The Wisconsin governor’s appearance at an important Republican fundraiser in Iowa last night got him back on the radar of pundits, and rightly so. It’s not just because Walker teased Republicans with his repeated mentions of being raised in the first caucus state and his close ties to it, though that sort of rhetoric is exactly the sort of thing that seems like a prelude to a presidential campaign pitch. The point about Walker dipping his toe into the Hawkeye State’s early politicking that potential presidential rivals are also engaging in is that he is not just another Republican governor. Though he got lost in the focus on Romney’s defeat and the dramatic rivalry in the Senate that is emerging between Rubio, Paul and Cruz on national issues like immigration, Walker still has a cult following among conservatives that stands him in good stead as GOP senators duke it out on divisive issues and Christie concentrates on winning re-election in a manner that continues to alienate the Republican grass roots.

It was just a year ago that Walker was actually the center of the Republican universe as he won a smashing victory in the recall election that liberals forced on Wisconsin. Though Rubio, Paul, Cruz and others are all vying for the affection of Tea Party voters, it was Walker who was on the cutting edge of the movement after he took office after the 2010 election and actually began to put its ideas to work. By challenging the public worker unions, he became the focus of an unprecedented attack by the left. Liberals who claim congressional Republicans are obstructing President Obama’s agenda cheered when the Democratic minority in the Wisconsin legislature used illegal tactics to try to stop it from meeting or voting. Union thugs tried to intimidate Republicans in massive demonstrations in Madison. But Walker, who went farther than other reform-minded governors that year, stood his ground and not only won those crucial legislative battles but actually gained a bigger majority when he was forced to face the voters more than two years earlier than scheduled in the recall election. Moreover, he can now boast that the $3.6 billion deficit he inherited has been transformed into a surplus.

The drama unfolding in Washington on immigration, the budget and the investigation of the various Obama administration scandals has diverted many of those thinking about 2016 from the idea that the strength of the GOP isn’t in the Senate or the House but out in the country with Republican governors. Walker hasn’t just talked about pushing back against the power of the government; he’s done something about it in a way that no individual senator can. He’s also done it in a manner that is far more comprehensive than even Christie’s impressive wins in New Jersey and he’s done it in a state that generally votes for Democrats in presidential elections.

There are steep obstacles to a Walker presidential run.

One is the fact that it is doubtful that Walker and Ryan would run against each other. If Ryan were to demonstrate serious interest in 2016—something that is by no means certain but which would be considered natural as the 2012 vice presidential nominee—that might edge Walker out of the race right there.

Another is the fact that Walker must, as Christie is doing this year, win re-election as governor before even thinking seriously about 2016. Unlike Christie, who has swung to the center in the last year and whose photo ops (including another one today) with President Obama have helped him in New Jersey (though hurt him with Republicans elsewhere), Walker hasn’t trimmed his sails. Democrats, who understand they overreached and alienated many voters who didn’t necessarily agree with Walker’s policies but thought the recall was wrong, will view Walker as one of their top targets in 2014. Though he will go into that race a favorite, he won’t have an easy time of it and will be pressed about whether he will serve out his second term.

Last, as long as events in Washington dominate the headlines, it’s hard for a politician who goes to work in Madison, Wisconsin to get attention. Walker won’t make it onto the radar of the national press unless and until he actually starts running for president.

But anyone who has heard the way Republicans react whenever Walker’s name is mentioned or he appears know that there is no figure in the party that has a tighter grip on the affections of its grass roots. While the big guns blaze away at each other on the cable news stations, it’s important to remember that if Walker runs, he could be a real factor in 2016 and not just in Iowa.

Though it’s probably worth pointing out that Kerry reportedly ate turkey shawarma, which of course isn’t shawarma at all but rather a ludicrous shawarma impostor whose proliferation is a terrifying sign of impending total civilizational collapse, and thus Kerry didn’t even accomplish that one goal. (The fault here lies, however, with the Israeli side, not the Palestinian side, as Ron Kampeas explains.) The Washington Post reports on how Kerry summed up his shuttle diplomacy:

“I’m not going to comment on what was asked for or not asked for,” Kerry told reporters at Ben Gurion Airport outside Tel Aviv at the conclusion of a two-day visit shuttling between Israeli and Palestinian leaders. He was headed to Ethi­o­pia for the next leg of his overseas trip.

Kerry called on Israel and the Palestinians to refrain from “provocative” actions that could derail U.S. attempts to inaugurate a new round of peace talks. He reiterated U.S. opposition to Israeli settlement building but said the issue should not be a blockade to talks. Settlements, like other long-standing irritants and disagreements, will have to be resolved in a final peace deal, Kerry said….

The United States understands that settlement expansions “can be deemed by some to be provocative, and they are not necessarily constructive with respect to the process” of resuming talks, Kerry said. “So, it is our hope that there will be a minimal effort there.”

Although some building is beyond the direct control of Netanyahu’s government, the timing of other construction is within the government’s power, Kerry said. Avoiding such construction could “make a difference here in the next months,” when substantial negotiations could begin, he added.

“Peace is actually possible, notwithstanding the doubts that some people have because of past disappointments,” Kerry said. “It is our hope that everybody will stay focused on the prize, focused on the goal.”

There was no word on whether Kerry encouraged them to display the eye of the tiger or reminded them that they miss 100 percent of the shots they don’t take. But the Israeli side is probably satisfied with Kerry’s word salad on settlements that can’t be interpreted in any definitive way, and relieved because any time Kerry intervenes in an issue and doesn’t do any real damage is about all you can ask for.

Since President Obama has already lifted his administration’s demand that Israel cease building homes in Jewish neighborhoods as a precondition for peace talks, Kerry’s reaffirmation of that didn’t make any news. What’s the chiddush, as we might have said in shiur. Though the Palestinians are wrong to object to negotiations without preconditions and to push for a settlement freeze, they are right to ask why Kerry made the trip. And in fact, if direct negotiations between the two sides are really the American goal here, Kerry needn’t have flown halfway around the world to say so. You shouldn’t have, Mr. Secretary. No, really, you shouldn’t have.

Though it’s a point we’ve made in this space consistently, it bears repeating if Kerry’s shawarma diplomacy is what he says it is: an indication that we are witnessing the beginning of that hardy staple of second presidential terms–the push for Israeli-Palestinian peace. And that point is that the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one in which the most progress–some might argue the only real progress–was made by the two sides when negotiations were held away from the press cameras and in the absence of an American president looking for a legacy.

There is nothing wrong with American officials encouraging negotiations, but there is something very wrong with negotiating over the prospect of negotiating. If the Palestinians need concessions in order to reject peace in person rather than over the phone, then it is quite obvious they don’t actually want to negotiate, nor do they have any intention of negotiating in good faith. A concession just for showing up makes negotiations conditional upon negotiations, which is more than faintly ridiculous and surely a waste of time and political capital for everyone involved.

Mahmoud Abbas has never shown any real desire to shake up the status quo. If he wants to negotiate, he knows where to find his Israeli interlocutors, who will join him. As for Kerry, there is plenty of good shawarma in the States.

What’s worth noting, I think, is that many of those in the first camp consider themselves to be more principled and authentically conservative than those in the second, who are often derided as RINOs and “squishes,” as part of the much-derided “establishment” and who go along to get along. These politicians continually back away from fights like shutting down the federal government, preventing an increase in the debt ceiling, going over the fiscal cliff and filibustering background checks. The failure to engage these battles, and many others, is a sign of infidelity to conservatism.

Now, it’s not as if this critique never applies. There are certainly Republicans who claim to be conservative but don’t have deep convictions, who are in politics not because they care about advancing ideas as much as they care about power and titles. But what is of more interest to me is the divide over what a genuine conservative temperament and cast of mind is. A new book on Edmund Burke, by the British MP Jesse Norman, helps illuminate this matter. Given the contours of the current debate, it’s worth recalling what Burke, whom Norman refers to as “the first conservative,” actually believed.

Let’s start with moderation, a word many modern-day conservatives instinctively recoil from but which Burke referred to as “a virtue not only amiable but powerful. It is a disposing, arranging, conciliating, cementing virtue.”

According to Norman, Burke believed the proper attitude of those who aspire to power is “humility, modesty and a sense of public duty.” He was “anti-ideological in spirit,” deeply distrustful of zealotry and believed self-correcting reforms, while certainly necessary, should be limited, discriminating, and proportionate. For Burke, Norman argues, universal principles were never sufficient in themselves to guide practical deliberation. 

“Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour and discriminating effect,” according to Burke. “The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.”

“The lines of morality are not like the ideal lines of mathematics,” he wrote elsewhere. “They admit of exceptions, they demand modifications. These exceptions and modifications are not made by the process of logic but by the rules of prudence.”

A Burkean approach would never insist on absolute consistency in conducting human affairs. Politics is about carefully balancing competing principles, ever alert to the dangers posed by unintended consequences. It involves taking into account public sentiments, what Burke called the “temper of the people.” Nor is politics ever as simple as saying we believe in liberty and limited government and therefore the application of those principles is self-evident. Burke’s view, according to Norman, is that “perfection is not given to man, and so politics is an intrinsically messy business… The function of politics, then, is primarily one of reconciliation and enablement.” What deeply concerned Burke were people of “intemperate minds.” What is required of statesmen is wisdom and good judgment, sobriety, foresight and prudence.

Now Burke’s interpretation of conservatism was not written on stone tablets delivered on Mt. Sinai–and even if it were, merely to invoke Burke does not mean one is properly applying his insights to the here and now. But it does strike me that as this debate intensifies, and as various people lay claim to being the True Conservatives, it’s worth reminding ourselves what the greatest exponent of conservatism actually believed.

As is common with any terrorism investigation, the focus is upon who Adebolajo was mixing with and which organizations he approached. A much-tweeted photo shows a stony-faced Adebolajo standing behind Anjem Choudary, a founder of the now banned Islamist organization Al Muhajiroun, at rally in London. It was Choudary who, in 2010, led a ceremony in which he and other supporters of al-Qaeda burned the poppies which many Britons pin to their lapels every November in commemoration of the British and Allied soldiers who fell in two world wars. And it was the same Choudary who justified Adebolajo’s barbarous act by citing “the presence of British forces in Muslim countries and the atrocities they’ve committed.”

When it comes to contacts with Islamist groups outside the United Kingdom, some press reports have mentioned that Adebolajo traveled to Somalia in the last year to join Al Shabab, a particularly brutal al-Qaeda offshoot in east Africa, and may have even been arrested along the way. No solid evidence has, as yet, emerged to tie Adebolajo–a British citizen of Nigerian descent–with Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamist terror organization that has instigated church bombings, pogroms and similar atrocities against the west African country’s beleaguered Christian population.

The prospect of a link with Boko Haram is of interest because Adebolajo was born into a Christian family who were regular attendees at a church in Romford, just outside London. Given the loathing with which Boko Haram regards Christians and Christianity, manifested in the more than 1,500 people killed during the group’s attacks over the last three years, the very idea of a Nigerian Christian joining their ranks is as shocking as the hypothetical (so far, at least) example of a Jew who converts to Islam, joins Hamas and becomes a suicide bomber.

But there is another, perhaps more important, observation to make here. The experience of Nigeria, which Christian rights activists say is now the most dangerous place on earth for Christians, illustrates the flaw of concentrating too narrowly on Islamist organizations, at the expense of the wider influence which Islamist ideas enjoy among the unaffiliated. As Ann Buwalda and Emmanuel Ogebe point out in a compelling study of Boko Haram and its anti-Christian fixations:

While Boko Haram’s bloody terrorist tactics certainly merit serious concern, the focus on this group has overshadowed a pattern of systemic religious violence in Nigeria. It obfuscates the pervasive history of the killing of Christians by Muslims in northern Nigeria going back over a quarter century.

Buwalda and Ogebe argue that Islamist activity in Nigeria has to be understood in the context of three concentric circles: sect (which incorporates Boko Haram), state, and street. Too much attention is paid to the sect circle, they say, and not enough to state policy or public sentiment. For example, the wave of anti-Christian violence that followed the 2011 elections in Nigeria was not orchestrated by Boko Haram, but “was an act of ordinary Muslims across most northern states.” That particular carnage resulted in more than 200 Christians being killed, more than 700 churches destroyed, and more than 3,000 Christian families being driven from their homes.

One can similarly make the case that it doesn’t matter whether or not Michael Adebolajo engaged in direct contact with Boko Haram; like the young Muslims who rampaged against Christians in Nigeria two years ago, he is one of their number in spirit. And now that the killing methods of Boko Haram have come to the streets of London, perhaps Western leaders will pay serious attention to the fact that, alongside Zionism, Judaism and secularism, Christianity has been designated by the Islamists as a transcendental force of darkness–and that Christians across the Muslim world have to live with the consequences of that every day.

Yesterday in a major address the president said, “I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable. Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs.” He went on to say he was calling on Congress to pass a media shield law and had raised the issue with Attorney General Eric Holder, “who shares my concern.”

The very same day we learned, courtesy of NBC News, that the very same Attorney General Eric Holder signed off on a search warrant that identified Fox News reporter James Rosen as a “possible co-conspirator” in violations of the Espionage Act and authorized seizure of his private emails. Just a week ago the president expressed “complete confidence” in Mr. Holder.

So we have the president of the United States complaining about leak investigations that may chill investigative journalism at virtually the same moment we learned his attorney general decided to treat routine newsgathering efforts by a Fox News reporter as evidence of criminality. (For the record, the president has shown no concern over past leaks of far more sensitive intelligence information–but information that portrayed him in a flattering light.)

The president speaks as if he’s living in an alternate reality, expressing solidarity with the press even as his administration is engaging in Nixon-like actions against it. 

You can’t make this stuff up. 

Both these elements were on display yesterday during his lengthy address at the National Defense University that seemed to combine a striking call for change with what also seemed to be a determination to keep using many of the same Bush administration policies that he had kept in place these last four and a half years. As our Max Boot said yesterday, the “balance between rhetorical versus substantive change” might be said to be tilting toward the rhetoric because of the president’s determination to keep using drone strikes to attack terrorists. The part of the speech defending the use of drones was well said and correct. But I think our John Podhoretz is also correct when he notes in today’s New York Post that other major elements of the speech undermine the president’s rationale for continuing those strikes. Obama’s promise to work for congressional repeal of the Authorization to Use Military Force that was passed on September 14, 2001 may please elements of his base, left-wing critics as well as Republican libertarians like Senator Rand Paul, who share the president’s distaste for the idea that we are locked in an “endless” war against Islamist terrorists. But unless the other side of this equation agrees that the war is over, the president’s declaration that it is finished and that we won it will continue to ring hollow.

The problem is that, like the president’s repeated declarations that the war in Afghanistan will end when he finished pulling out American troops, the end of the war on terror is not something that can be declared unilaterally. Far from the Afghan war coming to a close when the last U.S. soldier leaves, it is almost certain to heat up as our Taliban foes will view it as an opportunity to make advances that were impossible so long as U.S. and NATO coalition forces were there to stop them. We are entitled to hope that the heroic efforts of those forces will have sufficiently altered the balance of power in the country so as to make it impossible for it to ever revert to the pre-9/11 situation in which Afghanistan was a large Islamist terror base for al-Qaeda. But that is a hope, not a policy. The future there is, at best, uncertain even if Americans prefer not to think about it.

The same is true in Iraq where Obama’s haste to pull all American troops out—something made possible by the victory the U.S. had won there by the end of the Bush administration—has created the possibility that it, too, will sink back into the sectarian warfare that the surge had ended.

The president wants to act as if he has ended unpopular wars as well as unpopular elements of these wars like the prison at Guantanamo Bay. He also wants to reserve the right to keep fighting Islamist terrorists who continue to pop up both in the Middle East and in the West since Americans rightly believe it is his responsibility to keep them safe.

But without the broad, sweeping powers that Congress granted the executive branch and which the president wishes to repeal, it’s an open question as to whether the continued use of drones can be justified. After all, the only effective answer to the critique of the drone strikes articulated by Rand Paul and others is based is the fact that America is still at war with Islamist extremists that believe they are locked in a conflict with the West that will last for generations.

The president seems to think the threat level is sufficiently low that America can go back to a September 10, 2011 mentality where terrorism was treated primarily as police problem rather than a military one. Doing so might prove popular since Americans would prefer to think that ramping down security measures and aggressive counter-terror operations means they really are safe and that they can go back to ignoring the Islamist war on the West. But if the United States is to continue to defend its citizens and the West against an Islamist movement that seeks our destruction, it must continue to keep itself on a war footing with regard to terrorism.

The president may enjoy the praise he is getting today for the characteristically thoughtful nature of his speech in which he seems to be arguing both sides of every argument. But much as he’d like to, President Obama can’t have it both ways on these issues. He can and should continue to use drones to take out terrorists wherever that is feasible. But by beginning the process by which the legal props for that effort are discarded, he will further degrade the government’s ability to effectively defend the homeland. The West’s Islamist foes have been bloodied and weakened by American efforts in the last 11 years and eight months. But they are not yet defeated. Any policy shift based on that faulty assumption is bound to lead to tragedy as well as confusion.

The denunciation of health conditions on the Golan is particularly surreal: Syrians in Syria, where medical care of any kind is often simply unavailable, would be thrilled to get the same state-of-the-art care as their brethren on the Golan–where, as in East Jerusalem, Israeli law applies, entitling residents to the same services as all other Israelis.

But thanks to Israel, some of those Syrians actually are getting such care–which is doubtless Syrian President Bashar Assad’s real gripe. Israel has quietly set up a field hospital on the Golan where dozens of Syrians wounded in the civil war have been treated; others, who need more intensive care, have been transferred to regular Israeli hospitals.

Israel has also offered treatment to some Syrian refugees. Just this month, via Israel’s Save a Child’s Heart program, Israeli doctors saved the life of a four-year-old Syrian refugee with a serious heart condition. Similar treatment was offered to three other Syrian children in Jordan who have similar conditions, but their parents refused: Apparently, they fell victim to their own anti-Israel propaganda. Still, the doctors are hoping they will change their minds once the first girl returns to Jordan healthy and happy.

In the PA and Hamas-run Gaza, health care is also far better than in much of the rest of the world, though admittedly not up to Israeli standards. Of course, any deficiencies are their own fault: Both have had complete autonomy in civil affairs for years; Israel can hardly be blamed if they chose to invest in, say, military training for schoolchildren rather than better health care.

But more importantly, they have an advantage most other countries with similar health-care systems don’t: generous access to Israeli hospitals for any problems their own can’t treat. And you needn’t take my word for it: Just this month, after PA Health Minister Hani Abdeen visited Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Karem Hospital, the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida reported that “30% of the patients who are children are Palestinians.” It also reported that Hadassah is now training some 60 Palestinian doctors, who will then return to serve the PA’s own population.

It’s disgraceful that an otherwise respectable organization like WHO would lend its countenance to a farcical resolution like this. But it’s an excellent lesson in why the positions of the “international community” are often deserving of derision rather than respect–especially when it comes to Israel.

A nice example of subtle media bias is a headline that appears over an Associated Press story at the Seattle Times website (we think the headline is the Times’s): “Education Spending: Idaho Worst; Washington Below Average.” Here’s what the story says:

“A report from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that Idaho remains at the bottom of public education spending.

The [Spokane, Wash.] Spokesman-Review reports that Idaho spent about $6,800 per student for the 2010-2011 school year. Only Utah spent less, at roughly $6,200 per student.”

The headline writer was wrong to use the superlative without preceding it by “Second” or “Next to.” But more important, he used the wrong adjective. Idaho’s spending was the second-lowest, which would make it the second-best from the standpoint of the taxpayer.

But, you may ask, what about the children? Unlike recipients of cash or cash-equivalent benefits like Social Security or food stamps, you can’t measure the benefit of schools in terms of dollars. And this study makes no effort to gauge the quality of education. It could be that Idaho’s school system gives taxpayers an unusually good value for the money.

Today Los Angeles’s CBS affiliate reported on just how irresponsible its mayor had been not with the city’s purse strings (which he has been) but also with his own personal finances:

With just over a month left in his second and final term, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will leave office in June reportedly without a place to live or a car of his own to drive, according to a report published Thursday.

…

Outside of a rental property in Moreno Valley which brings in about $600 a month, Stewart said that Villarigosa has no major assets despite having been paid over $1.6 million during his time as mayor. Public pension information for Villaraigosa was not available, L.A. Weekly reported.

It seems some liberals are just as irresponsible with their own money as they are with taxpayers’. While that’s of little comfort to residents of Villaraigosa’s city (and state, which is facing severe financial straits of its own), it’s at least good to know that he’ll be spending some of his time upon leaving office reflecting on the importance of thrift, perhaps not so much as a politician as an average citizen.

It’s rumored that Villaraigosa is eyeing Governor Jerry Brown’s seat in 2018. If he is, residents of California must be hoping that he will have taken this lesson of the consequences of out-of-control spending to heart.

It’s easy to forget that, because the general assumption has been that since Democrats support immigration reform they’ll sign on to virtually any bill crafted by a bipartisan working group, confident that at least their most pressing concerns and priorities are addressed. It isn’t unlike the ease with which Democrats can usually get Republicans to support a robust projection of American power when there are national security threats to be addressed. But two stories from the Washington Examiner’s David Drucker and one from Politico illustrate the challenge of massive reform bills crafted by two ideologically distinct parties.

The issues concern a House immigration compromise being written in parallel to the Senate version. The Politico article contained two relevant pieces of information, the first of which was that Republicans want the bill to explicitly outlaw publicly funded medical care being available to illegal immigrants who would be granted a path to citizenship but haven’t yet completed that path:

House Democratic leaders are uneasy with the idea of blocking undocumented immigrants from accessing publicly-subsidized care – such as health coverage if they have to be treated in an emergency room. That could have the effect of deporting the immigrants if they can’t afford those expenses, Democrats worry.

Republicans, however, are insisting that no public dollars – from federal to the local level – will fund the tab for health coverage for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants. Negotiators are looking at an end-of-the-week deadline to smooth out the differences on health care between the two sides.

Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi responded today that current law is sufficient, especially with regard to ObamaCare–which is where the GOP is worried most about the cost to taxpayers. (Politico quotes GOP Representative Raul Labrador saying that “What might be the story at the end of this year, at the end of this session, is that Obamacare killed immigration reform.”) It would be yet another unintended consequence of that terrible bill if it derailed immigration reform as well. The other nugget from Politico is a seemingly irreconcilable difference over guest worker visas.

And what is that guest-worker impasse? Drucker explains:

The White House, meanwhile, has been quietly pushing back against Republican attempts to increase the number of visas granted to low-skilled guest workers, who would be allowed into the U.S. under the immigration overhaul. Republican sources charge that the White House is acting on behalf of organized labor.

Republicans want more immigration, in other words, but–as Politico also pointed out–the unions don’t, and therefore neither does President Obama. This will sound familiar to those who have followed the immigration reform process for the better part of the last decade, during which Obama derailed immigration reform twice, once as a senator and once again during his first term as president. Although Obama says this time he really does want immigration reform, skeptics have history on their side and have been waiting for Obama to find and exploit the weak points of the bipartisan bill.

This morning, Drucker reported that the two sides are looking at abandoning the bipartisan House talks after tomorrow if no deal is reached, and speculated as to what the reform process would be left with if that happens:

Labrador also said that Democrats are “sadly mistaken” if they assume that killing a bipartisan House bill would force the chamber to take up the Senate version, which many House Republicans believe is flawed. Actually, the Idahoan said, sinking the House bipartisan effort would ensure that the House moves forward on legislation that is influenced primarily by conservatives and even tougher than what the chamber’s working group has developed thus far.

If that’s how both sides are actually approaching this, then the Democrats are being more realistic than Labrador is. Between the White House’s newly expressed skittishness and the conservative distaste for pushing any bureaucracy-expanding, comprehensive reform legislation, there is simply no way Democrats would sign on to a deal far to the right of where Labrador is now.

The Senate bill is likely to be somewhere in between where House Democrats are and where House Republicans are. As such, it’s a more logical compromise to fall back on. If Labrador pushes a bill radically different from the current compromise it won’t matter if it can pass the House, because it can’t pass the Senate. The virtue of the Senate bill is that it has been crafted with the need to pass the House in mind. That doesn’t automatically make it great legislation, but it will make it thus far the only piece of legislation to emerge with a fighting chance of becoming law.

Obama said, for example, that after he came into office, “we unequivocally banned torture, affirmed our commitment to civilian courts, worked to align our policies with the rule of law, and expanded our consultations with Congress.” Umm, actually all of that happened in Bush’s second term.

He also took a swipe at the admittedly imperfect terminology favored by Bush (deliberately and understandably formulated to avoid any mention of our actual enemy—Islamist extremists), saying “we must define our effort not as a boundless ‘global war on terror’ — but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America.” Actually, that’s exactly what GWOT meant when used by the Bush administration: “a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle” terrorist networks. Even Obama’s closing line—“That’s who the American people are. Determined, and not to be messed with”—sounds as if it could easily have been delivered in a Texas twang.

But never mind: Better that Obama feign a change of course rather than actually undertake a change of course, because the course established by Bush and continued by Obama has kept us largely, although not entirely, safe since 9/11. Indeed, Obama’s welcome and robust defense of drone strikes (“our actions are effective… [and] legal”) also could have come from his predecessor’s mouth.

Obama was particularly effective and hard-nosed in explaining why he authorized the strike that killed an American citizen, Anwar Awlaki: “When a U.S. citizen goes abroad to wage war against America … his citizenship should no more serve as a shield than a sniper shooting down on an innocent crowd should be protected from a swat team.” Take that, Rand Paul.

There really was not much new in Obama’s speech; even his desire to close Guantanamo and transfer its detainees to prisons on the mainland has been often been expressed before—and is no closer to realization because of bipartisan opposition in Congress. He noted the difficulty of dealing with detainees who remain dangerous but cannot be convicted in a court of law—without offering any solution. All he said was: “I am confident that this legacy problem can be resolved, consistent with our commitment to the rule of law.” He also genuflected toward greater accountability for drone strikes but did not endorse any particular idea such as the creation of special courts; he simply said, “I look forward to actively engaging Congress to explore these — and other — options for increased oversight.”

There are some real changes associated with Obama’s speech, it seems, but, like much else in the war on terror, they remain classified, murky, and imperfectly understood by those of us who are not cleared to know the inner details. The Washington Post reports, for example, that Obama has issued a new directive limiting the use of drone strikes to targets that “pose a ‘continuing and imminent threat’ to the United States” and then only in instances where there is “near certainty” of no civilian casualties. His guidance apparently also includes a “preference” for the Department of Defense to play the lead role in drone strikes rather than the CIA. It’s not clear exactly what these changes portend, since, as Fred Kaplan has previously noted, the government’s definition of “imminent threat” is wide enough to include just about any al-Qaeda operative, whether he or she is actually about to attack the U.S. or not.

My own view is that drone strikes should not decrease while the threat from “al-Qaeda and Associated Movements” (to borrow the Obama administration’s parlance) remains as high as it is today—the threat coming no longer primarily from al-Qaeda Central but, as Obama noted, from its affiliates and from lone wolves inspired by its rhetoric. But at the same time, while I believe it is dangerous to reduce drone strikes, it is also misguided to believe that they can be the sum of our counter-terrorism efforts. We need to address, as Obama said, “the underlying grievances and conflicts that feed extremism, from North Africa to South Asia.” That doesn’t mean ending poverty, as his remarks implied, but rather effectively countering extremist propaganda and political organizing by helping moderate forces throughout the Muslim world to fight back. Unfortunately, this is an area where Obama, like Bush, has conspicuously fallen short.

Obama blandly noted that “unrest in the Arab World has also allowed extremists to gain a foothold in countries like Libya and Syria,” while conspicuously failing to note that it is his own administration’s lack of support for moderate forces—in the government of Libya and among the rebel factions of Syria—that has allowed extremists to come to the fore. Obama eloquently and rightly defended the need for foreign aid spending, but he announced no new steps to help embattled, pro-democratic forces in Libya or Syria.

Bush at least made rhetorical bows toward criticizing dictators and supporting democrats in the Middle East. Obama, in thrall to “realist” dogma, has been much less inclined to try to spread freedom abroad. Ironically, he seems to have adopted the “hard power” part of the Bush legacy while eschewing the emphasis on “soft power”—i.e., democracy promotion. That is his primary shortcoming—not, as the mainstream media narrative would have it, his support for supposedly excessive drone strikes but rather his failure to embed the drone strikes in a wider plan to promote better governance in the Middle East.

One of the most bizarre features of Syria’s ongoing civil war is the widespread assumption that outside intervention against the Assad regime will come from the U.S. or not at all. After all, the rebels’ main backers include two American allies with powerful militaries, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Turkey has one of the region’s largest armies, significantly larger than Syria’s; moreover, as a NATO member, it’s equipped with state-of-the-art Western weaponry. Saudi Arabia has been a major purchaser of the best American weaponry for years, including fighter jets, missiles and airborne warning and control systems. Both have billed Assad’s departure as a major national interest. Yet never once have they suggested that their combined air forces could use Turkey’s bases to impose a no-fly zone over part of Syria; they take it for granted that if military intervention is to happen, America will have to do it. And so does Washington.

In contrast, Israel has always insisted on taking sole responsibility for its own defense, and is consequently both willing and able to take independent military action. And because its interests in the region often overlap with those of its American ally, such action often ends up serving American interests. That was true in the Cold War, when Israeli battles with the Soviet Union’s Arab proxies repeatedly proved the superiority of American over Soviet arms. It was true when Israel bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981: Had it not thereby stopped Saddam Hussein from acquiring nukes, an American-led coalition wouldn’t have been able to oust his forces from Kuwait a decade later. And it was true when Israel bombed Syria’s nuclear reactor in 2007: Today, Americans are sleeping better because they don’t have to worry about al-Qaida-linked militias in Syria getting their hands on nuclear materiel.

Thanks to Israel, America never had to face a choice between taking military action against Syria or Iraq itself or letting a hostile dictator acquire nukes. But because its other Middle Eastern allies aren’t willing or able to act independently, it does face that kind of choice in Syria today: either take military action itself, or see its credibility in the region shredded by allowing Assad to survive despite President Barack Obama’s repeated statements that he must go–with the attendant risk that some of its regional allies will switch sides and align instead with Russia and Iran, who have proven their willingness to support their Syrian ally to the hilt. 

This understanding of Israel’s unique value was precisely what led to yesterday’s astounding 99-0 Senate vote on a resolution pledging American support for Israel if it is compelled to take independent military action against Iran’s nuclear program. The senators understand that despite Congress’ best efforts, sanctions may fail to halt Iran’s nuclear drive; that the Obama administration may ultimately prefer to avoid military action, even though a nuclear Iran would be disastrous for America’s interests in the region; and that none of the Arab countries that have vociferously lobbied Washington to attack Iran would ever do so themselves. But they know that Israel really might. And through this resolution, they were expressing their appreciation of the only Middle Eastern ally America has that is willing to act independently to advance shared regional interests.

It certainly underlines the size of the problem, estimating that annual losses from intellectual property theft top $300 billion and result in the loss (or more properly the failure to add) millions of jobs to the U.S. economy. It also squarely blames China as the main source of all this theft, accounting for 50-80 percent of the whole. “National industrial policy goals in China encourage IP theft,” the commission found, “and an extraordinary number of Chinese in business and government entities are engaged in this practice.”

What to do about this epidemic of industrial espionage? The commission offers some valuable suggestions, as summed up by Blair and Huntsman in a Washington Post op-ed: “denying products that contain stolen intellectual property access to the U.S. market; restricting use of the U.S. financial system to foreign companies that repeatedly steal intellectual property; and adding the correct, legal handling of intellectual property to the criteria for both investment in the United States under Committee for Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) approval and for foreign companies that are listed on U.S. stock exchanges.”

Those are all valuable steps but what is really intriguing is a recommendation that the commission does not endorse at this time—but that it believes may be necessary in the future unless China mends its ways: letting companies counter-attack in the cyber domain against intellectual property thieves. Such attacks are illegal today—as is any hacking—but if it were legalized this “would raise the cost to IP thieves of their actions, potentially deterring them from undertaking these activities in the first place.” The committee didn’t endorse retaliation “because of the larger questions of collateral damage caused by computer attacks, the dangers of misuse of legal hacking authorities, and the potential for nondestructive countermeasures such as beaconing, tagging, and self-destructing that are currently in development to stymie hackers without the potential for destructive collateral damage.” It concludes: “Further work and research are necessary before moving ahead.”

These are all legitimate concerns, but given that imploring China to put a stop to its cyber-attacks has not worked, it is high time to deter such attacks by showing that the U.S. can strike back. This should not be a responsibility of industry. It is the U.S. government which is charged with the nation’s defense, and it is high time that the government—specifically the military’s cyber command—seriously consider retaliating in kind for Chinese attacks on our computer networks, both government and civilian. Only if Beijing knows that it will pay a heavy price will it stop its aggressive cyber-intrusions.

Immigration has been a great economic and cultural blessing to the State of Israel. And so has tourism from abroad, which generates billions a year in revenue, much of which helps pay the salaries of workers at the lower end of the economic spectrum who work in industries that depend on tourism to survive. American Jews’ engagement with and connection to Israel is thus vital to maintain, not only for economic reasons but also to ensure international support for Israel and push back against the Jewish state’s isolation.

All of which makes this op-ed in Haaretz among the most asinine, self-defeating columns in recent memory–an impressive feat, since the competition for such distinction in Haaretz alone is vigorous.

There are few things that bother the Western press more than wealthy people and national or religious pride. So you can imagine the outrage when Sheldon Adelson, the wealthy Jewish philanthropist and funder of Birthright Israel, a program to provide trips to Israel for young Jews, met with Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid to request that Israel not slash funding for the program. Haaretz’s Itay Ziv fumes:

As the finance minister sees matters, there is nothing political about a decision to allocate NIS 150 million for a showcase project whose direct beneficiaries are citizens of a different country, most of them financially well-off. Even if the elderly had to pay a fee of NIS 35 per month for a caregiver to finance it — a measure that will bring millions of shekels into the state coffers — or cut back special aid to local authorities in the Druze and Circassian sectors by almost half, saving the state about NIS 30.6 million, or imposing any other cutback on the financially weak, minorities and others who cannot arrange a meeting with the finance minister any time they please to free up the tens of millions of shekels that the Birthright program needs so badly. For Lapid, it’s not political — even if it means giving a foreign billionaire who meddles in local politics on a daily basis anything he wants, no strings attached.

This is a pretty good example of how to get everything about a subject exactly wrong. As the Jewish Week reports, a recent survey of non-Orthodox Birthright alumni at least six years after the trip showed that participants are 42 percent more likely to feel “very much” connected to Israel and “Nearly 30 percent of participants have returned to Israel on subsequent trips, with 2 percent currently living there.” Birthright’s influence should not be oversold, but it’s pretty clear the program moves the needle in the right direction on virtually any issue of import to Israel’s relationship with the Diaspora.

Ziv’s opinion of the individual winners and losers on this issue also seems mistaken. Very often budgeting is viewed as a zero-sum game, but that’s a simplistic misunderstanding of the complex process of how each ministry and department’s allocations are earmarked each year. It also doesn’t take into account the fact that the employment benefits of Israeli immigration and tourism accrue to hotel workers, tour guides, food service workers, etc.

And Ziv may have access to information I don’t, but I’m not quite sure how he concludes that “most of” the program’s “direct beneficiaries” are “financially well-off.” I know many Birthright alumni (though I never went on the trip myself), none of whom is wealthy–nor did Birthright even inquire about such things when they applied. That does not appear to have changed; financial background is not included among the eligibility criteria. It also defies logic, since those who want to travel to Israel but cannot otherwise afford it would be naturally drawn to Birthright.

But it’s possible I’m giving too much credit to Ziv. At the end of his column, he declares Israel’s decision to continue funding Birthright to be “an act whose purpose is to take from the poor and give to a foreign billionaire”–something Ziv cannot possibly believe, since it is so obviously untrue. Lapid may be new to the Finance Ministry, but he clearly understands economics better than his loathsome critics in the leftist media.

It seems to me the proper approach is fairly obvious. Don’t get ahead of the facts. Don’t talk about impeachment or declare this or that scandal to be worse than Watergate (which placed the president at the center of a criminal conspiracy). Don’t allow opposition to President Obama to slip into hatred for him. Don’t come across as zealous partisans. And don’t become so obsessed by scandals that they set aside the hard and necessary work of recalibrating the GOP, which still faces significant problems in terms of its appeal to a changing electorate. Remember the words of Chekhov: “You don’t become a saint through other people’s sins.” 

At the same time, Republicans should of course pursue the scandals through the appropriate investigative channels, including congressional hearings. They have an obligation to do so in the name of the public interest. Those on the center-left and hard left who are urging Republicans to play down these scandals, in order to avoid a repeat of the Clinton-Lewinsky blowback, may have something other than the GOP’s interests in mind.

Perhaps it’s worth restating the obvious: Scandals and criminal investigations always harm an administration. Ask yourself this question: Do you think that Bill Clinton and Democrats, in looking back at the 1990s, are glad that Lewinsky scandal occurred? Of course not. The same goes for Watergate, Iran-Contra and countless minor ones. Political scandals are not good for presidencies–and they are not good for the country. But if they occur, they need to be pursued.

Republican lawmakers should approach the unfolding scandals in a manner that is sober, measured, purposeful, and rhetorically restrained. Follow the facts. Connect that dots when necessary–and don’t be afraid to say when the dots don’t connect. Resist the temptation to twist facts to fit into a preferred narrative.

All of this is easier to understand in theory than it is to execute in practice. But if Republicans do so, they’ll serve themselves, and the nation, well.

Naturally, I’m delighted that France has finally seen the light about Hezbollah. But France had no problem with the organization during all the years it was conducting cross-border attacks on the Israeli population. Lest anyone forget, these attacks continued even after Israel’s UN-certified withdrawal from every last inch of Lebanese territory in 2000; it was one such cross-border raid that sparked the Israel-Hezbollah war of 2006. In other words, France has just declared that cross-border incursions to kill Jews in Israel are perfectly fine, but cross-border incursions to kill Muslims in Syria are beyond the pale. If that isn’t an anti-Semitic double standard, I don’t know what is.

Indeed, until now, France has consistently billed Hezbollah as a legitimate political force that contributes to stability in the Levant. That was always nonsensical: Starting a war with your southern neighbor that devastates large swathes of your own country, as Hezbollah did in 2006, is not exactly stabilizing behavior. But apparently, in France’s view, fighting Israel does contribute to Middle East stability: It’s only because Hezbollah is now fighting Syrians instead that Paris suddenly sees the organization as a destabilizing force.

If other European countries think the same thing, they had the decency not to say it aloud. Germany, for instance, said it has reversed its longstanding opposition to blacklisting Hezbollah due to evidence that the organization was behind last summer’s terror attack in Bulgaria, which killed five Israeli tourists and one Bulgarian, and had been collecting information in Cyprus in preparation for additional terror attacks against Israelis and Jews on European soil. I’m no fan of the German approach, which essentially says terrorism is fine as long as you keep it out of Europe, but there’s nothing anti-Semitic about it; it’s perfectly normal for Europeans to care more about attacks on European soil than they do about attacks in the Middle East.

France, in contrast, has just said it cares deeply about attacks in the Middle East–but only if they’re directed against (non-Israeli) Muslims. You want to kill Jews in the Middle East? Go right ahead, says France: We’ll even help you do it, by keeping you off the EU’s list of terrorist organizations and thereby ensuring that you can fund-raise freely on our territory. Just don’t make the mistake of turning your arms on Muslims instead.

Although recent stories suggested the latter, there are occasional indications of the former–one of which came yesterday from the Wall Street Journal. The paper reported that Britain is formally requesting that the EU add Hezbollah’s military wing to its terror blacklist. That effort received another boost today, as the Jerusalem Post reports that Germany is backing Britain’s request, making it all but certain that Hezbollah’s military wing will be blacklisted:

“In the light of discussions we have had with our partners following the terrorist attack in Burgas, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle supports listing at least the military wing of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in the EU,” the officials said.

“The German position is based on an increasingly clearer picture of the facts and on the progress achieved by Cypriot authorities in analyzing terrorist activities,” they continued. “Minister Westerwelle hopes that the necessary consultations within the EU can be concluded rapidly.”

That report focuses the change of heart on the terrorist attack carried out last summer in Bulgaria on a bus of Israeli tourists. Initial signs pointed to Iran and Hezbollah, which are partners in global terror, and that was confirmed by the subsequent investigation which determined Hezbollah’s culpability.

The mention of Cypriot authorities is a reference to the recent revelations of a Hezbollah operative in Cyprus that showed the pervasive presence of the terror group in Europe. But even after the Bulgaria attack and the Cyprus case, there seemed to be hesitation to take any steps against Hezbollah. I noted in February a sickening quote from a German magazine editor who said officials were afraid that if they took action against Hezbollah the group might target non-Jews.

Additionally, the Journal article notes the concern of some EU officials that since Hezbollah is a powerful political presence in Lebanon, blacklisting them “could undermine a fragile peace in Lebanon.” That’s unlikely, but it at least gets closer geographically to the answer, which the EU Observer points to:

Its support for the Syrian regime has further blackened its name.

Up to 6,000 Hezbollah fighters are said to be in Damascus, where they guard the Sayyidah Zaynab mosque, and in the Syrian towns of Homs and Qusayr near the Lebanese-Syrian border.

Hezbollah is currently serving as a ruthless standing army for Bashar al-Assad in his murderous quest to hang on to power in Syria. As I noted earlier Monday, that in itself will destabilize Lebanon–or, more accurately, stabilize Lebanon more firmly under Hezbollah/Syrian/Iranian control. Hezbollah’s role in the Syrian civil war has thus removed one EU excuse not to blacklist the group and added a very good reason to outlaw them.

The Journal reports that the next step will be an EU-wide closed-door meeting in early June. Britain is pairing this move with one intended to make it easier to aid the Syrian rebels. Blacklisting Hezbollah’s military wing would be a step in the right direction, though as the New York Times reports, it would almost surely be a vastly weaker step–and more difficult to enforce–than an outright ban:

Still, many experts question the strategy of simply taking aim at Hezbollah’s military wing, arguing that it is impossible to separate the part of the organization that engages in politics and social services from the group’s large armed militia. Moreover, if only the so-called military wing is blacklisted, the group might still be able raise money in Europe under the banner of politics.

The Times then quotes a foreign affairs expert casting doubt on the efficacy of just listing the military wing. The separation between the military and political wings exists on paper, but it’s unclear if it goes much farther. If it doesn’t, then the blacklist would also only exist on paper. And the consequences of not effectively confronting Hezbollah’s activities have unfortunately been made all too clear in Europe, the Middle East, and around the world.

That’s why today King is claiming the high ground in his feud with his former antagonists and saying, as Politico reports, that he won’t get even by trying to stop any bill intended to help the people of Oklahoma:

“I think there’s a lot of hypocrisy involved here, [Sen. James] Inhofe saying Sandy aid was corrupt but Oklahoma won’t be,” King (R-N.Y.) told POLITICO. “But I don’t want to hold the people of Oklahoma responsible for what elected officials are saying, for the husband and wife without a home, for the people who lost all their worldly possessions.”

King, who stressed that he wasn’t looking for a fight, emphasized that aid should be provided to Oklahoma — which sustained a deadly tornado on Monday — without the requirement of budgetary offsets.

“I’ve always believed that but certainly, going through it myself [during Sandy], seeing the devastation a national disaster brings to a district…it’s a [national issue], not a local issue, like Sandy wasn’t a New York, New Jersey issue,” he said. “It’s an American issue, we have an obligation to come forward.”

That’s big of King, but it doesn’t change the fact that the original objections to the Sandy bill were largely correct.

Residents of the Northeast who suffered from Sandy should be forgiven for wishing that congressional reformers had decided to wait until they got what they needed before trying to fix the system. But the process by which Congress creates disaster relief bills is one of the last vestiges of a corrupt earmark system that ought to be consigned to Washington’s dark past.

The Sandy bill, like many of its predecessors, was stuffed with measures that had little to do with the actual needs of embattled shore dwellers—many of whom have still not recovered from the impact of the superstorm. It became a convenient tool by which members of Congress found a way to fund personal projects and crowd-pleasers for their districts. Efforts by GOP conservatives to clean up the bill forced some changes for the better before the Sandy measure was eventually passed. But that fact was lost amid the general hullabaloo about the insensitivity of members of Congress whose districts were not hit by the storm having the gall to demand it not be the usual laundry list of raids on the Treasury.

Christie and King—both of whom count themselves as opponents of this kind of congressional business as usual when their constituencies are not affected—bolstered their support at home by grandstanding about the Sandy bill. So King’s milking the issue for a little more press attention is understandable.

But the same principles that led some conservatives to raise questions about the Sandy bill should apply just as readily to anything Congress does for Oklahoma or any other place that has dealt with a natural disaster. Fiscal hawks like Oklahoma Senators Tom Coburn and James Inhofe say they will work to ensure that a tornado relief effort won’t repeat the mistakes of the past in Congress. But if they don’t succeed, then King and anyone else who isn’t napping should keep them honest.

The debate about Sandy relief was demagogued by Christie and King in such a manner as to make concerns about pork seem small-minded and cruel. But it is precisely because Americans are filled with emotion about terrible tragedies, such as the one that unfolded this week in Oklahoma, that our leaders must not allow themselves to be silenced when faced with congressional misdeeds. 

Let’s understand a few facts about the Weiner candidacy.

First, the reason for his decision to run is based in part on personal compulsion. He’s never really held an honest job in his life. Without politics, he has nothing. But it’s also because Weiner knows the race was his to lose prior to his career meltdown. There’s no one in the current roster of Democratic candidates who even remotely can be said to represent the views or the interests of the outer boroughs. That’s why Weiner—who had an impressive second place showing by running as the candidate of the middle class in the 2005 Democratic primary—was widely believed to be the frontrunner for 2013 before his career crashed and burned. With a formidable campaign war chest and the knowledge that this could be the last time the mayor’s chair is open for at least eight years, Weiner may have thought it was now or never, and that now gives him the best chance to win.

However, the polling that exists on this race should not engender much optimism in the Weiner camp.

The latest Quinnipiac poll does show him not all that far behind the frontrunner, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. The poll shows Quinn in first with 25 percent and Weiner in second at 15 percent, with 27 percent saying they don’t know and the rest scattered among a crowded field. Theoretically, that means that there is plenty of room for Weiner’s share of support to grow and give him a chance to win.

But the poll also specifically asked New Yorkers whether they thought Weiner should run. Nearly half said no. Only 38 percent thought he ought to be in the race. When you consider that he already has what must be almost 100-percent name recognition, that means about half the voters won’t even consider voting for him. That will make it nearly impossible for him to win a runoff, which is mandatory if no candidate gets 40 percent of the vote.

The bottom line is that Quinn is vulnerable, but the consensus is that while Weiner may qualify for a runoff that seems inevitable in a crowded race, he’s probably fated to lose it to any of his likely opponents.

These dismal poll results force us to ask the inevitable question about whether New York’s voters are prepared to accept Weiner’s plea for a second chance or hold his past behavior against him.

There may be some who think the scandal is not as much of factor as the national press thinks, but I think those who think Weiner can rise above his past don’t understand the city as well as they think. Anyone who thinks we’ve heard the last of his bizarre scandal is dreaming. Weiner has already said that there may be more embarrassing photos out there that he sent to women he didn’t know. That means such photos exist, and that it’s a given that sooner or later the press—especially the tabloids that consider the Weiner candidacy a gift from God—will find them.

Many people around the country may think the less religious nature of the average New York voter—especially in comparison to South Carolina—will mean they are more likely to be forgiving of his personal foibles. That assumption may be wrong. There’s good reason to think cynical New Yorkers will find Weiner’s plea for forgiveness to be baloney and actually be less vulnerable to a faith-based appeal for redemption that worked to some extent for Sanford. Weiner and his wife may want to move on from scandal, but it’s far from clear that New York will let him.

Nor can he count on his wife’s patrons—Bill and Hillary Clinton—to help overcome the public’s queasiness about him since they think his behavior only reminds people of their own problems. 

There will be those who watch Weiner’s campaign video which emphasizes public safety and reducing the burden of regulation on business and see him as a commonsense alternative to the big government visions of a hardcore liberal like Quinn, as well as the nanny state attitude of the departing Michael Bloomberg.

But no one should be deceived into thinking Weiner is morphing into a centrist. He wasn’t just one of the most openly obnoxious liberal partisans during his years in Congress. He was also one of the most liberal members on Capitol Hill. His campaign rhetoric is a cynical hodgepodge of all sorts of ideas geared to blur his former image, but anyone who wants to know what kind of a politician Weiner really is can only think back to the week in the spring of 2011 when he went off the rails. His lies and the desperate attempts to smear his critics (he still owes the late Andrew Breitbart for his slanderous claim that his Twitter photos of his private parts was a fabrication invented by the pundit) make Mark Sanford’s Appalachian Trail routine look good by comparison.

The next few months are going to be a lot more entertaining for journalists with Weiner in the mayor’s race. And given his combativeness and innate political talent, no one should write him off. But what is about to unfold may turn out to teach the country something about New York that most out-of-towners don’t suspect: New Yorkers tend to like straight shooters even if they don’t agree with them about everything and tend to despise liars and phonies no matter how loud they are. Weiner may get the lion’s share of the attention in this election, but the assumption that he will be as successful as Sanford is probably wrong.

For example, the New York Times, Dana Milbank and Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post have all expressed concerns about the Obama administration tactics. They have done so, of course, with a fraction of the umbrage they would be showing if this had occurred under a Republican administration. But at least it’s progress.

It’s late in coming, however, and let’s be honest: it would have been helpful if liberals had expressed some alarm years ago when top Obama White House aides like David Axelrod and Anita Dunn were targeting Fox News in an effort to de-legitimize it. Some of us warned at the time that “The White House’s effort to target a news organization like Fox is vaguely Nixonian.” Yet very few members of the elite media shared those concerns. In fact, they seemed to be sympathetic to what the White House was attempting to do. 

But what the White House was attempting to do was quite problematic. On this site back on October 23, 2009, we read this: 

We have seen from this White House Nixonian tendencies and, it would appear, a burning anger and resentment toward its critics. Whether it’s Fox News, the Chamber of Commerce, or companies that sponsor reports that take issue with the administration’s assessments, there seems to be a cast of mind that views critics as enemies, as individuals and institutions that need to be ridiculed, delegitimized, or ruined… there are lines that ought not to be crossed, temptations that need to be resisted, and people in the White House who need to say “no” to tactics that begin to drag an administration, and a country, down.

And then came this warning:

The Obama White House is showing a fondness for intimidation tactics that might work well in the wards of Chicago but that don’t have a place in the most important and revered political institution in America. To see these impulses manifest themselves so early in Obama’s presidency, and given all that he has said to the contrary, is rather startling. The danger is that as the pressures mount and the battles accrue and the political heat intensifies, these impulses will grow stronger, the constraints on them will grow weaker, and the voices of caution and reason will continue to be ignored. If that should come to pass — if what we are seeing now is only a preview of coming attractions — then the Obama administration, and this nation, will pay a very high price. Mark my words.

Like Captain Renault, liberals are now shocked, shocked to discover Obama & Co. have been using intimidating tactics (including punishing whistle blowers and slandering Romney campaign donors). But these tactics were obvious long ago to those who were not blinded by ideology. 

Liberals in the press have been enablers of this president. Now that Mr. Obama has turned out to be a rather minacious chief executive, overseeing an out-of-control executive branch, I wonder if the president’s press courtiers are having second thoughts.

I doubt it.

But the closest thing to a surprise has been Putin’s bungling of his once-masterful image management. By now everyone knows the ready availability of cheesy propaganda photos of Putin–shirtless, discovering ancient artifacts, subduing wild animals, feeding baby animals, perfectly executing a judo strike, etc. Want a slideshow? You’ve got your pick of news organizations happy to oblige. Putin has crafted his image from the very beginning; his biographer Richard Sakwa has noted that Putin self-consciously mimicked the concept of “third way” politics from Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, and fashioned himself a leader in their mold.

According to Sakwa: “Putin was one of the new breed of politicians of that time, such as Bill Clinton in America and Tony Blair in Britain, for whom news management often acted as the substitute for policy, and where policy development remains shrouded in a dense fog of spin and show,” and whose popularity “is nurtured and tended like a delicate plant, with focus groups, private polling and the manipulation of information.” Suffice it to say that Clinton and Blair were freely elected leaders of free countries, and Putin is out of his mind if he thinks he’s entitled to compare himself to them. But nonetheless, the point is that he has always taken great care to manage his image and has done so with success–too much success for comfort, in fact.

But those days appear to be behind us. It’s not just that by staying in power for so long Putin is earning comparisons to Leonid Brezhnev. It’s that he’s making mistakes he didn’t used to. Perhaps he can’t help himself, since he’s a power-mad authoritarian, but the illusion of the benevolent dictator is gone, and probably for good. His decision to retaliate against perceived diplomatic slight from the U.S. by outlawing American adoptions of Russian children, and thereby consigning poor, disabled, and malnourished Russian children to the outrageously ill-stocked Russian orphanages, was the very definition of gratuitous cruelty.

His jailing of a self-styled “punk rock” trio for stomping around a Moscow church was silly and heavy-handed, and will only further damage the Russian Orthodox Church’s credibility by tying the church to Putin’s repression. It also brought down the wrath of the denizens of pop culture by angering famous musicians who are happy to pretend to care about human rights if it offers them the chance to publicly bask in their own evanescent relevance.

And now he has taken action that will surely diminish his own authority. Putin has always fallen back on opinion polls showing his high approval ratings to prove he has the consent of the governed. Because there are no other political figures permitted to enter the fray in any real way, and because state media tars any would-be challengers before they can make their own name, those polls are often accurate. Putin has been the indispensable man, and a combination of nationalist pride and economic stability has kept his poll numbers afloat.

Yet now Putin’s latest affront to civil society, forcing NGOs beyond his reach to register as “foreign agents,” puts in danger the survival of the one high-profile independent polling institute in Russia. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports:

Prosecutors this week officially warned the polling agency that it is in breach of legislation requiring politically engaged NGOs that receive foreign funding to register as “foreign agents.” The center acknowledges that a small portion of its budget comes from foreign sources. Prosecutors allege that its research constitutes “political activity.”

The warning comes shortly after the Levada Center released polls showing President Vladimir Putin’s popularity falling, sparking allegations that the prosecutor’s move was politically motivated.

The Levada Center’s director, Lev Gudkov, told RFE/RL’s Russian Service that the move threatens the pollster’s continued existence.

Levada split from a government pollster in 2003 to maintain its independence. Practically speaking, the attack on Levada is illogical. Putin’s popularity remains well above 50 percent even in Levada’s recent poll. No one is allowed to run against Putin, so opinions polls don’t matter much to elections. And those elections aren’t free and fair, but are manipulated to whatever extent is necessary to keep Putin and his party in office. Meanwhile, he can always point to Levada’s independent polling to claim political legitimacy.

Levada’s polling was the one strand of authenticity to Putin’s hold on power. If Levada goes under, all Putin will have left is his own propaganda. Putin may be a thug, but he’s always been a clever thug. His paranoia has finally got the best of him, and the Russian people will get the worst of it.