Akin's Remaining Friends

In the wake of Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin's (R) comments that women who are victims of "legitimate" rape don't get pregnant, it's been gratifying to see a large number of GOPers looking to cut Akin loose (e.g., Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX)). Sure a goodly portion of it is the belief that Akin's about to cost them a likely Senate pick-up in Missouri, but the bare recognition of the fact that sometimes lunatic craziness has electoral consequences is a big step for the GOP compared to 2010.

But don't shed too many tears for Akin. It's not like he's wholly without friends. The Family Research Council released a statement saying that while they "don’t know anything about the science" (... but I repeat myself), Akin is assuredly the real victim here of the dreaded "gotcha politics". Meanwhile, across the pond George Galloway wants you to know that even if Julian Assange is guilty of everything he's alleged to have done, it's clearly nothing more than "bad sexual etiquette." To call it "rape", Galloway claims, would " bankrupt the term rape of all meaning."

I sense a new group of besties forming....

Settler Terrorism is Terrorism

The US State Department has begun grouping in settler "price tag" attacks as a form of terrorism committed in Israel and Palestine. This is, of course, exactly right. And furthermore, when someone -- I don't care who -- commits a terrorist strike in territory under Israeli jurisdiction -- I don't care against whom -- they're threatening the security and stability of the Israeli state. They are threats to Israeli national security, and ought properly be seen as such.

In related news, a 19-year old suspect has been arrested in the "lynch" attack in Jerusalem that injured four Palestinians, one critically.

Lie Extermination

Garance Franke-Ruta has three suggestions for how the media can handle repeated campaign lies (such as Mitt Romney's claim that Obama has eliminated the work requirements from welfare).

1) Add boilerplate to every story indicating it is a lie (similar to how stories about "Obama is a Muslim" always included language informing the reader that this was false).

2) Always attribute the charge to campaign partisans, and immediately quote rebuttal from opposing partisans.

3) Turn repeated lying into its own story.

Of these, I dislike the second, because it's identical to he said/she said journalism, which actually allows the lie to get traction because independents will assume the truth lies somewhere in the middle. But the other two proposals are spot on. Franke-Ruta expects us to start seeing "repeated liar" stories, which would surprise me. It's hardly unprecedented -- remember Election 2000? -- but it seems like it takes balls the media tends to lack.

I'd be particularly intrigued if such a story didn't just attack the credibility of the instigating campaign, but also took on the think tanks providing a "source" for the charge (in the case of the "Obama gutted work requirements" lie, that would be the Heritage Foundation). Such organizations depend, in large part, on their ability to be taken as credible currency by the media -- providing an "independent" veneer to whatever claim they're making. I'd love to see some consequences when they abuse that privilege and act as simple hacks.

Sacramento Makes Ashkelon a "Sister City"

The Sacramento City Council unanimously voted to make Ashkelon, Israel one of its "sister cities". Ashkelon joins nine other Sacramento sister cities, including Bethlehem in the Palestinian Authority (Bethlehem was added in 2009, under a deal that would see an Israeli city added later).

There was some controversy from the usual suspects (including Jewish Voice for Peace, which totally opposes only the occupation and not Israel-qua-Israel). The claim was that adding Ashkelon was unfair given Israeli human rights violations against Palestinians; some argued against Ashkelon specifically because it has a jail which holds Palestinian prisoners and because Ashkelon was formerly the site of a Palestinian village (the village had been the site of fierce fighting between Israeli and Egyptian forces during Israel's war of independence, forcing many of its residents to flee). Today, Ashkelon's most well-known relationship to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is its status as a constant target for Palestinian shelling emanating from the Gaza Strip.

I'm disinclined to credit the claim that the opposition's problem is with Ashkleon, rather than with Israel -- the arguments they make against Ashkelon are exceptionally thin and could, with minor shifts, be applied against virtually any city in the world). Which inspired me to take a look at the other cities Sacramento has partnered with.

* Manila: Capital of the Philippines, which is currently engaged in a brutal counter-insurgency against Islamic separatists in the southern parts of the country. The Philippines has resorted to extrajudicial killings, vigilantism, disappearances, torture, and arbitrary arrest and detention.

* Matsuyama, Japan: Japan has a long-standing practice of discrimination against the indigenous Ainu people, with de jure discriminatory laws repealed only in 1997.

* Jinan, China: Yeah, I'm not even going to bother with this one. From the occupation of Tibet to one-party rule to government censorship and crackdowns on dissent, this is too easy.

* Hamilton, New Zealand: Built on the site of Maori villages prior to British colonization. New Zealand's treatment of its indigenous minority continues to be of concern.

* Liestel, Switzerland: Switzerland has recently come under fire for banning the building of minarets in Mosques. Liestal is the seat of Basel County, where over 55% of voters approved the ban.

* Chisinau: The capital of Moldova, another country with a spotty human rights record, including many restrictions on independent media and reports of widespread torture by police forces.

* Yongsan-gu, South Korea: Imperialist swine. In all seriousness, though, non-Korean minorities face considerable discrimination, particularly among non-documented workers from elsewhere in Asia. The country also has many anti-gay discriminatory laws.

* San Juan de Oriente, Nicarauga: Also built in the vicinity of native villages by European colonizers, Nicaragua has also experienced significant problems with police abuse, and President Ortega has been accused of using state apparatuses to squelch dissent while enabling regime-friendly groups free reign to violently terrorize opponents.

* Bethlehem: Palestinian security forces stand accused of violence against Christian residents, who have accelerated emigration from the city. Israeli citizens are forbidden from entering Bethlehem, including the Solomon's Pools, while Palestinians require a permit to enter Rachel's Tomb, a Jewish holy site. Military and paramilitary forces linked to the Palestinian Authority have been implicated in numerous terrorist attacks against Jewish targets.

The point isn't that any of these cities shouldn't be "sister cities". The point is that the claim that Ashkelon or Israel is somehow distinct in form from other cities that Sacramento has paired with (or indeed, most cities around the world) are essentially spurious. They're cover for a fundamental objection that Israel is there and doesn't roll over and die.

Suppressive Cycles

I confess to having similar thoughts to Harold Meyerson:

If voter suppression goes forward and Romney narrowly prevails, consider the consequences. An overwhelmingly and increasingly white Republican Party, based in the South, will owe its power to discrimination against black and Latino voters, much like the old segregationist Dixiecrats. It’s not that Republicans haven’t run voter suppression operations before, but they’ve been under-the-table dirty tricks, such as calling minority voters with misinformation about polling-place locations and hours. By contrast, this year’s suppression would be the intended outcome of laws that Republicans publicly supported, just as the denial of the franchise to Southern blacks before 1965 was the intended result of laws such as poll taxes. More ominous still, by further estranging minority voters, even as minorities constitute a steadily larger share of the electorate, Republicans will be putting themselves in a position where they increasingly rely on only white voters and where their only path to victory will be the continued suppression of minority votes. A cycle more vicious is hard to imagine.

This does not strike me as a negligible risk. The voter suppression tactics of today are "justified" by reference to a non-existent phenomenon, so its not like Republicans have to worry about a fig leaf jarring loose. And if GOP's only path to competitiveness is in each year blocking more and more minority voters from reaching the polls, there's a real chance that's the strategy that they'll adopt.

The Ryan Effect

There are different schools of thought when it comes to choosing a Vice President. One can pick to reinforce a narrative ("this election is all about the economy"), or to balance the ticket (the nominee is strong on domestic issues but has little foreign policy experience, so pick a VP who is know to be an IR maven). One can pick based on electoral calculation or based on who is ready to take the reins of the presidency if disaster strikes. One can go for geographic diversity, or break barriers by selecting a woman or sexual minority.

But the selection of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as Mitt Romney's VP nominee has raised a new criteria -- effectively shifting blame for a loss. Already I'm seeing a bunch of different reports arguing over whether and how Ryan reallocates blame for a Republican defeat in November. Some say Ryan's presence on the ticket pins the loss on the far-right slash-and-burners that Ryan represents. Others vehemently disagree, saying this is still the "moderate" Mitt Romney's baby.

I'm not really sure what I believe. But I do know that if the first reaction to the VP pick by one's base is "how does this impact our upcoming November defeat", well, that's not exactly the sign of a healthy and confident campaign.

This is a Secret Message

Testing from behind the wall. If you aren't an approved reader, you shouldn't be able to see this. If you can see this, either the wall isn't working or welcome to the club!

The End, For Now

You all gonna be here when I wake up?

I was planning on waiting a few more days to write this. It was not something I was looking forward to, to say the least. But I hit a natural lull in my blogging and, well, it didn't seem smart to try and get back in the groove given what was looming on the horizon.

Eight years and two months after I launched it shortly after my high school graduation, The Debate Link is going on public hiatus.

I mean "hiatus" seriously -- this is a required break for the duration of my clerkship, where various rules of judicial ethics effectively prevent me from having a high-profile public platform for launching all my half-formed opinions onto the world. Everyone raves about how wonderful clerking is, and I'm excited about it too, but this is one major sacrifice I'm being asked to make. But it's only for a year, I hope. The plan is that once that clerkship ends a year from now, the blog will resume as well.

Still, this is a scary thing for me. The Debate Link has been my baby for nearly my entire adult life. I created it from scratch and since then it has become a really important part of me. It's a space for me to let off steam, incubate new ideas, or just shoot the breeze about random interesting events. It has more or less served as my mind's external hard-drive for years. And, of course, it has sparked innumerable great conversations with friends and colleagues off-line, all of which I treasure.

Some of these things I can still do -- just not in a public setting. I'll move the blog behind a password wall, and I can still write to my heart's content. So in that sense it isn't really a "hiatus", since I'll still be doing some writing (albeit probably at a reduced pace). But taking the blog out of the public eye means giving up one of the most important things of all -- the blogging community. I'm still small-ball enough that getting links from any blog (big or little) tickles me pink. And even more important than inbound links, I've been blessed with some wonderful commenters and met some wonderful people through The Debate Link. It is difficult to let that go -- even temporarily. While I may end up sharing the password with a limited audience, there's no getting around the fact that I'm essentially disconnecting the blog from its larger ecosphere, and that's going to hurt.

But so it is. I'm going to leave this post up on top as my formal farewell until I get back from my vacation in Maryland later this month, and then The Debate Link will officially become password protected.

Again, I want to thank everybody who's been reading me -- those of you who have been around almost since the beginning, and those of you who are relatively new. You've been fantastic.

Just promise me you'll be here when I get back.

Concern Trolling, Thy Name Is Lara

I think Americans for Peace Now is generally a good organization, but this piece by Lara Friedman on the "exploitation" of Jewish refugees is just awful. The instigation for the column is various moves in both Israel and the United States to place the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab countries -- many of whom were forced to flee anti-Semitic discrimination and violence and watched as their property was confiscated -- on the agenda of the broader Israeli/Arab peace process. "Exploitation", here, appears to be defined as "making sure these persons are not completely overlooked".

The basic problem with Friedman's article is that, while it purports to recognize that there are unresolved issues of justice with respect to the departure of Jews from Arab nations, she effectively labels any efforts to make it an agenda item an example of illegitimate political gamesmanship meant to neutralize claims by Palestinian refugees. For starters, even on face this isn't really correct -- the congressional bill she cites, for example, specifically suggests that Israeli and Palestinian refugee claims ought to be paired. So she twists a bit and says, no, the problem is that discussion of Israeli refugees as a parallel to Palestinian refugees is wrongheaded because they're separate issues. Which they are, but it's not clear why that's relevant -- if they're both issues of concern, both should be on the agenda, and one set of refugees currently is being largely ignored. Jewish refugees and their descendants have every right to wonder about the asymmetry as compared to the most analogous event. None of these bills do much more than urge that Arab Jewish claims become part of the agenda -- which right now they are not. If even that relatively modest call is illegitimate politicization, then Friedman is effectively saying that Arab Jews should permanently shut up.

Is part of the impetus for this discussion an attempt to fight back against the notion of Israel as the sole wrongdoer victimizing Palestinians, while Jews had it made in the shade? Sure. But so what? Aside from the fact that if we're going to get all high-groundy over disputants' attempts at framing we'll be here all day, Israel wasn't the sole wrongdoer and not all Jews did have it made in the shade. The fact of the matter is that this is an issue which has been grossly overlooked for decades for a variety of factors -- racism against non-White Jews ranking high among them -- and now is finally getting some attention. While Friedman says that these claims are "tarnished" because they also have political valence, I doubt the men and women in question will lose much sleep over it, given that everything in this region has a political valence. If that's Friedman's standard -- and it really isn't, because it's impossible for it to be one she applies to every Israeli/Palestinian issue -- what she's actually saying is that any discussion of Arab Jewish claims is a distraction from real-people issues.

Frankly, this is a class of persons that's been silenced for long enough, and deserves to have their grievances aired. Friedman may sigh about how she feels for Arab Jews, but without any indication of how a conversation about them can proceed in an "acceptable" fashion, it rings quite hollow indeed.

UC's Misguided Flirtation with Hate Speech Ban

The Forward has an interesting story up about a proposal by a University of California community to regulate hate speech -- in part because of alleged anti-Semitism as part and parcel of various anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian protests.

While I'm perhaps a little more ambivalent than most on this issue, I still lean towards skepticism. There's just too much room for manipulation with regard to what counts and what doesn't. One of the co-directors of the panel, when asked about whether calling Israel an "apartheid state" would count as hate speech, replied "I couldn't give you an answer without looking at the definition of how courts define hate speech." Bzzt. American courts don't have a definition of hate speech, because hate speech isn't a legally cognizable concept in American law at the moment. The panel grandstands about the inevitable legal challenge (urging the university to "accept the challenge."), but it isn't altogether clear they know just how shaky their position is.

And furthermore, it seems like a ban is the easy way out. Banning hate speech is a sign not just that one's community has racist, sexist, or anti-Semitic members. It's a sign that the community as a whole does not have a strong enough commitment to liberal ideals to defeat them by normal means. It is easy to sign an order barring a racist protest. It is considerably harder to mobilize the community to counterprotest, to flood the newspapers with condemnatory editorials, and to otherwise make it known that the fringe is a fringe. It strikes me that UC's flirtation with this move is done with the knowledge that the fringe isn't so fringe at all, and a corresponding lack of confidence that, left to their own devices, the Cal community really can be counted on to stand against bigotry. There is irony in the report chiding UC President Mark Yudof for condemning a protest of a pro-Israel event, for in a sense that's precisely the right tactic -- people can protest however they want, and we hope that the university leadership and student rank-and-file makes known their contempt for the protesters. That's how one reconciles free speech with combating hate speech -- "more speech, not enforced silence."


None of this is to say that issues of racism and anti-Semitism aren't problems on California campuses. The JVP, for example, is complaining about a co-director of the panel who apparently is biased because he's (*gasp*) pro-Israel. They're also making the banal and irrelevant point that Jews have a variety of positions on Israel, though it is altogether unclear why that would make it impossible for any particular statement or protest against Israel to be anti-Semitic (as usual, the JVP's main contribution is to act as Jewish voice for what non-Jews want to say about Jews with impunity). But that the JVP has an institutional hostility to the belief that anti-Semitism exists does not mean that any policy geared at combating it is appropriate. I'm skeptical of Cal's ability to manage an anti-hate speech program, and I'm worried about such a policy serving as a short-cut against what needs to be done -- an actual, concrete, substantive, broad-based commitment by the entire university community that bigotry is unacceptable and does not represent California values.

Down Goes Perry!

The kinda-upset by former state Solicitor General Ted Cruz over Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in the Texas Republican Senate primary (kinda because while Dewhurst started as the overwhelming favorite, all the momentum had shifted to Cruz during the run-off such that by election day, prognosticators were saying that a Dewhurst victory would be "a surprise") doesn't effect me very much. It in effect chooses a new US Senator. And, since this is Texas, he looks like a typical loon, but no more than anyone else. I mean, what Republican at this point doesn't oppose efforts by a shadowy Jewish financier to destroy freedom and achieve global domination George Soros' "grand scheme ... to abolish 'unsustainable' environments, including golf courses, grazing pastures, and paved roads" efforts by a shadowy Jewish financier to destroy freedom and achieve global domination (you know what -- my original formulation is more accurate, so I'm sticking with that).

But what is a little interesting is how this race puts the exclamation point on the fall of Rick Perry. Dewhurst, of course, is Perry's LG, and Perry went to the mat hard for him. But even in Texas, Republicans have fallen out of love with the man who actually managed to be too stupid to win the GOP nomination. And hey, I can certainly support that. The craziness of Texas politicians is a constant, but I can at least enjoy watching the final implosion of Governor Rob Ritchie.

Reports from the Move

As this post indicates, internet is now online, which means the most crucial part of any move has been a success. As always, obtaining wireless connectivity was a desperate, sometimes hopeless-seeming struggle, with twists, turns, a few tears, and a few times where I thought I'd lost even direct connectivity (those last two events may have be related). I honestly think wireless routers refuse to work for the first half-hour after a move out of spite, solely to get you to fiddle impotently with various incomprehensible settings (absent guidance from the internet, because, irony) and make your situation worse each time. As best I can tell, the wireless only started working when I reverted back to the original settings that had failed to work when I first connected the router to the modem. Oh well -- past is past.

Other thoughts:

* We misestimated the truck size we'd need for the move, and so Saturday morning became a brutal triage of which furniture got to make the trip to Minneapolis. A lot of good pieces were left behind. An IKEA trip yesterday has replenished the living room, though much of it remains unbuilt.

* The building managers of the apartment appear to be fascist (Jill says sadist, but it seems to me like their motivating desire is total autocratic control rather than gaining pleasure from others' pain). The number of restrictions on our move in was unbelievable.

* The local grocery store is nice, but too nice -- it's the sort of place that seems to view stocking items like "shampoo" to be degrading. Since there is no CVS for miles, this is deeply unfortunate.

* On the food side of things, Chipotle within walking distance may quickly obviate the need for said grocery store anyway.

* We're back on Comcast, as the building has a contract which makes it insanely cheap. Our installer, Trivia (real name, unbelievably), was very nice, but I can't help but notice one of my TVs effectively can't change channels. Thankfully, Jill is calling them, because I cannot go through this again.

* I already desperately miss smoothies. Neither Jamba Juice nor Robek's nor Smoothie King nor Freshen's appears to have discovered Minneapolis yet. Nor, if my cell phone reception is to be believed, has AT&T.

Moving on Up

Today's packing today, and tomorrow's moving day. I'm off to Minneapolis, and will be moved in on Monday. But no time to rest on my laurels -- I'll be in Chicago next weekend, and I'll be in DC (and the beach) for days a week after that.

J Street Takes on the One-State Caucus

When J Street attacked Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) for his one-stateism, I said that the ad was exactly what I wanted to see in theory, but noted a few problems in the execution. Basically, I didn't think it was aggressive enough in hammering home that one-state = anti-Israel.

This is more like it.



The ad still isn't perfect on execution. At a full minute it runs a little long, and takes some time to get its wheels spinning. I think the beginning can be trimmed considerably, and I think the Adelson reference can be cut (not because Adelson isn't being a putz about this, but I'm not sure why his involvement makes things worse). I also think adding quotes from other Jewish organizations saying "one state = anti-Israel" would pack some punch.

But nitpicking aside, the message is loud and clear: The one-state solution stands in opposition to Israel's Jewish, democratic character. It is an obstacle to a true peace that respects the rights and security of Israelis and Palestinians alike. Ergo, anything less than support of a two-state solution isn't pro-Israel. J Street is saying nothing more than what every other mainstream Jewish organization has been saying for years but now seems too cowardly to stand up for. So I'm glad that at least one pro-Israel group has the balls to take on the rising one-state tide head on.

EMILY's Lies

Is there a nominally progressive advocacy group more scurrilous than EMILY's list? It seems like I'm constantly seeing them engaging in bogus-to-outrageous attacks on progressive Democrats, in ways that do deep damage to the progressive movement while doing very little (if anything) to push Congress in a pro-choice direction. They were deeply involved in Nikki Tinker's racially and religious-tinged campaign to unseat sterling progressive Rep. Steve Cohen in the 2008 Democratic primary. And right now DKos Elections is on their case adopting GOP-style rhetoric attacking a Democrat for successfully raising taxes on millionaires.

Blogger PSA

The Debate Link is a blog. This individual entry is a blog post. If I refer to "my last blog", it presumably means a prior website I wrote for before moving to The Debate Link (no such site exists). It does not mean the last entry on this blog. Bloggers who use "blog" to refer to individual posts read like bloggers who non-ironically capitalize "Internet".

Thank you, and remember -- acculturation to the norms of the medium is everyone's responsibility.

Body Swappers

Wouldn't it be awesome if former Florida Governor Charlie Crist (then-R, now-I) and Alabama ex-Rep. Artur Davis (then-D, now-R) ran against each other for something in the future?

This came to mind after Crist came out against the voter ID fraud in the Washington Post, and delivered an unapologetic defense of democratic values and access to the ballot box. It was precisely apostasies like this, of course, that caused him to lose what had seemed a sure-shot bid to the US Senate as a Republican in 2010 to the tea-flavored Marco Rubio. Davis, of course, originally showcased his GOP-curiosity by jumping on the voter fraud bandwagon, though he was outraged when media critics made unreasonable demands of him like "give examples of when this has ever happened".

I had liked the old Davis, which is part of the reason the new one is so risible -- he's smart enough to know that "voter fraud" is a fraud, but he's also smart enough to know that jumping on that train is a fast way to leap to prominence amongst the GOP. Crist, by contrast, I liked even before he dropped the "R", and of course, I like him even better now. But still, they do seem to be walking similar paths (in opposing directions).

Reinventing Charlemagne

As usual, TNC hits out of the park:

Consider this: what if you were a medievalist and the majority of your public simply refused to accept that Charlemagne ever existed. Indeed, what if they felt their prosperity was contingent on not acknowledging it. And thus all your medievalist friends spent a great deal of time proving that Charlemagne did exist.

Think about all the other interesting questions you might never get to ask, because you were spending all your energy in refutation of myth. And this would be frustrating because surely you had true questions, questions which you actually didn't have answers for. But every time you presented your work before an audience you felt called back to 800 AD all over again.

I think about how the climate scientist, or the evolutionary biologist living in Tennessee must feel, and I find some sympathy. So much of black intellectual life is wasted in disabuse, in explaining yourself to other people, as opposed to yourself.

Above all, I think this is the case for HBCUs. It wasn't like we didn't talk about racism at Howard -- where Toni Morrison attended -- but we never had to explain. And we were free to consider the geography of ourselves, to understand ourselves as another country. I remember going to the CSA (Caribbean Students Association) parties. It was like some other parallel world. Or watching the fraternities and sororities come out in the Spring, something I had no understanding of at all.

This, presumably, explains the frustration at having to repeat "101" level material over and over and over again. When I was newer at this, I couldn't understand the frustration -- probably because I remember when I was 101. Nowadays, it's far more clear to me, though I still do my best to be patient. It really depends whether someone is being deliberately pugnacious or not. But either way, having to spend huge portions of one's times reinventing the wheel (or Charlemagne) is time that one can't spend pushing the ball forward, and that really is annoying.

Project Runway Season 10: Designer Notes

We're back with a new season of Project Runway! Can any of this season's designers compete with the awesomeness that was Anya? Nope -- let's get that out of the way right now. But still, it looks like they'll have their own charms, and with one episode down I already feel comfortable giving my assessment of all 16 to the world.

Beatrice: She's already gone, so we'll make this quick. Did I think her clothes were worse than Lantie's? No. But when you're in the bottom two in the first challenge and basically admitted you're a one-trick pony, you can't expect the judges to keep you around. She did have a dazzling smile though.

Alicia: The dreads meant that Jill and I immediately starting calling her "New McKell" (what, you don't remember the first designer eliminated from PR two seasons ago? What kind of fan are you?). So far, though, she's pretty awesome: I loved her hoodie garb (it was like Little Red Riding Hood meets Assassin's Creed), and the companion piece was pretty sweet too -- wearable, yet just off-kilter enough to feel unique. I really think she deserved Top 3, to be honest. I don't know if there are many lesbian designers (the glut of gay male designers made me think yes, but upon further reflection I have no idea), but she's pretty rockin'.

Andrea: I kind of wish she was judged this week so she and Patricia Field could have a throaty New York-accented conversation. Unfortunately, if she had been up there it would have been in the bottom three. The first dress was nice enough, if a little house-maidy, but the second one made her model look like a pregnant cupcake. I feel like I've seen that exact cut before, which makes me wonder if that style is a deliberate choice -- like we're in some bizarro fashion world where the goal is to make your model look shorter and fatter. I hope it's a fluke -- I like the saucy old folk, and she's a professor so, you know, solidarity.

Buffi: "Tacky." "The good kind of tacky?" "No, just the regular kind." Actually, both of these outfits seemed to lie just on the right side of too much. I could deal with less shiny scrunchy black on the first, and the top of the second looks like it emerged from the bottom of my dresser drawer after having been balled up for three months, but it really wasn't that bad. I'm not optimistic though.

Christopher: That gown was legitimately gorgeous. Seriously, it was probably the single best piece of the entire show. I'm a little put off by the placement of the leg slit, but that hardly mars a beautiful effort. I was so impressed by the gown, in fact, that I'm totally cool with Christopher winning even in spite of his Vegas-hooker-cocktail-waitress second look.

Dmitry: Dmitry is the one who was a ballet dancer in Belarus, but who claimed that didn't influence his style anymore, right? Because that glittery first dress looks exactly how I'd expect an eastern European ballet dancer to design a gown. The second look is okay, though the skin-baring panel in the middle reads less "ooh, sexy flash of skin" and more "someone slashed off the bottom of my top."

Elena: Both of her outfits looked like Stasi uniforms, circa 2056. Which I would have thought I'd have liked more, to be perfectly honest. I'm taking a wait and see attitude -- militaristic chic can be pretty awesome, but right now it's a bit too heavy on the Frau Farbissina side of things.

Fabio: Ombre! Pretty frickin' awesome! Becky said the line, but I'm pretty sure Victor used that exact color scheme. But I liked Victor's looks, and these were both pretty solid. Wyatt Cenac wants his beard back, though.

Gunnar: Gunnar Deathrage! Coolest name ever! I remembered him from last season, simply because the name was so sweet. So I'm thrilled he's back -- except that he appears to be this season's reincarnation of Joshua. Boo. He also is physically indistinguishable from Christopher, which will get tiresome quite quickly. Clothes-wise, both pieces were pretty good, except that the yellow base/black stripe theme makes both girls (but especially the first) look like they're going to a Halloween party as a slutty taxi cab.

Kooan: So I'm conflicted about him being in the bottom three this time around. His clothes are genuinely weird, but that's what he's going for. He is going for "Hello Kitty running from Godzilla," right? The judges seem to have preemptively decided that he's repetitive and one-note, and while technically I agree with Heidi that they can't say that off of literally one challenge, secretly (well, secret's out I guess) I think they're almost certainly right. But maybe he'll surprise us when he's tasked with making something elegant. Maybe.

Lantie: The actual worst of the worst last night. The first dress looked like a repurposed wedding gown -- which was an interesting PR challenge, but not anything that should be done voluntarily. The second piece had that fugly front panel that looked like it was glued on. And I'm not convinced she has any stylistic vision. I'm dubious she's got much longevity on this show.

Melissa: There might be a cast member named Buffi, but she's the one who looks like Sarah Michelle Geller. It's difficult to go too far wrong with an all-black palette (and I enjoyed watching her race to the only part of Mood which looks like a Brooks Brothers annex), but neither of her two looks blew me away or anything. I don't even think either were super-wearable. In any event, if she doesn't show some color, stat, she'll pretty quickly wear out her welcome.

Nathan: Nathan's story about reconnecting with his dad over Project Runway was super cute. His dresses were perfectly pretty, though a little simple -- and the knot on the green one was a little too crotch-centric for my tastes. Middle of the pack right now.

Raul: Raul's first look is pretty awesome if I can look past construction issues and the fact that there is literally no context it can be worn other than "I've just been laid off from my law firm so seducing my boss is now-or-never." The second one is a stiff, feathery mess. He also seemed to struggle badly with his time, which is always a bad sign.

Sonja: Sonja currently stands out for that ghastly shade of lipstick she had on. Her first look was very strong except for the way it opened in the middle (she might have had a skin-colored shirt under there -- I couldn't tell -- but either way it looked ridiculous). The second look was super-chic and elegant. Definite potential.

Ven: I can totally see and appreciate the superb technical skill that went into this. That being said, I have no idea where anyone could wear that flower-outfit. The second piece, on the other hand, was perfectly made and chic and wearable -- that's the one that popped for me to be honest. He's got an eye and he knows how to make clothes, and that's a powerful combination.

Deep Thoughts By Tablet Mag

It takes a lot to unite John Podhoertz and MJ Rosenberg, Commentary and The Nation, all on one issue. But Anna Breslaw's sick attack on Holocaust survivors in Tablet Mag has managed to bring pretty much everyone together in entirely justified condemnation of both Breslaw for writing the piece, and Tablet for publishing it.

I don't really have anything to add to the piece itself, but I did want to remark a bit on Tablet's explanation for the article. They've published two so far -- neither by Breslaw, who is laying low -- and neither is what it should be: a sincere, unadulterated apology. Rather, they seem to be taking the tack of saying that while they don't agree with Breslaw, they view her article as "a means of honestly processing the complicated, damning, and even self-indicting impulses for Jews who are now generations removed from the Shoah." As Adam Chandler concluded:

I say this not to endorse what Ms. Breslaw has written, but to endorse these self-investigations, even if they turn up feelings — in us, in family, in the broader Jewish community — that at first (or may always) seem ugly or coarse. What’s underneath is the try, which for many is difficult enough.

The idea here seems to be that Breslaw isn't just some smarmy contrarian bomb-thrower. Rather, hers was an honest look at a tough issue, and even if it touched a few raw nerves (hell, even if her conclusions are undeniably offensive), shouldn't we encourage such difficult introspection?

Here's the thing, though. It is entirely possible for someone to have thought long, and hard, and deeply, about a difficult subject -- and still produce conclusions that are unworthy of publication. Conclusions that are foolish and ignorant and hurtful and demonstrate an impoverished moral compass. It's an editor's job to spot that -- an editor who is bedazzled because an author "thought really hard" about what she was saying is an editor who needs to find a new job.

Indeed, it's almost more indicting of Breslaw if it wasn't simply a misbegotten attempt at being provocative. At least then it might be nothing but a performance. But if we're to take her editors seriously -- that Breslaw was baring a window into the deepest recesses of her soul -- well, then we've revealed that her soul is blackened and diseased.

But the point is that Tablet seems fixated on the notion that any thought is worthy of publication so long as it's honestly attained. This is the hallmark of sloppy editing, and it manages to reflect even more poorly on the magazine and its direction than the original decision to publish Breslaw's article. Introspection is a valuable thing, and it should be encouraged. But it does not follow that all products of sincere introspection are valuable. Tablet needs to understand the difference if it's going to avoid mistakes like these in the future -- or indeed, recognize it made a mistake at all.

Multiple Israelis Killed in Bulgaria Terror Attack

A terrorist attack on a bus carrying Israeli tourists in Bulgaria has killed at least seven people. The attack came on the twenty-year anniversary of 1992 car bomb attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires that killed 29 (a distinct event from the 1994 bombing by Iranian-backed terrorists of a Argentine JCC that killed 87). Details remain sketchy as to who is responsible, though early witnesses say it appeared to be a suicide bomb attack.

Obviously my prayers are with the victims, and I hope the perpetrators and any organizations which supported them are found and brought to justice.

UPDATE: Israel is now pointing fingers at Iran, noting that it has been implicated in a string of near-miss attacks on Israelis over the preceding months.

Meretzniks

Ha'aretz has a fascinating profile/interview piece up on Zahava Gal-On, leader of Meretz (for those of you who don't know, Meretz is Israel's left-wing Zionist party). It's really a great read (also, listening to her eviscerate the repulsive Michael Ben-Ari alone would be worth it).

Joe Walsh Should Be Pro-Israel PAC's Public Enemy #1

There is one member of Congress who is a loud-and-proud supporter of a one-state solution. His name is Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL), a Tea Party extremist who came to Washington on the crest of the 2010 GOP wave. His opponent is decorated war hero Tammy Duckworth, who lost both her legs in combat (Walsh is sick of hearing about that).

Walsh's extremist views have made Israel a surprisingly large issue in his suburban Illinois race. Walsh's district isn't very Jewish (good thing too, because he views most Jews with contempt), but by being so clear in opposing one of the bedrock principles of American pro-Israel advocacy, he has put himself in the crosshairs.

Or he should be. I've already noted the deafening silence that has met the rise of one-stateism on the American right. And as The Forward reports, many of the middle-of-the-road pro-Israel groups are ducking this race entirely (Walsh is getting support from some fringe right-wing groups and is under heavy fire from J Street).

As de Talleyrand famously put it: "This is worse than a crime, it's a blunder." We'll put aside the part where pro-Israel groups should oppose Walsh because Walsh's views are fundamentally dangerous for Israel by the terms of these own groups' statements. Taking out Walsh is in these groups' best interest on a host of levels.

First of all, if Walsh stays in Congress he is showing that one can defy the American pro-Israel consensus with impunity. Obviously, part of being an effective advocate is showing that opposition comes with political costs -- a reputation that takes a hit when a first-term Congressman appears to have the big bad Israel Lobby running scared. And in a sense, Walsh is more dangerous to the pro-Israel establishment than most because he's at the vanguard of a movement seeking to strip "pro-Israel" away from mainstream Jewish groups and turn it into an evangelical Christian construct which doesn't care a whit about Jewish lives or Jewish values. Does anyone think Walsh actually has a use for groups like AJC in directing the future of pro-Israel? Of course not. The more the power of people like Walsh waxes, the more that of the mainstream Jewish community wanes.

Second, a critical element of the pro-Israel community's Washington strategy is to maintain support for Israel as a bipartisan value. Yet that image is increasingly under threat as the heavy pro-Israel hitters are beginning to be seen as essentially arms of the right. There are left-wing politicians they will attack for insufficient support of Israel (sometimes rightly, sometimes not), but there is no way one can be anti-Israel from the right (save Pat Buchanan-esque crpyto-conservatism). Given that, liberal organizations are naturally going to wonder if the supposed bipartisanship of the pro-Israel community, really is. Taking on Congressman Walsh -- demonstrating that they're willing to police their right flank as well as their left one -- would do much to reestablish the fraying centrist credibility of these groups.

And finally -- taking on Walsh is likely a freebie. Walsh is a far, far right-wing Republican who was elected in a wave year and whose seat got even more liberal in redistricting. Most prognosticators think he's going down anyway. So why not line up on the winning side? Even if one is misguided enough to think Walsh is anything other than a massive liability, there's no reason to not jump on the bandwagon here, given the benefits outlined above. If pro-Israel groups can't challenge right-wing Republicans even when the odds are stacked in their favor, what good are they?

Joe Walsh is, almost without a doubt, the single most anti-Israel Congressman serving in Washington today. He needs to be taken down, and hard. And it is a disappointing commentary on the state of the American pro-Israel lobby that they seem unable to muster the balls to take him on.

Maine Gov. LePage Calls IRS "Gestapo" -- Twice

I had vaguely heard of this before reading LePage had apologized, but I didn't really look into the specifics -- I just figured it was yet another case of embarrassingly overheated Tea Party rhetoric. But The Forward's more comprehensive coverage manages to shock even me.

Generally, casual Nazi references are done pretty thoughtlessly -- the speaker tends not to flesh things out too much because doing so would pretty rapidly demonstrate the absurdity (and moral depravity) of the comparison. But LePage was hardly being casual or off-the-cuff -- here are his remarks to a Vermont alternative paper after the original firestorm from the first time he called the IRS the Gestapo:

“What I am trying to say is the Holocaust was a horrific crime against humanity and, frankly, I would never want to see that repeated. Maybe the IRS is not quite as bad - yet,” LePage said.

Asked if the IRS was headed in that direction, LePage responded, “They’re headed in that direction.”

Asked if he knew what Adolf Hitler’s secret police did during World War Two, including the imprisonment and murder of millions of Jews, LePage said, “Yeah, they killed a lot of people.” Asked whether the IRS “was headed in the direction of killing a lot of people,” LePage answered: “Yeah.”

If I can have a moment of levity before I return to outrage -- "frankly", the Governor doesn't want the Holocaust to repeat itself? Why thank you -- I'm so glad you can be frank with us. It's so rare to have someone willing to boldly stand up for unpopular positions like "I don't want mass genocides to reoccur."

But anyway, Gov. LePage makes it very clear that when he is talking about the IRS-as-Gestapo, he is talking about mass slaughter, and that he does think that the IRS is "headed in that direction". The warrant for that is, naturally, the ACA -- I wouldn't say I was joking when I called the GOP's perspective on the ACA "taxing the rich to exterminate the poor", but I didn't expect a state governor to come out and say it so directly.

Keeping Things On the Table

I nominate "off the table" as the dumbest concept in foreign policy. It's why Alan Dershowitz says J Street isn't "pro-Israel" -- they allegedly demand that the military option be "off the table" with respect to Iran (J Street denies that's their position, they simply think a sanctions-based approach makes more sense).

But what, exactly, does "off the table" even mean here? Unless J Street has secretly sabotaged our nation's armed forces, the "military option" is always "on the table". We still have planes! They can still bomb things! That's always available. Even if we decide not to do it now, we can change our mind later -- the military will still be there. Now, of course, at some point it might be too late -- but that could be the case if the military option is "on the table" but ultimately not used.

Compare, for example, if Iran said they were developing nuclear weapons, but using them offensively was "off the table". Would you be comforted? No, of course not -- in part because we might not trust them, but in larger part because even if they're being genuine they can always change their mind instantly. As can we -- military capacity isn't a perishable good. It'll keep.

J Street Attacks Walsh's One-Stateism

J Street has released ads attacking Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) for supporting a one-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict (apparently parallel ads are up attacking Rep. Allen West as well). This is a tactic I've been urging for some time now. But while I like the concept, I think the execution needs work -- as the ad language is still too defensive for my tastes.



I don't think the ad emphasizes enough the consensus view amongst mainstream Jews that such plan means the end of Israel -- not a bigger Israel. And at the end, when it says that supporting one state "isn’t pro-Israel", I'd instead have said "is anti-Israel". In general, I think political rhetoric is strongest when it takes as a given the point it is trying to make, rather than make it seem like the point of controversy. The ad here should have acted as if it is simply accepted that to be a one-stater is to be anti-Israel (easy to do, given the plethora of quotes by respected Jewish groups saying just that), and then flambé Rep. Walsh for his anti-Israel views.

Part of the problem is that J Street has been framing this campaign as trying to cut against the norm of "Israel right or wrong". But good project or not, here the Israeli government isn't wrong -- as the ad points out, the Israeli government has consistently stated that the two-state solution is the solution it wants. It's Walsh who has decided to stake out a position critical of the Israeli government and most Israelis and Jews, so why shouldn't he get the (mostly fabled, but still) "classic" treatment that people "critical of Israel" are said to get?

This ad hits Republicans on Israel "from the left", and that's important. But it could have been more visceral about hitting Republicans for being anti-Israel from the left -- thus helping bring back a form of genuine progressive pro-Israel politics as well as documenting the way in which conservative Republican stances on Israel are hostile to many of Israel's core values and security concerns.

Boobirds

Mitt Romney delivers a speech before the NAACP. Mitt Romney promises to repeal "Obamacare". Mitt Romney is met with a chorus of boos.



My favorite part is how the video cuts just as Mitt Romney starts to mention "a survey of the Chamber of Commerce." That'll win 'em back, Mitt!

In any event, I'm curious what the impact of this booing will be. The odds are nothing -- it's no news that Black people disagree with Republican policies. But assuming we do care what Black people think, there is something notable about this. Sometimes a politician can go into a group's backyard, elicit boos, and come out ahead -- spin it as telling "tough truths" or "tough love". But that doesn't quite work here -- the GOP's attack on the ACA hasn't been that it is good for some but ultimately unaffordable. It is that it is a moral catastrophe loathed and despised by everyone. That narrative can't really countenance people booing at eliminating it -- it's predicated off of pretty universal disdain for the program.

Likudnik Policies

Man, I hate when American politicians blindly parrot Likud Party policies. Take this proposal by Likud MK (and Knesset Speaker) Reuven Rivlin:

"I would prefer for the Palestinians to be citizens of this country," he said, "rather than divide the land." This was no slip of the tongue. Rivlin's office gave the statement to the press, thereby making him the highest-ranking political figure to have publicly raised the possibility of a single State of Israel from the Mediterranean to the Jordan.

Rivlin places those comments within the framework of a broader outlook: The land, he says, is not divisible. Jews and Arabs have lived side by side here since the dawn of Zionism and before. His own family arrived in Palestine in the early 19th century. Settlement east of the Green Line is no more moral than settlement to the west of it. And incidentally, the Palestinian claim is as legitimate and just as the Jewish claim.

And the solution? The Knesset Speaker rejects the idea of a "state of all its citizens", i.e. − a binational state. But he is pondering the possibility of some kind of joint sovereignty arrangement in Judea and Samaria under the Jewish state, or even a regime composed of two parliaments, one Jewish and one Arab.

"We're living in a political reality that requires answers. "When people say that the demographic threat necessitates a separation, my reply is that the lesser danger, the lesser evil, is a single state in which there are equal rights for all citizens. Realpolitik requires us to opt for the danger in the demographic threat over the existential threat of separation.

As is noted, this makes Rivlin that highest-ranked Israeli (and, now that I think of it, probably Israeli or Palestinian) to endorse a one-state solution.

Rivlin's has always been relatively iconoclastic and concerned with the rights of Israel's Arab minority. But no matter -- the point is, the next time you see a JVP-sort endorsing a one-state solution, try scuffing at them and calling them a "Likudnik". It'll be fun for everyone!

Younger Jews Care More About Israel

An interesting new survey finds that Jews thirty-five and younger feel more attachment to Israel than the next oldest age cohort (35-45), though still less than those 45 and older. This runs counter to conventional wisdom that Jewish attachment to Israel is declining among the younger generation (and, since the survey explicitly excluded Orthodox Jews and alums of Jewish day schools, it's not a result of expanding numbers of very observant Jews either).

Perhaps equally important is that the rise in this younger cohort runs parallel to a drop in confidence with the Israeli government. This doesn't surprise me -- as I often repeat, caring about something means having opinions about it (this is also why David Bernstein's defense of "pure" Israel advocacy makes little sense) -- but it is demonstrative of the fact that the younger generation's willingness to put pressure on the Israeli government comes from a sense that Israel is important and needs friends -- not a stance of anti-Israel rejectionism.

Didn't You See Me Winking?

Louisiana has recently passed a voucher plan which would allow state educational funds to be used to send kids to religious schools. Louisiana conservatives saw that and said "sounds great". That is, until they realized Islam is a religion:

Rep. Valarie Hodges, R-Watson, says she had no idea that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s overhaul of the state’s educational system might mean taxpayer support of Muslim schools …

'I liked the idea of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school,' Hodges said.

Hodges mistakenly assumed that 'religious' meant 'Christian.'

Via.

I have to go through this every time someone mistakenly says that "religious" Americans or "people of faith" believe that, say, abortion is murder. Maybe your religion does, but mine (Judaism) doesn't. In any event, as much as the casual desire to discriminate against Muslims is repulsive, the chain of "logic" Rep. Hodges brought to the table -- it apparently not even occurring to her that there exist non-Christian religions -- is hilarious.

PCUSA Votes to Invest for Peace

A pro-divestment motion before the Presbyterian Church's general assembly narrowly failed tonight, with the assembly electing instead to invest in the Palestinian economy and other projects which bring about peace. For that, two congratulations are in order: first, for rejecting the divestment motion -- a divisive and one-sided approach which in effect, views all Israeli actions taken in the West Bank and Gaza, including those which save innocent lives, as inherently malign -- and second, for voting to invest in the Palestinian economy. People who oppose BDS without any sort of corresponding efforts to actually improve the lives of Palestinians and forge a two-state solution are worth nothing to me. The PCUSA is doing the right thing not (just) because it voted against divesting, but because it voted in favor of taking tangible action aimed at strengthening the emerging Palestine.

We might also congratulate left-ward groups like APN and J Street for taking a stand against divestment here. Given their reputation and given the close nature of the vote, it is very possible that their intervention was decisive. They were there when they were needed. And they provided a sterling demonstration that the liberal, pro-peace wing of the American Jewish community is as opposed to divestment as anyone else. This is not AIPAC and ZOA. This is the near-entirety of the mainstream Jewish community.

Finally, the PCUSA vote represented BDS' high-water mark in the US. Which is to say, their high water mark is getting narrowly defeated, while their median outcome is getting soundly thrashed. The fact is that BDS doesn't have a meaningful, sustainable constituency in this country. Most Americans -- of all faiths and political backgrounds -- view it as a non-starter. They think it singles out Israel, they're unconvinced of its efficacy, they view it as a Trojan Horse for one-stateism and other radically anti-Israel politics. The point is that the BDS movement in the United States appears to be essentially a non-starter. On its best days, it manages to only lose by small margins rather than large ones. Without the support of the sorts of entities who accuse Jews of bombing American churches and find the very existence of a Jewish state abhorrent, it would scarcely register as a political entity at all. It has not and cannot serve as a basis for a political movement that takes seriously the respective national self-determination rights of Jews and Palestinians.

Now, to be sure, there are people who don't care -- either because they don't care about the rights of Palestinians to self-determination and an independent, secure, democratic state, or because they don't care about those rights for Jews. But for what I take to be the majority which does care about these things, alternative processes have to forged. It can no longer be that this is an issue which is left aside until crisis moments like divestment votes. We need to work for this on the ground. Christian, Jewish, and Muslim groups needs to join together to figure out how to make stuff happen -- how to get parties back to the negotiation table, how to freeze the settlements, how to harness the consensus in both Israel and Palestine in favor of a two-state solution, how to convince each that the other is a willing partner. This has to be day-to-day work -- it can't wait. The BDS movement has the strength that it does in part, yes, because of a committed core of activists who are simply outraged that there is at Israel, but also because of a middle that just doesn't see other entities which seem to be consistently working (or claiming) to work for actual change.

These groups do exist -- OneVoice is the most obvious candidate. And so my modest proposal is that, for the next two years, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim groups united at the local level and engage in a full-court press in favor of OneVoice -- bolstering its mission, its visibility, and its status as the single best route for peace in Israel and Palestine. It is the best hope for all people in the region, and it needs a cadre of activists here in the USA willing to fight for it.

Hell's Kitchen: Grading the Top Ten

With the elimination of Patrick, we're down to the Hell's Kitchen top ten. I have to say, for all the drama and chaos of this season, there's a fair bit of quality amongst the chefs remaining. Not all of them, of course -- we haven't cut all the deadweight yet. But there are at least three chefs that seem to me true top quality, and a few more that are only a step behind.

Red Team

Dana: One of the top three cooks remaining, Dana probably has the most personality of all of them (not saying much -- generally, the best cooks are the ones providing the least drama). Dana seemed on the verge of getting pulled into the massive red team drama-fest, but has mostly extricated herself and seemed content to watch Robyn and Kimmie annihilate themselves backstage. Now that they've been separated, more eyes are going to fall on Dana. She's been sharp on station, but the one thing we haven't seen yet is leadership skills. A

Barbie: Barbie started off as the scapegoat for the Red Team, which was approximately 33% just, 66% unjust. She did have struggles on station and a bit of an attitude, but no more than anyone else, and the red team's picking on her seemed more motivated by personal animosity than objective ordering of talent. Fortunately, she seems to have gotten past that and coalesced well with the Red Team (except Tiffany, but we'll get to her in a moment). She's shown an ability to jump on flailing stations (like Tiffany's) and get stuff done, while handling her own affairs, which is good. But some consistency issues still lurk on the line. B+

Kimmie: Ever-shifting relationship with Robyn notwithstanding, Kimmie is enigmatic in the kitchen. Streaky might be the best way to describe her -- she can cook, but there are times she loses her cool and composure and suffers as a result. I'm not convinced she has the mental fortitude to hang with the top dogs much longer, and I've also seen no leadership ability from her at all. C+

Christina: The de facto leader of the Red Team, Christina has been a voice of maturity and sanity all season. One got the feeling that everyone on the Red Team respected her, no small feat given how bad that team's dynamics have been all season. Plus, she's been consistently excellent on the line. I think she's the whole package -- great leadership, great cooking, and a great head on her shoulders. A serious threat to take to the title. A+

Tiffany: Oh lord, where to begin. Tiffany's biggest problem isn't that she's a bad cook, though she is. It isn't that completely lacks any self-awareness, though she does. It isn't even that she doesn't care, though she doesn't. It's that she seems outright offended that other people do care. Why is Barbie the weakest chef? Because she does bother to communicate times. Bzzz. Wrong answer. Tiffany is only still here because there have been more high-profile screw-ups (I won't even say worse) than hers each week. She could have easily gone home five episodes ago. D

Blue Team

Brian: Jill and I couldn't remember his name (we called him "the goofy one"). Brian seems like a solid cook. He's been pretty strong all season, mostly staying out of trouble, but never really shining. I also haven't seen any real capacity to lead from him. And judging by some of his interviews, having ladies in the kitchen come black jacket time will cause him to suffer from a never-ending boner. He's definitely in that second tier, but it's still very much in the air whether he kick it up another notch. A-

Justin: The strongest chef left on the Blue Team. Justin (who looks kind of like Brad Pitt, no?) has done a very good job, never to my recollection been singled-out for shame on the line, and has kept his cool on the line. Recently the editor-monkeys tried to stir up stuff by making him out to be a control freak. Because if there is one thing Chef Ramsey hates, its someone who is obsessed with making sure food gets made right. A

Clemenza: "Credenza", as he's known on the TWOP forums, is a bit of a dark horse. He's the most experienced cook left. He's not bad by any stretch. He's shown a good ability to fight back from adversity. But I don't see him able to consistently perform against the tip-top competitors. He might make black jackets, but he's not Vegas material. B

Royce: Royce may not be as bad as some think he is, but he's nowhere near as good as he thinks he is. He may be the only chef that rivals Tiffany in the non-self-aware field. Seriously, this whole season has been Royce declaring his perfection immediately before, during, and/or after he screws up. It's unbelievable. And I think Ramsey doesn't like him -- I actually agree that he didn't deserve to get booted from the kitchen last episode, but he's on thin ice. It's a shame -- I so like his mentor Ralph. C+

Robyn: The Blue Team's newest addition, Robyn is an interesting case for me. I actually wonder if Chef Ramsey sees some of himself in her. Gordon always toes that line of barely contained rage perfectly -- his fury makes his food and kitchen run better, but he never really loses control. Robyn ... does not have that control. But I do get the sense that her meltdowns stem from a similar passion about putting out good food and high standards, rather than just a generic mental imbalance. She's very type-A, like Chef Ramsey (whom I'd be curious to see in a genuinely subordinate role). But even though I have an odd affection for her, I just don't think Robyn has enough self-control for Gordon to put her in charge of one of his restaurants. B

The Answer is Enforced Silence, Not More Speech

We've been seeing a trend in recent years where the greatest threat to free inquiry, for conservatives, is other people speaking. Consider the fall out from Chief Justice Roberts' ACA opinion. Conservatives are convinced that Roberts changed his vote due to "left-wing media pressure". Here's Avik Roy at the National Review:

Perhaps, the next time a Republican president nominates a Supreme Court justice, he should make the candidate swear to never pick up a newspaper.

The bottom line, if Jan Crawford is right, is that conservative justices can be blackmailed by left-wing editorialists. It’s not a pretty picture.

As Roy Edroso points out, this might be the first time that "mere viewing of contrary opinions" has been characterized as "blackmail". Obviously liberals thought that a decision striking down the ACA would be terrible as a matter of law. The position of liberals had consistently (since well before the debate over the ACA specifically began) been that this law was obviously constitutional and could only be struck down if judges let their ideological preferences overcome any semblance of respect for law or precedent (they were buttressed in their belief due to the fact that this was the consensus conservative position too right up until it became associated with the Obama presidency). It's hardly surprising that, upon watching the well-understood contours of the Commerce Clause appear on the verge of shifting due to what was essentially a political temper tantrum, they'd speak up about it. Exactly how is airing this viewpoint "blackmail"?

J Street, APN Speak Out Against Divestment

Two left-leaning American pro-Israel groups -- J Street and Americans for Peace Now -- have spoken out against a proposed divestment resolution currently being debated by the PCUSA. This isn't surprising -- both groups have been quite consistent in opposing BDS. But it matters because J Street and APN probably have the largest constituency of liberal Jewish groups, and are unimpeachable members of the pro-peace camp. Their position here at the very least gives lie to the notion that to be an organization which cares about a just Israeli/Palestinian peace means to support BDS. Indeed, as leaders from both groups emphasize, to cooperate with the BDS movement runs orthogonal to pursuing a just peace, as the BDS movement has long presented itself in opposition to any solution which allows Israel to preserve itself as a site for Jewish self-determination. Here's APN:

“We believe that divestment campaigns such as this are misguided and counterproductive," said APN President and CEO Debra DeLee. “By targeting Israel rather than the occupation, this divestment campaign creates the impression that PC (USA) is making common cause with historically virulently anti-Israel organizations and individuals, who are often not interested in Israeli security concerns or Palestinian behavior but in Israel’s destruction. Divestment campaigns such as this therefore raise very real and understandable worries about global anti-Semitism and the perception that the campaigns are not truly (or only) about Israeli policies but rather reflect a deep-seated hatred for and rejection of Israel."

And here's J Street:

I would say to the Church’s leaders as they again consider joining forces with the BDS Movement, that the Movement’s rhetoric and tactics are not only a distraction, but a genuine threat to conflict resolution. Even the limited divestment approach under consideration by PCUSA falls under the rubric of larger BDS efforts to place blame entirely on one side of the conflict. Such an approach encourages not reconciliation, but polarization. Further, too many in and around the BDS movement refuse to acknowledge either the legitimacy of Israel or the right of the Jewish people as well as the Palestinian people to a state,

Well-spoken by both. Incidentally, I just skipped over to the front pages of the ADL, AJC, and AIPAC, none of whom have anything about the PCUSA debate on their sites. I don't know what to think about this -- on the one hand, their silence belies the idea that this all the Nefarious Israel Lobby squelching all dissent in its path. On the other hand, the fact that these groups simply registering an opinion is the only prerequisite for such accusations can be made is itself emblematic of the problem -- the definition of "silencing" is when a Jew decides to speak and someone doesn't like what she has to say. There is nothing insidious or wrongful about Jewish organizations having opinions -- even (and I know this shocks) having opinions that major Christian denominations disagree with, even (and I know this shocks even more) having those opinions reflected in American policy. Jews, having influence and power when there are Christians who disagree with them? What is the world coming to, I wonder.

But I digress. The point is that, for whatever reason, it is left-wing, pro-peace Jews who are the most vocal in the opposition to PCUSA divestment, and they deserve credit for that. It's demonstrative that the liberal Jewish community -- which is to say, the majority of the Jewish community -- is easily able to straddle together the need for Israel to make hard choices to bring about peace, and the recognition that Israel is not the only problem here (but people who think that about Israel are a huge problem). J Street and APN -- which have far more clout and influence than fringe posers like the JVP -- are the real face of what a progressive, empathetic, and motivated concern for the future of Israel and Palestine looks like.

Snyder Vetoes Voter Suppression Bills

I'm pleasantly surprised by this: Michigan Governor Rick Snyder (R) has vetoed a set of bills which, though nominally targeting (largely non-existent) voter fraud, would in effect serve to suppress eligible voters. Snyder said the bills would cause "confusion" due to the obscure procedures they enacted.

I have no idea why Snyder -- a rather orthodox (which is to say, tea-flavored) Republican, decided to break with the GOP orthodoxy on this. I don't know of any inside-baseball explanation for this, so let's just congratulate him on doing the right thing.

Many Motives, One World

The constant debate in terms about Israel is about whether any given act it takes is done to "preserve Israeli security" or "maintain the occupation". The answer, of course, is "both". Or more accurately, "either". Do they maintain the occupation? Yes. Do they protect Israel from real, extant security threats? Also yes. Israel has legitimate and illegitimate objectives, and the same actions can plausibly advance either. It is often impossible to tell which is the "real" motive from afar. The odds are, it is a mixture of each.

Take the three companies that the PCUSA may soon divest from: Caterpillar, Motorola, and Hewlett-Packard. Caterpillar sells armored bulldozers to Israel. Motorola runs cell phone networks in the settlements. And Hewlett-Packard provides information technology to the Israeli navy.

Caterpillar's bulldozers are sometimes used to build Israeli settlements, which is bad. Sometimes they demolish Palestinian houses because these houses are built "illegally" (in quotes because the process for Palestinians to gain building approval seems to be deliberately arcane and Kafka-esque), which is also bad. Sometimes it's because these houses are being used as bases for terrorist activity and firing, which is good. Sometimes it's to do normal construction activities inside Israel, which is good. When Caterpillar operates in Israel, it advances all these possibilities at the same time. If it withdraws from Israel, it retards all these objectives. It is true that we can sometimes clearly distinguish between good and bad usages -- but not always: demolition of a Palestinian house on claims that it is being used to smuggle weapons or as a firing post for terrorist will likely be met with skepticism by pro-Palestinian activists claiming it is gratuitous punishment -- we really have no way of knowing who is telling the truth from afar.

Motorola provides cellular technology to settlements, and settlements are illegal. Is that bad? I suppose, though it's unclear why this is different from companies which sell, say, food to settlers. Motorola also apparently provides some weapons technology (such as bomb fuses), and again, one can point out that the IDF's capacity to deliver lethal force can be used either to "protect Israel" (good) or "maintain an occupation" (bad). And one also points out that these are indistinguishable from afar. That Israel has an effective military by definition means its military is capable of pursuing both legitimate and illegitimate objectives. Trying to cripple that military means the opposite -- it would weaken both Israel's ability to maintain an occupation and it's ability to defend itself. It's difficult to disentangle these from one another.

Hewlett-Packard is perhaps the toughest case to justify. HP provides technology to Israeli Navy. To the extent this debate is about the settlements, HP is irrelevant -- Gaza has no settlements and the West Bank isn't on the water. Rather, HP is presumably being indicted because of the navy's efforts in placing a blockade on Gaza. I'm not convinced the blockade is illegal at all (it seems to fall inside the rules laid out by the San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea, and most of the arguments against its legality either don't cite any legal arguments at all, or, as in the case of the UNHRC's report, made me embarrassed to share the profession of "attorney" with them). Of course, I also don't care about international law anyway -- so the blockade may still be wrong. In any event, the point is more or less the same: a blockade both can restrict the flow of necessary goods into Gaza (bad), and restrict the flow of weapons into Gaza (good).

A large part of why the bulk of the Jewish community is so uncomfortable with divestment from these companies is that they are unconvinced the divesters are putting any moral weight on the other side of the ledger. That is to say, while I say that Motorola simultaneously is enabling "good" (enabling Israel to defend itself) and "bad" (enabling Israel to maintain an occupation), the divesters don't consider the former to be "good" at all. It's either "irrelevant" or perhaps even "bad". This is particularly so with HP, which arguably isn't doing anything wrong at all -- it is not supporting the settlements at all. But regardless, the point is that there are two sides to the ledger, and it's not clear that even legitimate Israeli interests are being taken to account -- indeed, whether it is acknowledged that Israel has interests capable of being characterized as legitimate at all. In essence, it's the same problem in reverse -- the same tactics could plausibly advance legitimate (end the occupation) and illegitimate (end Israel) objectives, and it is impossible to tell from afar which is which.

So what does one do? In essence, the problem is one of trust -- all parties have ample reason to distrust one another, and little way of verifying which moves are legitimate and which ones are aggressive -- they tend to look the same. So I tend to focus on two, seemingly contradictory ambitions: (1) Rebuilding trust and (2) Making it so parties don't have to trust one another. The first is obvious -- mistrust significantly diminishes the range of actions one party can take without provoking the other. So in order to get things done, there has to be space for political action to breathe. That means listening to the other's concerns and claims of serious threat, even if one thinks they're unfounded. I don't think that Israel secretly harbors a desire to maintain control of Jericho forever, but I understand why Palestinians worry about it. And so Israel should behave in ways that alleviate that concern, and be mindful of how their actions interact with that lens upon Israeli motivations. Likewise folks operating from a pro-Palestinian perspective -- they may be absolutely confident that they're totally incorporating Jewish interests and concerns, but Jews seem convinced of the opposite. They have to take account of that fact, rather than engaging in further inflammation. This is the general project of groups like OneVoice, and why they are worthy of your support.

The second proposal is less romantic, but in some ways more important. Israelis and Palestinians don't trust one another. They don't think the other has their best interests at heart. Each are probably, at least to some degree, right about that. But right now they have to trust on another, because they're enmeshed in a relationship of mutual dependency -- both have to take actions predicated on what they believe the other will do. That is one reason why a two-state solution is not just the best solution but also, as Ziad Asali of the American Task Force for Palestine reminds us, is the only one that will ever work. A situation where Israelis and Palestinians are regularly in a position to influence the other's lives is a situation that will likely be characterized by strife, discord, and probably violence. So the goal should be to extricate the warring parties from one another as soon as possible.

This also, in part, is why I do not support a demilitarized Palestine. Part of the reason is simply because I want Palestine to have a monopoly on violence in its territory (if the PA doesn't have guns, then only Hamas will have them). But in part, it's also because I want Palestine to be in a position where it doesn't need to trust Israeli good intentions because it is capable of defending itself. For the same reason, I support Israel having a strong military (including a strong navy). Israel has a great many people who claim to want to destroy it. If Israel is militarily weak, it has to take those threats extremely seriously (in neorealist terms, it has to act aggressively on turn one because it can't guarantee there will be a turn two). If Israel is militarily strong, it can afford to take more risks and concessions because if its goodwill is exploited, it can rest confident its ability to utterly demolish whoever it is that was dumb enough to cross them. Power doesn't guarantee cooperation, but it creates the conditions by which cooperation is possible, because it makes it so that losing once doesn't mean losing everything. And that same logic is why, ultimately, empowering Palestine is the largest step in making Israel secure -- and vice versa.

BDS, The PCUSA, and Caring About Anti-Semitism

One thing that is evident to observers of the BDS movement is how thoroughly it is shot through with anti-Semitism. One sees this in ways ranging from allegations that Jews engineered the financial crisis to folks threatening to make Jews' "life hell". And one corollary to that is that institutions enmeshed in the BDS movement have extreme difficulty in crafting any sort of robust policy against anti-Semitism, as to do so would create sharp dissonance with their own avowed politics and priorities. So it was that the UCU -- a prime player in the British BDS campaign -- simply decided to abandon any definition of anti-Semitism at all.

As the American focus of this debate shifts to the Presbyterian Church (USA), one sees a similar pattern emerge. Jewish organizations had already issued complaints that the PCUSA had been deliberately excluding the mainstream Jewish community from deliberations about issues of concern to the Jewish community, instead inviting handpicked representatives from the marginal fringe who would eagerly provide cover to the PCUSA's pre-existing political priors. Meanwhile, as Will Spotts documents, despite its claims to the contrary the PCUSA has been rather consistent in evading any sort of reckoning with potential anti-Semitism -- rejecting internal reports that acknowledge to a problem within their church and demanding instead that any accounts of anti-Semitism be phrased so broadly that they could never firmly be pinned on anything the PCUSA actually does. The prime criteria for what is anti-Semitism, to groups like the PCUSA, is that it can under no circumstances encompass anything that the PCUSA actually does. That, of course, is not how someone who cares about anti-Semitism operates -- that's how someone who cares about ticking the "I'm not anti-Semitic" box off their mental checklist operates.

Giving Offense

Took a second stab at apartment hunting today, with considerably more success than the first go-around. With luck, we may have a place to live next year.

Meanwhile, I haven't been able to get this Alyssa Rosenberg post on "offense" off my browser, so now's as good a time as any.

I think that one of the common defenses whipped out by people who make art—or hell, say things in any forum—that’s sexist or racist or transphobic is to say that they’re brave, speaking truths others dare not utter. The thing this, these people rarely speak these so-called truths to unfriendly audiences. And the easiest thing you can do with any audience is to confirm the beliefs they already hold. Sometimes, that can be a useful thing to do. Confirming that people aren’t alone in their beliefs or reactions to things can be a powerful way to bring marginalized people together. And telling people that their beliefs matter and are actionable in the world is a major mobilizing tool. But there’s a difference between those kinds of conversations and affirming people’s fears, prejudices, and need to be superior to someone. If you view giving offense as a sign of courage, it’s much more courageous to poke at your allies rather than the people weaker that you’ve determined to keep that way, to take a broad view, really see what the conventional wisdom is, and then challenge that. There are pieties in every movement, be it left, right, or center. But if you want to skewer them, you have to do better than “bitches be crazy” or “trans people are gross.” Smashing things and causing pain are not the same things as making a point.

What one believes to be unsaid, rarely is.

(Im)Proper Constitutionalism: Roberts' Revenge?

Now that the original frenzy over the ACA ruling has died done (a little), folks are starting to dig a little deeper into the opinions (particularly Roberts') to figure out what it means for the next case (incidentally, you can read the opinions here). Chief Justice Roberts' formulation is that the individual mandate does not lie within Congress' commerce clause power (nor the necessary and proper clause), but functions effectively as a tax and thus is part of Congress' taxing power. Now that I've quickly read over the commerce/N&P parts of the opinions (well, Roberts, Ginsburg, and the joint dissent), I have a few thoughts on them as well.

First thing is first -- I'm not sure I've ever seen as vicious a spanking as Justice Ginsburg delivers to Chief Justice Roberts on the commerce clause question. It is an utter smackdown of epic proportions. She clearly demonstrates that, under existing precedent, the ACA should have been by all rights a slam dunk, and that the parade of horribles Roberts and others have trotted out are more or less fanciful. So you go Justice Ginsburg. Keep on keepin' on.

Some folks are speculating that Chief Justice Roberts is pulling a Marbury -- issuing an opinion that on face is a victory for the President while actually sharply moving doctrine in a new direction undesired by the Chief Justice's political opponents (in Marbury, establishing judicial review, here, sharply circumscribing the Commerce Clause).

Chief Justice Roberts' attempt to atomize the discussion (is this individual person "in the health insurance market"?) is reminiscent of the style of commerce clause analysis the Court rejected in Jones & Laughlin. There, the Court rejected older decisions which looked individually at particular segments of the steel production process and asked if, individually, they were exhibiting a substantial effect on interstate commerce. The Court instead said we should look at the "steel industry" as a whole (which clearly does significantly impact ISC), and then Congress can issue regulations of the steel industry as part of regulating ISC. Similarly, the "health insurance market" is clearly a huge part of interstate commerce, so the question is whether regulating persons who do not possess health insurance substantially effects that market -- which of course it does (Justice Ginsburg's arguments about these persons "proximity" to the market were particularly on target).

But the part of the opinion that is more eyebrow raising to me is not the Commerce Clause analysis, but rather the decision to give the "proper" in "necessary and proper" independent weight. Given McCulloch (and Raich), that the individual mandate satisfies the necessary and proper clause would seem to be obvious -- it is an essential part of Congress' attempts to regulate the health insurance market as a whole. The rhetoric in McCulloch focused particularly on the word "necessary" -- to wit, does it mean "absolutely indispensable", or just convenient or useful? The Court found it meant the latter, reasoning that an alternate interpretation would render the Courts an effective super-legislature judging for themselves what was the single best way of regulating health care policy (this did not stop the joint dissent from explicitly doing just that, saying that the individual mandate was not necessary because the dissent could conceive of alternative health care regulations). This means, as Chief Justice Roberts acknowledges, that courts are very deferential about what legislative policies are "necessary".

Still, with "necessary" seemingly a bust, what about "proper"? It was the claim that the individual mandate was not a "proper" way of exercising the commerce clause authority that was Chief Justice Roberts' ultimate hinge. Here, Chief Justice Roberts accords no such deference, and that's especially worrisome given that the only constraining text he's using is the word "proper". As much as we might worry about courts imposing their own policy preferences when they utilize relatively open-ended language like "due process of law" or "cruel and unusual punishment", that risk has to be tripled when the alleged constitutional infirmity is that the law isn't "proper". I don't even know what that could conceivably mean other than raw imposition of judicial preference.

And the Chief Justice's opinion hardly inspires confidence that "proper" will mean anything more than "personally distasteful". What makes a law not "proper"? All Chief Justice Roberts can give us is that the legislation isn't "proper" where it would "undermine the structure of government established by the Constitution" or is "not consist[ent] with the letter and spirit of the constitution." There is almost no constraining bite to that "doctrine" at all -- it is an open invitation to simply strike down whatever it is a given Justice finds distasteful. Which is more or less how it was used here: The individual mandate is not "proper" because ... mandates, ew, scary. There just isn't a workable argument in there -- particularly when, as Justice Ginsburg (again!) notes, it is far from clear that the mechanism of a penalty payable as a tax is more far-reaching than Chief Justice Roberts' own example of admittedly "proper" congressional exercises (such as, say, keeping someone in jail). Nor is it clear why, if the form of a mandate is so repugnant to the constitutional order, it becomes okay when it is viewed as a tax regulation rather than a commerce regulation. The answer is that programs like this aren't actually that scary, but using constitutional language as vague as "is it proper" is an invitation to disaster.

Now, on the "proper" end of things, it is possible that this is meant to be a ticket good for this ride only -- that the Court will not in fact start using questions of "is the law proper" to strike down legislation left and right (well, most likely left). But maybe not -- if it was meant to be just a tool for this case, Roberts would have joined his conservative colleagues and struck the thing down. If we do see a revitalization of Lochner-era due process jurisprudence under the new guise of "proper", that would be nothing short of a catastrophe.