- The Flaming Crotch terrorist will not be leaving American soil, by the way. He will be tried and convicted and punished right here in the United States. Yet another change from the cowardly Bush Administration.
- The GOP is seeking to blame the Obama Administration (i.e. the Transportation Security Agency) for the secrrity breach in Nigeria that resulted in the Flaming Crotch terrorist getting onboard with fireworks. This blame game is a wonderous exercise, for guess who voted against TSA funding time and again?
- Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), earlier this year: “If we’re able to stop Obama on this [health care reform], it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Sen. DeMint now: “I never wanted to break the President. ” Do they ever not lie?
- I guess our purist friends will view this another Obama failure, like they view all Obama actions:
William Hochul, a twenty-year prosecutor with expertise in running counter-terrorism cases, was in line for promotion to Main Justice in 2006. Until Monica Goodling, the infamous figure from the US Attorney firings scandal, found out his wife is active in Democratic politics and killed the appointment. Now President Obama has nominated him to serve as US Attorney in the Western District of New York.
- A must read from Stephen Walt of Foreign Policy magazine on why the West should stay on the sidelines during the Green Revolution in Iran:
If you’re looking for a useful historical analogy, think back to the “velvet revolutions” in Eastern Europe. Neoconservatives used to argue that the rapid and mostly peaceful collapse of communism proved that rapid democratic transformations were possible in unlikely settings, and they used that argument to justify trying the same thing in Iraq. (We all know how well that turned out.) In fact, the velvet revolutions were a triumph of slow and patient engagement from a position of strength. The upheavals in Eastern Europe were an indigenous phenomenon and the product of containment, diplomatic engagement, and the slow-but-steady spread of democratic ideals through the Helsinki process and other mechanisms. And the first Bush administration was smart enough to keep its hands off until the demise of communism was irreversible, which is precisely the approach we ought to take toward Iran today.