The (Potential) Harm in Harmon Resigning

Longtime California Democratic Rep. Jane Harman has announced she is resigning from Congress to lead the think tank. Her District is pretty firmly "D" territory, so the big question is which Democrats will run to replace her.

DKos floats some names, and at the top is 2008 and 2010 primary challenger Marcy Winograd. You may recall Winograd -- she's the one who opposes Israel's very existence as a Jewish state and basically accused Henry Waxman of possessing dual loyalties. And beyond that, she sounds like an all-purpose nutcase. So not exactly someone I want to rise into any level of prominence.

On the other hand, SSP's recitation of potential candidates doesn't seem to take Winograd very seriously (Dave Weigel is checking into whether she's running at all). So hopefully that means she's on the outs, and a solid progressive Democrat will be in.

Snow (Hey Oh!) Roundup

We're fine over here in the wake of the Snowpocalypse. School was canceled yesterday and today, but folks are finally starting to dig out, and we'll be back to normal tomorrow.

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Utah State Rep. wants to ban gay families from participation in all public programs.

Republicans drop "forcible rape" language from their new anti-abortion bill.

Republican presidential candidates graphed on basis of their sanity and their Mormonism.

Meanwhile, Ed Kilgore measures Jon Huntsman's 2012 chances, and finds them severely wanting. He's like Romney, but even easier to call a conservative apostate.

An interview with Dos Equis' World's Most Interesting Man.

Behavioral economists, poor people, and the broken social safety net.

Max Boot chides his fellow right-wingers for pretending there's a viable alternative to ElBaradei.

The Liberalizing Effect of International Military Interchange Programs

One of the key inflection points in any revolution is the ultimate decision by the armed forces as to whether they will fire on the protesters. Generally, any decently-entrenched regime with a powerful military can survive street protests if the military continues to back it. If the military decides to stand down, however, things get a lot more interesting. This is one of the key differences between Egypt in 2011, and Iran in 2009. Iranian military and paramilitary forces were effectively deployed against the protesters, and demonstrated a willingness to crush the demonstrations. Moreover, Iran had a layer of redundancy built in -- even if the army wavered, the army had to fear the Revolutionary Guard, which is fanatically loyal to the existing regime.

So what is it that made the Egyptian army different? Though not as tied into the state apparatus as the IRC is in Iran, it certainly was known as relatively loyal to President Mubarak. Enter a really interesting argument by Mark Thompson:

Ever since the Camp David peace accords between Egypt and Israel, promising Egyptian military officers have come to U.S. military schools, including the Army War College in Carlisle, Penn., the Army’s Command General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. Inculcated there with U.S. ideals on lawful civilian control of military, such an education has helped act as a “safety” on the firepower of the Egyptian streets now massing in Cairo and in other cities.

“This new generation of Egyptian officers has been exposed to the American military and has had a very favorable impression of not just the way we fight our wars but also about the relationship between the military and society,” says Robert Scales, a retired Army major general who served as commandant of the Army War College where he launched the international fellows program. “One of the reasons for the army’s reluctance to follow Mubarak’s intent and squeeze the population in Cairo has to do with the Egyptian military’s exposure to the U.S. military.”

A little self-serving, perhaps -- particularly given the less than stellar record regarding human rights such interchange programs have assembled in the not-so-distant past. Nonetheless, there is some broader empirical research finding such a liberalizing effect correlated to U.S. military-to-military contacts. So it certainly isn't out of the question.

Definitely an interesting dynamic, if true. H/T: LGM.

From the River to the Sea

I oppose all radical clerics who advocate a "one-state" solution in Israel. Mike Huckabee is no exception.

As Jon Chait observes, Huckabee's objection in principle to the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank is a position not even taken by the Likud Party (indeed, it's not even taken by Avigdor Lieberman's extreme-right Yisrael Beiteinu party). Virtually the only folks who share Huckabee's views are those who expressly advocate Israel's dissolution, or the fringe-of-the-fringe settlers who likewise have expressly stated that they care not whether Israel lives or dies. Just so we know his bedmates.

Barbara Bush Comes Out in Favor of Gay Marriage

Barbara Bush (Dubya's daughter, not his mother) has just appeared in an HRC video spot promoting marriage equality in New York.

In terms of Bush's actually influence, this isn't all that important -- Bush is only a political figure because of who she's related to; she's expressed little interest in entering the public sphere on her own terms (even less than, say, Meghan McCain -- another gay marriage supporter). But what it does demonstrate is that, even among Republicans, the youth are just gone on this issue. Support for marriage discrimination is nearly solely the province of older Americans. It's barely even a partisan issue amongst the young. I'm dubious that the leaders of the "Christian right" can arrest the inevitable here -- I'm wondering if even they are beginning to feel some fatalism on the subject.

In any event, it's only a matter of time.