants. Perhaps this is a time to stand aloof then — and simply say, how can we engage someone who has no power to deliver anything?

If the opposition comes out on top, how embarrassing would it be for the West to be found engaging the losing tyrants? Holding off talks indefinitely seems the least the West can do at this time.

The Obama administration’s decision to pick a quarrel with the Jewish state over settlements, Jerusalem, and how to deal with a nuclear Iran, are all light years away from the down-the-line support for Israel that candidate Obama and his Jewish surrogates articulated throughout the campaign. This leaves those Democrats who spent 2008 vouching for Barack Obama’s bona fides as a supporter of Israel, with, as they used to say on “I Love Lucy,” a lot of ’splainin’ to do.

And none of them have as much to answer for as Harvard Law’s Alan Dershowitz who used his status as a celebrity author and personality to good effect on Obama’s behalf. It should be stipulated that while Dershowitz is, and always has been, a proud and loud liberal and though his sympathies have always similarly been with the Left of the Israeli political spectrum, there can be no questioning his long and honorable record of backing Israel. Few have been as articulate in making a principled stand on behalf of its right to self-defense against terrorism. Indeed, last year he argued that George W. Bush had earned the right to be considered a great friend of Israel (something most liberals would never admit to). But he nevertheless considered an Obama victory as a victory for Zionism, specifically because having a popular liberal president who cared about the Jewish state would be an improvement over a situation in which its greatest American champion was a deeply unpopular conservative Republican.

All of this makes Obama’s flipping on Israel issues during the last six months an acute embarrassment for Dershowitz, who tries to argue his way out of a corner in an unpersuasive op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal.

Dershowtiz’s thesis is that the spat over settlements is a perennial issue and that Obama’s stand is no worse than that of previous administrations. On Iran, he claims there is no real change from Obama’s campaign stand that a nuclear Iran is unacceptable. Unfortunately, the prominent appeals specialist’s brief for Obama would be laughed out of any court in the land.

First, as even Dershowitz concedes, “Rhetorically, the Obama team has definitely taken a harsher approach toward Israel compared to its tone during the campaign.” For a president to adopt such a tone while at the same time going into overdrive in an effort to make nice with Israel’s Arab and Islamic foes, speaks volumes about his sympathies. Obama’s snub of Israel during his recent Mideast tour coupled with his profligate use of moral equivalencies between Israel and its would-be destroyers (i.e., the Holocaust equals the flight of Palestinians during the War of Independence) was the sort of thing that would have had Dershowitz on his hind legs screaming “bloody murder” had it been done by a president he didn’t campaign for.

Dershowitz is also wrong about the settlements spat, not only because it is significant that this administration made it their top foreign-policy priority early on but also because they have sought to escalate the dispute rather than resolve it. The calls by Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for an absolute freeze on any settlement building, including those the Bush administration conceded would stay with Israel in any peace settlement, was a blow to the alliance between the two countries. While Dershowitz is right that most American Jews are not fans of the settlements, the State Department’s statement that such a freeze applies even to the city of Jerusalem is something that only left-wing extremists within the Jewish community would countenance. It was also an effort to raise the stakes in a showdown between the Obama team and that of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that no friend of Israel could regard with anything but trepidation.

On Iran, the situation is also far worse than Dershowitz lets on. Though he rightly acknowledges that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s statements attempting to link a settlements freeze with U.S. action on Iran is ill considered and must be repudiated by the administration, he fails to note how Obama’s much ballyhooed attempt to “engage” Iran undermined efforts to rally the nation to more awareness of the existential threat that Tehran’s nuclear program poses to Israel. Up until the last week when the election fiasco and crackdown on dissents forced Obama to toughen his stand on the regime, the administration gave every indication that it was prepared to live with a nuclear Iran, a position switch that Dershowitz admits would justify Jewish supporters’ repudiation of the president. The best he can offer us is a hope that Iran’s behavior will strengthen Obama’s will to resist. However, the talk in Washington about resuming engagement after a “decent interval” makes this nothing but a wish upon a Democratic star. His faith in veteran peace processor Dennis Ross as a bulwark against appeasement of Iran is a weak reed upon which to base a defense of Obama.

Dershowitz understands that the fears about Obama’s betrayal of his pro-Israel supporters are real. He even goes so far as to say that “there may be coming changes in the Obama administration’s policies that do weaken the security of the Jewish state … with Iran’s burgeoning nuclear threat, it’s important to be vigilant for any signs of weakening support for Israel’s security — and to criticize forcefully any such change.” He’s right about that. But he’s wrong when he tries in vain to pretend that such a moment didn’t arrive months ago.

There is no way even for the spin-obsessed White House to sugar-coat this:

The pace of job losses quickened in June after slowing just a month earlier, casting a shadow over the Obama administration’s attempts to stanch months of declines in the labor market.
The American economy shed 467,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate rose to 9.5 percent from 9.4 percent, the Labor Department reported on Thursday. Job losses were widespread among the construction, manufacturing and business and professional services sectors.
The losses were sharply higher than economists’ expectations of 365,000 lost jobs.
Economists said a decline of 322,000 jobs in May had raised expectations that the market was bottoming out as the economy struggled to right itself, but the numbers on Friday dashed some of those hopes.

The New York Times helpfully suggests “The figures also raised questions about whether the Obama administration, which has already passed a $787 billion stimulus plan, needed to step in again to shore up the American worker.” Well, you have to give them credit. There is no failure too great, no government boondoggle too ineffective for which the answer is not “More of the same!”

As this report noted:

An elevated unemployment rate could become a political liability for President Barack Obama when congressional elections are held next year. The last time the unemployment rate topped 10 percent, the party of the president — then Ronald Reagan’s GOP — lost 26 House seats in midterm elections in 1982.

So far, many people are saving — rather than spending — the extra money in their paychecks from Obama’s tax cut, blunting its help in bracing the economy. Much of the economic benefit of Obama’s increased government spending on big public works projects won’t kick in until 2010, analysts say.

The White House last week said federal money was being shoveled out of Washington quickly, but states aren’t steering the cash to counties that need jobs the most.

The public, not to mention the president’s political opponents, will likely reach different conclusions from the Gray Lady’s: the stimulus is a bust, the economy is not improving, and the president isn’t doing anything likely to lead to job growth. And no, a jumbo energy tax and a government take-over of health care are not going to increase jobs.

As one might expect, the markets dived at the opening. With 70% of the economy related to consumption, it isn’t likely we’ll see a significant rebound with more and more people either out of work or fearful of being out of work in the future. Perhaps it is time to focus on job growth, not government expansion.

Below the surface of the daily news coverage, Senate Republicans have been struggling to get documents from PRLDEF, the liberal civil rights group in which Sotomayor held a variety of leadership positions for a dozen years. It seems odd, at first blush, that there should be a tussle over a group whose public positions on a variety of issues are well known and in which Sotomayor played such a central leadership role. Why fight over boxes of old letters and legal briefs? At first, many speculated that this might have been problematic because it would feed the racial preference storyline and breathe new life into the “wise Latina” remakrs. But maybe it is far more explosive.

Roll Call buries the lede on this one:

The PRLDEF on Tuesday turned over a number of documents that could become political flash points, including papers on the organization’s work with the nonprofit Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now during Sotomayor’s time with the PRLDEF. ACORN has become a major rallying cry for conservatives after allegations that its organizers falsified voter registration forms in the 2008 election. The mere mention of ACORN in association with Sotomayor — regardless of how significant her involvement with the group was — will almost certainly intensify opposition to her high court installment from conservatives on and off Capitol Hill.

Ya think? Well that would be problematic.

And as for any suggestion that Sotomayor wasn’t all that connected to the group? Hogwash. Her questionnaire lists her various posts: “Member and Vice President, Board of Directors Chairperson, Litigation and Education Committees.” The New York Daily News describes her as taking on “an increasing amount of leadership on the Board” in the 1980s. The New York Times reported:

“She just believed in the mission,” Luis Alvarez, a former chairman of its board, said of Ms. Sotomayor. “This was a highly refined group of individuals who came from the premier academic institutions. It was almost like Camelot. It was a wonderful growth period.”

But Ms. Sotomayor stood out, frequently meeting with the legal staff to review the status of cases, several former members said. And so across her 12 years on the board — she left when she was appointed a federal judge in 1992 — she played an active role as the defense fund staked out aggressive stances on issues like police brutality, the death penalty and voting rights.

The board monitored all litigation undertaken by the fund’s lawyers, and a number of those lawyers said Ms. Sotomayor was an involved and ardent supporter of their various legal efforts during her time with the group.

This is all the more reason to insist on a complete and thorough review of the PRLDEF documents. What did Sotomayor do for PRLDEF, what is the “mission” she believed in, and why is the organization now playing interference for her? Good questions for the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The New York Times this morning has a long lead editorial on reforming what is laughingly referred to as the New York State Legislature. As the state has relentlessly declined over the last few decades both economically and politically, the Legislature has become something straight out of Gilbert and Sullivan, populated by pompous time-servers and buffoons who do as they’re told by party leaders:

. . . I was sent
By a pocket borough into Parliament.
I always voted at my party’s call,
And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
I thought so little, they rewarded me
By making me the Ruler of the Queen’s Navee!

And as the Times makes clear the American version of the “pocket borough”– gerrymandering — is a big part of the problem:

HONEST MAPMAKING The first item on the reform list should be drawing districts honestly. A New York State legislative seat is so secure that no scandal, not even a recent conviction, can reliably defeat an incumbent. The prime reason is that legislators create their own districts. Every 10 years, each legislator with any power tells the mapmakers: Put my pal’s house in my district and my enemy’s house out. A few of these districts look like something wiggling under a microscope, but they keep their hosts in office until death, retirement or, with increasing frequency these days, time spent in jail.

The Legislature and Gov. David Paterson should immediately agree to create a nonpartisan commission like the one in Iowa that draws districts fairly and presents the map for a yes or no vote. (A no vote means the commission, not the legislators, re-draws the maps.)

Gerrymandering dates back to the earliest days of the country (Patrick Henry and his allies who dominated the Virginia legislature, tried to use gerrymandering to keep James Madison out of the House of Representatives in 1789). In 1811, the Massachusetts legislature drew up weirdly-shaped districts that favored — surprise! — incumbents. A famous cartoon in the Boston Gazette made one of these districts into a monster with wings and beak. Gilbert Stuart — a better painter than biologist — said it looked like a salamander. The editor said “Better say gerrymander” after Governor Elbridge Gerry and the word stuck.

Computers have turned gerrymandering into a fine art and the effect has been deeply pernicious. Gerrymandering effectively disenfranchises millions of Americans. It makes primary elections more important than general elections. That, in turn, empties out the center from which this country has always been governed, as primary electorates tend to be dominated by the left and the right. That makes politics ever more partisan, bitter, and vindictive. Legislators entrenched by gerrymandering easily become both corrupt and indifferent to public opinion, and thus much more willing to do the bidding of special interests. Gerrymandering is also one of the main reasons the public favors so strongly what politicians hate so much: term limits.

It has taken the Times a long time to editorialize against gerrymandering, but better late than  never. Congress has the power (Article I, Section 4) to require fair districting and, indeed, did require it until the 1920’s. It will take tremendous political pressure to get it to do so again, however.

I hope that the Times’ call to end gerrymandering in New York State (and thus, by implication, everywhere) marks a shift in political sentiment on the issue among liberals. Gerrymandering is a clear and present danger to American democracy and its end would do more to restore political health to this country than any other single reform. And it wouldn’t even cost any money.

Fatah accuses Hamas of plotting to kill Palestinian Authority Chairman Abu Mazen. Hamas retorts that Fatah is perpetrating a massacre in the West Bank (of its supporters, presumably) and threatens to round up Fatah people in Gaza (evidently, they have not rounded up everyone yet).

This bickering between the two Palestinian entities is not news. What would be news is for world leaders to stop presuming it will stop or become irrelevant if Israel were to freeze settlements. Again and again, Western leaders raise the settlement issue as an impediment to peace — see German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s latest.

In effect, this insistence is only going to hinder, not favor peace. With Israel’s best friends intent on ganging up against prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu over settlements, Israel’s adversaries are not going to do Israel any favors. Why should the Palestinians make any concession, fulfill any obligation, or take any step forward on the road to reality, given that U.S. and European leaders are busy doing their bidding against Israel?

While I realize my efforts to decode Barack Obama may turn into a never-ending task, I want to focus on another of his rhetorical habits: his ceaseless attempts to portray himself as America’s philosopher-king, the person standing not only above country but above politics itself. Obama is, he would have us believe, uniquely able to transcend old, tired, and rutted debates, to think anew, and to bring a fresh, creative approach to the problems of our time. He alone inhabits the upper world.

On the stimulus package, Obama accused the bill’s critics of employing “phony arguments and petty politics.” Speaking to House Democrats at a retreat in Williamsburg, Virginia earlier this year, he criticized Republicans for having “come to the table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas” that helped cause the current economic crisis. And in a radio address, Obama continued to criticize Republicans for pushing what he called “tired old theories.”

This charge echoed another one Obama made during the campaign, when he said, “At a moment like this, the last thing we can afford is four more years of the tired, old theory that says we should give more to billionaires and big corporations and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else.” And this, in turn, echoes what Obama said on another occasion, when he declared that “It’s not because John McCain doesn’t care. It’s because John McCain doesn’t get it. For over two decades, he’s subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy — give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else.”

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Joe Lieberman doubts “in substance and in the politics,” the merits of a public-option plan for health care.

Joe Sestak makes it official: he’s challenging Arlen Specter. And Kirsten Gillibrand has her challenger too.

Mark Hemingway unmasks the weasels who did not simply lose a presidential campaign but attacked their own ticket and displayed uncommon disloyalty, even for political operatives. The only consolation is that they are unlikely to have the chance for a repeat performance.

Back in the grown-up world: “Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney called on Republicans to ’stand up’ to President Obama and his policies on the economy, health care and energy, in a wide-ranging interview with Fox News.” Next thing you know he’ll be coming out against adultery. A sample: “When the stimulus bill is wrong, when it wastes money and threatens the viability of our currency long-term, you have to stand up and say ‘no.’ When a health care plan says we’re going to have the government take over health care which is roughly a fifth of our economy, Republicans are going to have to say ‘no’ to that.”

Via Realclearpolitics.com: MSNBC and CNN sink further into cable news obscurity. Maybe it isn’t good business to shameless kiss up to the White House?

Foreign policy reporter David Cloud, who came and went in six months at Politico, reveals the not-so secret formula to all its coverage: “I’m used  to covering those things straight, by straight I didn’t mean they were pressuring me to inject some point of view into a story. It’s all done through the lens, ‘what does this mean for Obama?’” And this from a guy who used to write for the New York Times.

James Pethokoukis on “what happened to the 8% unemployment Obama promised us?”: “Did Team Obama purposely give a bad forecast, or did its old fashioned Keynesian approach merely lead it astray? Good question. Either way, it’s the Obamacrats’ economy now.” (h/t HotAir)

Alan Reynolds of CATO: “General Motors can survive bankruptcy far more easily than it can survive President Barack Obama’s ambitious fuel economy standards, which mandate that all new new vehicles average 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. . . CAFE standards might just be another foolhardy regulatory nuisance — were it not for the fact that they could easily prove fatally dangerous for any auto maker overly dependent on the uniquely overregulated U.S. market.”

Yesterday morning, John R. Thomson wrote at National Review Online that Roberto Micheletti — the president of the Honduran Congress, a member of ousted President Manuel Zelaya’s party, and the person unanimously chosen to complete Zelaya’s term after the Supreme Court ordered the army to remove him from office—described the ouster as “a democratic act,” and that it will not affect the elections scheduled for November 29 to choose a successor to the term-limited Zelaya.

As retired career diplomat George Landau—the former U.S. ambassador to Chile, Paraguay, and Venezuela—observes, “This was not a military coup. The military blocked an attempted civilian coup by Manuel Zelaya, as he defied Honduras’s Supreme Court, its Congress, and his own political party. Instead of calling for his reinstatement in office, we should congratulate the Honduran government on removing the president peacefully.

According to Thomson, “not one informed Honduran—including members of the media—has opposed Manuel Zelaya’s removal from office.”

While many regretted the need to do so, all said the move was both legal and necessary, a position supported by Honduran attorney general Luis Alberto Rubí, who had threatened to prosecute Zelaya if he actually held some form of referendum.

Late yesterday afternoon, two unidentified “senior [Obama] Administration officials” held a background briefing for reporters.  They responded as follows to a question about the characterization of Zelaya’s removal as a “coup:”

QUESTION: . . . earlier this week, Secretary Clinton gave us to understand that you were holding off on a determination on whether it was indeed a military coup. . . . Is that still your stance, even though I know that . . . the Legal Adviser’s Office has begun the process of determining whether it was a military coup and, therefore, whether the aid cutoff is triggered? . . .

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE:  . . . [B]oth the President and the Secretary have described events in Honduras as a coup, which they certainly were once the current claimant to the presidency swore - was sworn in before the congress after the forcible removal of the legal and constitutional president, Mel Zelaya. . . .

In regard to the illegal detention and expulsion of President Zelaya, this was an act which was unconstitutional and illegal and cannot be tolerated. . . .

Unconstitutional, illegal and cannot be tolerated:  a harsh position, harshly expressed, delivered in as harsh a manner as possible—by press conference.  The New York Times reports this morning that American officials were “giving Honduras a cold shoulder” and that they “said that they had not had any official or unofficial contact with the interim government.”

It’s almost as if Honduras were an adversary of the United States rather than an ally—although if it were an adversary the “no-meddling” principle might kick in.

If it could make contact, Honduras might protest that it interprets its own constitution differently from the Obama administration, and that there is no difference of opinion on the issue between its Congress, Supreme Court, civilian attorney general and military lawyers.

But Honduras would undoubtedly find that its interpretation is, as Secretary Clinton might explain, unenforceable.