Turkey Ups the Ante Again

After expelling Israel's ambassador, now Turkey is apparently going to send naval escorts to ships trying to break the blockade of Gaza. This, of course, puts them on a military crash course with Israel.

Just so everyone is clear: as a matter of international law, one of the requirements for a blockade to be legal is that it has to be effective. That is to say, the blockade must actually work in stopping all or most shipping into the blockaded area. So, to the extent Israel wants to maintain its blockade, it has to stop all ships trying to breach it -- including those under Turkish military guard.

Meanwhile, Turkey also is promising to take the matter of Israel's blockade to the ICJ. If I were Turkey, and I was set on the course of escalation that they seem to be pursuing, this is exactly what I'd do too. Part of what makes the Palmer Report so notable is its rarity -- a relatively decisive victory for Israel in the international arena. It is a case of Turkey losing a bet where the odds were strongly in their favor. So if I'm them, why not return to the table? The ICJ has not been historically friendly territory for Israel (and in particular, like the UNHRC, it tends to play fast and loose with proportionality claims). If Turkey floods the zone with enough authoritative-sounding international legal opinions, the Palmer Report will become an anomaly and easily dismissed.

But of course, this sort of escalation is dangerous -- even Ban Ki-Moon can sense it. We're getting past the point where this is mere posturing. It is difficult to overstate just how wildly irresponsibly Turkey is behaving. You won't find a more fervent critic of the Israeli foreign ministry than I, but in this case they've made reasonable efforts at rapprochement that Turkey has rejected over and over again. The match is being held to the fuse, and Turkey seems bent on setting the whole region alight.

Sore Losers

In the wake of a comprehensive UN report which largely, though of course not entirely, vindicated Israel's conduct with respect to the Gaza blockade and the flotilla incident, Turkey has expelled the Israeli ambassador. It also announced that it considered the Palmer Report "null and void", which makes sense, as the report sided with Israel over Turkey on most of the key points and its recommendations for reconciliation (a statement of regret) were considerably closer in line with what Israel had offered than what Turkey had been willing to accept.

Turkey has a habit of being more than a little childish in the international arena, so I can't say I'm surprised that their response to a major defeat in the UN is to simply announce that they're ignoring it. Well, let me be a little more charitable: most UN states ignore UN recommendations that go against their interests or conduct, and I can hardly fault them for doing so given that the bodies in question generally lack basic credibility. What makes Turkey unique isn't that it is rejecting a report that went against them; what makes them unique is their utter unwillingness to negotiate in good faith. They weren't looking for a route towards rapprochement, they were looking for a path towards escalation. There were loads of ways Turkey could have indicated its dissatisfaction with the Palmer Report that didn't entail expelling the ambassador of a friendly nation. As is per usual, it isn't Israel who decided to up the diplomatic ante with its neighbors. Turkey made a conscious decision that it wanted to turn a fissure into a chasm, and it acted accordingly.

Palmer Report Largely Vindicates Blockade

The United Nation's long-awaited Palmer Report on the Gaza flotilla incident has now been released, and, from Israel's perspective it has to be seen as a major win. The committee firmly decides that the blockade is legal and notes that an essential element of a legal element is that it has to be enforced consistently (which means intercepting folks trying to breach it, and can entail forcibly boarding resisting vessels). It also notes that the the Israeli soldiers who boarded the Mavi Marmara did face violent resistance. The committee does believe that Israel used excessive force in boarding the vessel and in not pursuing more non-violent interception techniques prior to its forcible boarding action. Statements from the Israeli and Turkish representatives to the commission appended at the end are revealing: the Israeli representative quibbles with the excessive force findings, but the Turkish representative is forced to disassociate himself from virtually the entire document.

I think the committee report is generally solid. It's analysis on the overall legality of the blockade is unquestionably superior to that forwarded by the UNHRC's report, which (and this is true regardless of one's ultimate perspective on the conflict) was frankly an embarrassment to the legal profession (how one even tries to undertake a proportionality analysis without even mentioning the objective in question, see paras. 51-61, compare Palmer Report pp. 38-45, is a mystery). So that's good.

Of course, I remain exceptionally dubious of the utility of these reports or the international law frame at all. The Palmer Report had been delayed several times because everyone believed it would only hurt rapprochement efforts between Israel and Turkey (Turkey is hell-bent on a full apology and an end to the blockade, which Israel is far less likely to do now that a high-profile commission has deemed the blockade legal and vindicated many, albeit not all, of its actions). Folks opposed to Israel's actions will simply cite the UNHRC report instead. Israel knows that, which limits whatever benefits it might reap from citing the Palmer Report. The conflict is political, and will be resolved politically. Whatever formal authority the Palmer Report has (and I'm not sure it has much anyway), formalism is not and should not be the primary lens for examining the issues in this controversy.

UPDATE: This older post by Kevin Jon Heller offers a good foil for some of what I'm trying to say here. Unlike the UNHRC opinion, Professor Heller provides a solid, well-reasoned argument for why the blockade is illegal (which isn't to say I'm necessarily persuaded by it; indeed, Professor Heller is admirably forthright about his uncertainty on the question). Professor Heller's basic claim is that the conflict between Israel and Hamas is not of an international character, and that international law does not contemplate the use of blockades in non-international conflicts.

The Palmer Report considers and rejects that point, instead holding that the conflict between Israel and Gaza is, for all intents and purposes, "international" for the purpose of the law governing blockades:

The Panel now turns to consider whether the other components of a lawful blockade under international law are met. Traditionally, naval blockades have most commonly been imposed in situations where there is an international armed conflict. While it is uncontested that there has been protracted violence taking the form of armed conflict between Israel and armed groups in Hamas-controlled Gaza, the characterization of this conflict as international is disputed. The conclusion of the Panel in this regard rests upon the facts as they exist on the ground. The specific circumstances of Gaza are unique and are not replicated anywhere in the world. Nor are they likely to be. Gaza and Israel are both distinct territorial and political areas. Hamas is the de facto political and administrative authority in Gaza and to a large extent has control over events on the ground there. It is Hamas that is firing the projectiles in Israel or is permitting others to do so. The Panel considers the conflict should be treated as an international one for the purposes of the law of blockade. This takes foremost into account Israel’s right to self-defence against armed attacks from outside territory. In this context, the debate on Gaza's status, in particular its relationship to Israel, should not obscure the realities. The law does not operate in a political vacuum and it is implausible to deny that the nature of the armed violence between Israel and Hamas goes beyond purely domestic matters. In fact, it has all the trappings of an international armed conflict. This conclusion goes no further than is necessary for the Panel to carry out its mandate. What other implications may or may not flow from it are not before us, even though the Panel is mindful that under the law of armed conflict a State can hardly rely on some of its provisions but not pay heed to others. (p. 41, para. 73)

This sort of analysis appeals to my legal pragmatist streak generally. And specifically with it is hard to argue against the Palmer Report's conclusion that the conflict bears the "trappings" of an international one in terms of actually describing the hostilities between Israel and Gaza. Even to the extent he's right, Professor Heller's analysis is another example of formalism and categories triumphing over descriptive and normative realities. That's not a strike against Professor Heller -- he's doing what lawyers do. And perhaps in a world where international law was a stronger force and it didn't seem like all aspects of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict were treated as sui generis anyway, it might be more important to rely on staid legalisms (though I'm not sure why participants in non-international conflicts should never be allowed to resort to blockades anyway. Their omission seems more a function of the rarity of situations where one would make sense -- Israel/Palestine really being "unique" in this regard -- than the result of some normatively sensible distinction). But that isn't our world, and in the world we live in, the Palmer approach seems far, far more reasonable.

It's the Traditional Jewish Pronunciation

Mitt Romney thinks the reason Michele Bachmann is outpacing him amongst GOP Jewish donors is that they believe Bachmann is Jewish. Right. Because while many would be fooled by her constant invocations of evangelical Christianity, true Jews know that the "ch" in "chutzpah" is pronounced as in "chutney".

Are Liberals Slanted Towards the Media?

The Volokh Conspiracy currently is hosting Timothy Groseclose, author of a book purporting to quantify liberal bias in the media. Basically, what he does is attempt to measure by "objective" (I'm going to problematize that below) criteria, how liberal or conservative a given media outlet is, then compare it to a perfectly "centrist" position. The upshot is that the media, under Groseclose's analysis, leans left -- excepting some niche conservative publications (like The Washington Times).

Groseclose provides three different metrics by which one could "objectively" measure the relative bias of media outlets. The first is with reference to think tanks, the second talks about "loaded phrases" (like "death tax" versus "estate tax"), and the third looks at the mention of "equally true facts", one liberal-leaning, one conservative-leaning. The media "scores" on this are then compared to a normalized ranking of Senators and Congressmen, so, we could say, the way The New York Times uses these think tanks, phrases, and facts, is most closely akin to that of Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT).

This sort of empirical analysis isn't really my area, but even I spotted some problems (actually, while running a google search for this post, I discovered I spotted some problems with the book's predecessor article in the first month of this blog. Ah, the memories). First, there are some question design aspects that worried me when I took my own "PQ" quiz (it labeled me as liberal -- which is absolutely accurate -- but I have no idea why the questions informed me how Democrats and Republicans voted except to push the data to extremes). Second, I don't think the metric disaggregates enough: my own line is that the media is socially liberal, economically moderate, and hawkish on foreign policy, and that hypothesis isn't really examined.

But the most gaping one is that it doesn't tell us who is leaning towards whom. A relative affinity between what think tanks the media cites, and what think tanks a Democratic Senator cites, may show the media is biased towards liberals. But it could equally show that liberals are more likely to cite independent, dependable think tanks of the sort relied upon by the media. In other words, we can use politicians as independent variables and use them to judge the media. Or we can use the media as an independent variable and use it to judge the politicians. Groseclose's methodology doesn't have us distinguish.

And there's a solid case to be made that the latter is a better explanation. Take Groseclose's own example on the "loaded phrases" front: "death tax" versus "estate tax". Republicans tend to use the former, Democrats the latter. Hence, under Groseclose's methodology, if the media tends to use the latter, it is exhibiting liberal bias. But another explanation is simply that "estate tax" is considered the more neutral, explanatory term, which is why the media uses it. "Estate tax" is, in fact, not loaded in the way that "death tax" is (or something like "plutocrat tax" would be). Practitioners don't talk about the "death tax", they talk about the estate tax. "Estate tax" is the name of the term in U.S. tax code dating back to 1916, "death taxes" refer to something else entirely. The term "death tax" didn't gain any mainstream traction until the Gingrich speakership, when it was part of a specific effort to muster up voter anger against the "estate tax".

Given all that, it makes perfect sense for the media to favor "estate tax" over "death tax". Groseclose's methodology would have us adopt the absurd conclusion that, because both the media and liberals (but not conservatives) refer to the estate tax by its historical and official name, that's a problem with the media's objectivity. One could hardly impoverish the meaning of "media objectivity" more if one tried.

What is most weird about Groseclose's methodology is that, for all its protestations of scientific rigor, it is really dependent on a very blunt sort of relativism. The methods he use only make sense if one effectively believes there is no way of determining which think tanks or more reliable or less reliable, which phrases are neutral and which ones are inciting, which facts are salient and which are irrelevant. Why not? Well, probably because the most obvious way of measuring that would be with reference to how a supposedly neutral arbiter, like the media, and then instead of concluding that there exists a liberal media bias, we instead conclude that, as the saying goes, "reality has a well-known liberal bias."

But if we dispense with the notion that we can evaluate the neutrality of various phrases or researchers on their merits, then it's all politics -- liberal ideas and conservative ideas, liberal phrases and conservative phrases, liberal facts and conservative facts. And the media tends to align itself with the liberals. If there's no truth behind it, then that's no strike against the right. It just marks the media as an adversary.

Again with the Formalist Worries

The forthcoming UN General Assembly vote on admitting Palestine as a state is perhaps the highest profile example of the Netanyahu administration's catastrophic failure at managing both Israel's perception abroad and crafting any sort of progress on resolving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict at home. To be sure, at this stage in the game, there is little any Israeli government could do to stop the vote (though the American threat to slash aid to Palestine might). But this is not something that came up out of nowhere -- it is the upshot of months of blunders and unforced errors by the Keystone Cops which comprise the current Israeli cabinet. I cannot think of an Israeli government in my lifetime which has done more damage to the state of Israel than this one.

But anyway. One of the more 7-dimensional chess worries to emerge from the statehood vote was claims by Palestinian legal adviser Guy Goodwin Gil that the statehood vote could imperil various claims made by Palestinians who do not currently reside in the West Bank or Gaza (the "diaspora", so to speak). In essence, the current state of affairs has the PLO as the recognized representative of the Palestinian people (wherever they live). "Palestine", as a state, would take over that role in the United Nations. The problem, though, is that the state of Palestine has little basis for claiming the right to represent Palestinians who aren't inside its borders (and, to the extent it wants to push for a "right of return" to Israel proper, Palestinians who have no desire to move inside its borders).

Another Palestinian legal adviser, my Illinois colleague (though we have not yet met) Francis Boyle, argues that these worries will not come to pass. His reasons are a little vague, but no matter -- I suspect he is correct. But the reasons why have nothing to do with "all the legal and constitutional technicalities that were originally built into the Palestinian Declaration of Independence," or, for that matter, technicalities in international law.

For starters, it is hardly unknown for states to maintain concern about the status and rights of people -- even non-citizens -- outside their borders that the state nonetheless possesses an affinity towards. Mexico, for example, cares quite a bit about the rights of Chicana/os in the United States -- including those who are United States citizens. That is part and parcel of having nation-states in the first place where, in addition to (hopefully) promising some sort of open, liberal political order, states also hold themselves out as the homeland of Mexicans or the Irish or Jews or Palestinians.

But more importantly, the entire debate relies on formal notions of the structure of international law and the effect international legal machinations of which I'm dubious exert any strong force. Relying on formal rules of international law to exert any constraining force on what international law is said to be in politically "hot" conflicts is almost invariably a mistake. To the contrary, the international legal system is overwhelmingly results-oriented, and in particularly it fervently desires results that redound to the benefit of Palestinians (and to the disadvantage of Israelis). To the extent there might be precedents which seem to imperil a given Palestinian interest, they'll be modified accordingly or cast aside. In the worst case, an entirely sui generis regime will be carved out to accommodate the dissonance (see, e.g., the UNRWA).

To be honest, though, in a sense this is how it should be. Not the part about international law being entirely results-oriented (though honestly, I'm mostly an international law skeptic even conceptually at this point -- it is not a system I think presents a particularly prime candidate for meaningful reform, so I prefer not to try). But the various claims of Israelis and Palestinians shouldn't be extinguished by technocratic reshuffling of categories, and it bothers me how often people try to play this game. One sees it with respect to Jews when folks alternatively label them a "religion", "race", or "ethnicity" depending on which one best defeats any particular Jewish political claim. The idea that the category system might not map onto the territory -- might simply be inadequate to encompass the Jewish experience and respond to just Jewish political claims -- is pushed aside as Jews are forced into a legalistic game whose rules, at best, we didn't write and at worst were written precisely to maintain Jewish subjugation.

And that's silly. I'm no fan of a Palestinian right of return, and everybody knows that it will not be a part of any final peace agreement except perhaps as some limited symbolism. But that end is and should flow out of a negotiated settlement -- it should not be the result of some legalistic trap.

Some Million

While understanding why Israelis might justifiably be nervous about the new government in Cairo, I've always been dubious that Egypt actually was going to repudiate its peace treaty with Israel. First, the minds of most Egyptians are primarily on other things right now. Second, one generally doesn't repudiate a peace treaty unless one is willing to go to war (otherwise, what's the point?), and I don't think the Egyptian people are in any mood for an actual full-blown armed conflict, nor do I imagine the Egyptian military is currently prepared to engage in such hostilities even if the populace were. Finally, and not insignificantly, there is massive international pressure against Egypt repudiating its peace agreement with Israel -- meaning that the Egyptian government won't take that step without some very strong reason (be it irresistible domestic pressure or provocation or what have you).

But one always can worry (and I do think it is notable that, reputation for rabid warmongering aside, there is no political constituency of note in Israel that has called for a repudiation of peace with Egypt. It seems that once Israel makes a final agreement with one of its neighbors, it is capable of keeping it with little fuss from its citizens' end). So I was gratified to find out that the planned "million man march" in Cairo calling for an end to peace with Israel apparently only attracted a few bare hundreds. This doesn't surprise me -- while I imagine the Egyptian street is probably rather cool towards Israel, I also, to reiterate, think they're mostly concerned about other issues right now, and are not keen on reverting back to old patterns where mad gesticulations towards Israel are used to distract them from necessary reforms at home. There, now, that playbook isn't going to fly.

The Difference Between Winning and Not Losing

Caroline Glick has a whiny column up blaming the Israeli media for sabotaging "American media superstar" Glenn Beck's trip through Israel. Her breathless account of Beck's boundless influence ("His calls for action are answered by hundreds of thousands of people. His statements are a guidepost for millions of Americans. Aside from radio host Rush Limbaugh, no media personality in the US has such influence.") manages to omit the fact that he got himself axed from Fox for being just too crazy. But whatever -- Glick is of the persuasion that the vast majority of Israel's "friends" are really enemies, and that the only friends worth having are the one's that cheer alongside whatever policy Avigdor Lieberman bumbles into next (Tzipi Livni, in Glick's telling, is clearly not among Israel's friends). What Israel needs, she said, is for folks to "empower it to defeat its enemies and to stand up to an increasingly hostile world."

Glick's ideological blinders are doing more than deluding her into thinking that Glenn Beck is anything but a deranged nutjob. It also is causing her to seriously misappraise Israel's security situation. Israel can't win its battle by military force. It can lose it that way, to be sure. And that's important to remember. Losing is bad, and the sort of losing we're talking about -- where the state gets wiped off the map and Jewish communal self-determination is extinguished -- would be exceptionally bad. That's why you won't see me get behind notions of throwing up an arms boycott against Israel. We're talking about a country that has been at war a half dozen times in barely 60 years of existence, that is still technically in a state of war with two of its immediate neighbors, that has another regional power promisng to "eradicate" it ... I could go on. Given that, I fully subscribe to the notion that Israel needs an armed forces able to, paraphrasing Sergeant Johnson, "blow up any son-of-a-bitch dumb enough" to try and mess them up.

But that's simply a case of "not losing". Successfully not being destroyed is certainly important, but it's not the end goal. The end goal is for Israel to not have to fight such wars. It's for Israel to be a recognized part of the region, stable and secure as a Jewish, democratic state. And that's something that force can't accomplish. Force can defend against hostile action, but it can't stop hostile sentiment. Force can respond to military incursions, but it can't stop demographic realities. Force can defend democratic institutions, but it can't create universal suffrage. All of these things have to be resolved with political courage, not military might.

These political reforms and negotiations and compromises -- jumping into an unknown future in the hopes that former enemies can become peaceful neighbors -- can be frightening. They are risks. Luckily, Glick and Beck are correct that there exists against many Israelis an incredible reserve of courage that often has been called upon to make these deals. It is just a shame that Glick and Beck seem not to have kept any for themselves.

Criticize This!

A St. Andrews University student was expelled, and convicted under a racial abuse statute, after placing his hands in his trousers, grabbing his genitals, then rubbing it over an Israeli flag a fellow student had in his own room. The student also allegedly made remarks to the effect that Jews had no claim on the state of Israel and that the student was a "terrorist". Another student was acquitted of the criminal charges, but an internal university investigation suspended him for a year.

O'Malley Renews the Push

After Maryland came tantalizing close to instituting marriage equality this past year, Governor Martin O'Malley (D) is gearing up for a renewed push.

It's unclear how, if at all, the political dynamic has changed in Annapolis. O'Malley has some boilerplate about how the trendlines are in our favor (and they are), but there's no word on movement by any particular state legislator. Of course, the bill really just failed to pass last time, so even assuming no change we're still in toss-up territory.

I have to add my kudos to Governor O'Malley, who is starting to demonstrate real leadership on the issue. It isn't just "if it passes, I'm willing to sign it" -- he's made it known that he completely and unambiguously supports the legislation, and thinks it should pass. So good for him. And hopefully, this time Maryland will indeed do the right thing.

A War They Can Get Onboard With

Lauren Booth is a journalist for Iran's Press TV and a pro-Palestinian activist (in much the same way that the Kach Party consists of "pro-Israel activists"). She's mostly known for being the half-sister-in-law of Tony Blair. Like many folks of her particular political bent, she is affiliated with various putatively "anti-war" groups: Stop the War Coalition, Media Workers Against the War, etc..

But let it never be said she's not a pragmatist about it. For Lauren Booth appears to have found a war she can support: Urging Israel's Arab neighbors to attack it (again):

It is time, Brothers and Sisters, for Al Quds to be liberated. For Islam and people of the world who wish to pray there to the one God. And we say here today to you Israel, we see your crimes and we loathe your crimes. And to us your nation does not exist, because it is a criminal injustice against humanity. We want to see Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt go to the borders and stop this now. Liberate Al Quds! March to Al Quds!

If asking Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt to "march to [Jerusalem]" (Al Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem) isn't simply a pro-war rallying cry, I don't know what is. Other speakers clarified that, yes, they were talking about sending in the army:

You can’t take an army, which is a nation’s army, a terrorist nation’s army, and defeat it with sincere small fighters. It needs some of those states around to release their armies to burn that land and then that region will see peace like it had in the past. Because the only time that land has seen peace between Muslim, Christian and Jew living side by side was when sincere Islamic rulers ruled with justice.

The point is that the "anti-war" commitments of folks like Booth extend precisely as far as their realization that sometimes war has the salutary impact of killing Israeli Jews.

Want a Broader Tax Base? Reduce Income Inequality

The current tax orthodoxy amongst congressional Republicans has been simple: no more taxes, period. But some Republican presidential contenders realize that's unsustainable. And they've finally hit on a tax increase they can support: raising taxes on the bottom 50% of American workers. The language is "broadening the tax base", and the argument is that these are Americans who pay no income tax at all (though of course they pay other taxes, such as social security and sales taxes), because their incomes fall below the minimum required to trigger tax liability.

Libertarian blogger Radley Balko* concurs with those who find it worrisome that half the country pays nothing in income taxes. The problem, as he sees it, is that "an increasingly small percentage of earners fund the government, we’ll soon have a majority of people who pay no tax voting for more and more government services they benefit from, but don’t have to pay for." The reason we want to broaden the tax base is to ensure that everybody (or at least as many people as is feasible) have "skin in the game", that is, have an incentive to care about governmental expenditures.

The concern is legitimate, but it doesn't necessarily take us where Balko thinks it does. Let's put aside for the moment the fact that just because a majority of Americans don't pay income taxes doesn't actually mean that majority controls policy (both because of apportionment issues, and also because of structural concerns which disproportionately reduce the influence the bottom 50% have in political institutions). And also put aside the fact that taxation is not the only way that one can have "skin in the game" -- poorer Americans are more likely to be dependent on governmental services for the provision of basic needs, and thus have every reason to care about the efficacy of such services (Balko's main concern is less effected by this, because his primary worry is that government will do more, not that it will do what it does poorly -- though he suspects it will).

That fifty percent of Americans don't pay income tax is not because our tax code is set up to say "the poorest half of Americans pay nothing". Rather, the income tax system simply decrees that people who make below a certain threshold pay nothing income taxes, presumably because we feel that taking money away from people who earn that little represents too much of a hardship. And, as income inequality continues to skyrocket, the number of people who fall below that demarcation is now hovering around 50%.

But if we started seeing rising wages and earnings amongst the working class, that number would drop as more Americans earn enough to join the ranks of taxpayers. In other words, to the extent conservatives are really concerned that as many people as possible have "skin in the game", the current income tax structure in turn gives conservatives an incentive to care about an issue important to liberals: income inequality. One can broaden the tax base by taking more away from the already-poor. But it seems the better option is to broaden the income tax base by broadening the income base -- rendering fewer people poor in the first place.

And aside from the fact that this is simply more humane -- there is a threshold level of income below which we don't think a family is earning enough to support itself to a standard commensurate with our status as the greatest country in the world -- I think the incentive question cuts in its favor as well. I already explained above that the poor already have lots of incentives to care about how government works, and, regardless, it's far cheaper to incentivize them to act anyway. By contrast, there are very few notable points of leverage society has on the rich to get them to care about the living standards of the poor. To the extent that they are genuinely concerned over an emergent democratic majority which pays no taxes (to be honest, I'm dubious that they're actually that concerned), that's a very rare opportunity to make a trade.

* I want to say that, while obviously I strongly disagree with Balko on issues such as this, I have a lot of respect for him as a libertarian who actually puts his money where his mouth is -- he devotes as much if not more attention to aspects of governmental power which harm the poor and marginalized as he does to decrying regulations which hurt primarily the rich and powerful. His work on police brutality and the death penalty, in particular, has been stellar and admirable.

The End May Be Nigh in Libya

If there is one name I trust for useful, clear-eyed, non-biased descriptive evaluations of what is going in a military conflict, it's Robert Farley of LGM (see, e.g., his early appraisal of Cast Lead, which I drew on heavily). What makes him distinct from so many other commentators is that he doesn't seem tied to a particular normative agenda regarding warfare -- he's neither a gun-toting neoconservative cheerleader, nor a reflexive anti-war peace protestor. That doesn't mean he doesn't have normative opinions, only that when he gives his predictions, I feel comfortable he's not molding them to craft a narrative either in support or against "war" as a concept.

Anyway, in that vein his thoughts on where Libya seems to be headed are well worth reading. Of particular interest is the evaluation of the "Afghan model" of military intervention (special forces logistical support combined with air power used to support indigenous forces on the ground) which, he claims, may be vindicated in the military sense while showing its fragility in the political sense. Avoiding real boots on the ground didn't seem to stop any flack aimed Obama's way (which was much of the point). But it does look like the rebels will be victorious and, Farley argues, there are real benefits to it being the rebel forces themselves who are seen as toppling the regime (and had to work together to do so), rather than it being swept away by a Western expeditionary force.

Thanks! Oh, Wait, That Was an Insult?

The Syrian people continue to brave brutal and violent crackdowns, but seem on the verge of overthrowing the dictatorial rule of Bashar al-Assad. I, personally, salute the Syrian people for their courage and perseverance. But one Australian blogger credits Israel for the "sustained attack" on Assad.

Wait, did I say "credit"? I meant blame. The blogger blames Israel for Assad's troubles.

Personally, I don't think the Syrian revolution has much to do with Israel at all. But it's extra weird acting like the Syrian quest for freedom is a bad thing.

UPDATE: More on the whole Syrian peace marchers are just tools of Israel meme.

Miss Katie is the Best

After Hours on Cracked.com is one of my all-time favorite things. Katie Willert, a comedian who is on the cast of After Hours is, by extension, also one of my favorite people.

Unfortunately, some people are dicks (and specifically, sexist dicks) to her online, in the Cracked.com comments section. And yes, comments sections are typically chock full of assholes -- that's a universal truism of the internet. But still, it's sad.

Anyway, there's no mega-point to be made here. Only that Katie Willert is awesome, and that she'll remain awesome no matter what some obscure no-name commenter frat ape has to say about it. So keep on keeping on, Katie.

Call Him Crazy

TPM and I had the exact same reaction to Jon Huntsman's "call me crazy" tweet ("To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy."). Specifically: He's running for the GOP nod, and he just tweeted that. If the shoe fits....

Gaza Students Prevented from Studying in the US

A group of Gaza students with scholarships to study in America were prevented from leaving the Gaza Strip. This is part of a larger effort by the governing authority to crack down on academic freedom and independent civil society in the Palestinian territories, and just another minor indignity and human rights violation Palestinian children must endure ....

Oh, wait -- it was Hamas' decision. Well, never mind.

(But, to be clear, the part about it being one piece of a larger effort to crackdown on independent civil society is absolutely true. Hamas has recently taken several steps to tighten its grip on all aspects of life in the Gaza Strip, with independent NGOs and aid groups being the primary targets).

UPDATE: Speak of the devil, Hamas also has been notably sanguine about Syria's shelling of Palestinian civilians in refugee camps as part of the anti-uprising crackdown.

How Many GOPers Does It Take To Recognize a Collective Action Problem?

Warren Buffet recently took to the New York Times to argue that the very rich -- like himself -- were under-taxed. It's not even that bold of an argument -- tax rates for the ultra-wealthy are exceptionally low, and the American government needs revenue. But obviously, for the death-before-taxes wing of the GOP (i.e., all of it), this was heresy.

My former co-blogger Michael Van Der Galien was the first person I saw to snidely comment that Buffet was free to donate as much money as he wanted to charity (or the IRS), of his own volition. I thought about responding to point out that the question of tax rates for the rich is a collective action problem -- Buffet obviously was not declaring that he alone could solve America's budget crisis if only he were allowed -- but I figured it was a one-off, and decided to let it lie.

But alas, as usual, I can't set my expectations low enough. Jon Chait collects the same argument being made by Michele Bachmann and the Wall Street Journal. In addition to making the obvious collective-action point, Chait also notes that -- between the "why don't you just donate" then argument made against folks like Buffet, and the "class warfare" charge made against everyone else -- it turns out that nobody has standing to argue against raising a top marginal rate that currently is 15 points lower than where it was for the majority of the Reagan administration. Neat trick, that.

Take Two

Some might have forgotten that there were two recall elections in Wisconsin today as well, both targeting Democrats. The AP has called both races for the incumbents (one won by a 58/42 margin with all precincts reporting, another is up 54/46 with 79% in). The net result is that Democrats gained a total of two seats in the state Senate, winning 2/6 of their recall attempts while Republicans went 0/3 (there was another failed recall attempt against a Democrat earlier in the cycle).

Republicans still maintain a one seat edge in the state senate. All eyes are currently on Sen. Dale Schultz (R), easily the most moderate member of the GOP caucus (and a "nay" vote on Governor Walker's union busting plan). Schultz has already declared he won't switch parties, but the possibility he might defect on individual votes may be enough to stem some of the worse abuses of the Wisconsin Republican leadership.

One Decade On, One Decade Off

Ex.-Rep. Bob Shamansky (D-OH) died last week. He only served one term in Congress, during the 1980s, so he wasn't that notable for his political accomplishments. Rather, what is fascinating about him is the temporal range of his career. Shamansky ran for Congress in 1966, in 1980 (when he won), 1982 (when he lost the seat he won), and 2006. In other words, he ran in three separate decades, with an "off" decade in between each.

I have to think that's unique. Condolences to Rep. Shamansky's loved ones.