The story this far is that the New York Times is seriously on the defensive because the son of its Israel correspondent, Ethan Bronner, joined the Israeli army.

In the end, the Bronner story is not that significant. He will either remain in Israel or be reassigned. Other than for the Bronner family, life will go on as before.

But here's the real story. Suddenly the New York Times feels the need to deal with its critics who argue that an intense attachment to Israel obscures objective judgement on the Middle East.

This is new. Until very recently the assumption was that the Israeli position was, by definition, the neutral, disinterested position.

Read any Tom Friedman column on the Middle East. The underlying assumption of any Friedman column is that if it's good for Israel, it's good for America. It's right.

Friedman is classic. On any issue -- Thai economics, Chinese reform, or Macedonian separatism -- he will invariably find a friend, who happens to be an Israeli, to comment on it.

Until now, that was okay.

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"...[T]he delinquencies of the states have, step by step, matured themselves to an extreme which has at length arrested all the wheels of the national government... The [members of Congress] will consider the conformity of the thing proposed or required to their immediate interests or aims.... in a spirit of... suspicious scrutiny, without that knowledge of national circumstances and reasons of state which is essential to right judgment, and with that strong predilection in favor of local objects which can hardly fail to mislead the decision."

So warned Alexander Hamilton in 1787 in The Federalist, No.15, and Walter Lippmann cited this in 1922 in his Public Opinion, his now-classic remonstrance against democracy. Lippmann defended Hamilton's and Madison's desire to, as he put it, "restore government as against democracy" in order to secure "the power to make national decisions and enforce them throughout the nation; democracy [the Federalists] believed was the insistence of localities and classes upon self-determination in accordance with their immediate interests and aims." Were they wrong?

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John Bolton has made a cottage industry out of trying to scare people about nuclear weapons. Contrary to the subtitle of Dr. Strangelove - "how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb" - Bolton's motto seems to be "why you need to start worrying and embrace the bomb." He reiterates this point at every opportunity, most recently in a piece published in the Washington Examiner. But does he really believe that the Obama administration's modest but essential first steps towards reducing global nuclear arsenals are putting us in grave danger? I seriously doubt it.

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The political establishment continues to be obsessed with the victory of Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate race. In fact, they are so obsessed they managed to almost completely overlook the success of two important tax initiatives in Oregon the following week.

Oregon voters passed by a margin of 54 to 46 a tax measure that would raise the tax rate on taxpayers with an income of more than $250,000 a year. They also approved a measure that would raise the tax paid by corporations in Oregon. Together the two measures are projected to raise $750 million over the next two years, approximately 5 percent of the state's $14 billon budget.

This victory is striking because it shows that voters in Oregon were willing to support progressive taxation in order to avoid substantial cuts in public services. This is worth noting at time when there is a conventional wisdom taking shape in Washington that the public is increasingly hostile to the government and will oppose taxes in any form.

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Former Army Specialist Casey Elder is trapped in a story without a conclusion. It began in 2004, the moment an IED struck her Humvee in Baghdad, slamming her hard enough to dislocate her shoulder and cause permanent joint and nerve damage.

After returning home, Casey began suffering from balance problems, short-term memory loss, and severe migraines. After a series of misdiagnoses, her local VA was finally able to pinpoint the source of her injuries: Casey had a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). She responded by filing a disability claim with the VA in January 2009, assuming that a diagnosis from a VA hospital would qualify her to receive compensation. But that assumption proved to be painfully wrong.

After waiting eight months, Casey was shocked to learn that her claim was rejected. Her only recourse was to appeal the VA's decision, an arduous, drawn-out process. Today, more than a year after she started this journey, Casey still waits for word on whether or not she will receive her hard-earned benefits.

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As a companion piece to Matt Yglesias' ontology of Miranda rights, I want to look at the underlying first-order basis of the intelligence obtained from terrorists in custody. Very simple: they give it to us. Obviously they don't do so eagerly or enthusiastically; after all, being in custody isn't their original plan. Certainly there's intimidation, manipulation, and pressure involved. But whatever techniques are used, regardless of whether the interrogators are civilian or military, the detainee definitely has a say in the transaction.

Contrary to conservative (tough-)talking points, information doesn't come out of terrorists like toothpaste out of a tube. Again, the conservative side of the law-enforcement-versus-war debate is more about which looks tougher than which works better -- especially since the FBI has clearly been getting substantial information out of the underpants bomber, despite treating him like a criminal. Apparently this has a lot to do with his trying to earn whatever leniency is possible and the urging of his family. So how would hard-liners do better by using the military -- through shock and awe? Precision strikes?

Financial Times Washington Bureau Chief Edward Luce has written a granularly informed insider account about those who hold the keys to the inner most sanctum of Obama Land -- Rahm Emanuel, Robert Gibbs, Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod.

It's a vital article -- a brave one -- that includes "dozens of interviews with his closest allies and friends in Washington."

Most are unnamed because the consequences of retribution from this powerful foursome can be severe in an access-dependent town. John Podesta, president of the powerful, administration-tilting Center for American Progress, had the temerity and self-confidence to put his thoughts publicly on the record. But most others could not.

Mark Schmitt, executive editor of the liberal magazine the American Prospect, wrote that "Luce has written what seems to me the best and most succinct rundown of what's gone wrong in the White House, with particular attention to the role of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel." But some of the big aggregators out there -- Mike Allen at Politico and ABC's The Note among others -- didn't give Luce's juicy and lengthy essay any love.

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The Public Editor at the New York Times, Clark Hoyt, is doing the public a great disservice, not only by calling for Ethan Bronner's reassignment, but for asserting a reason, apparently supported by Harvard's Alex Jones, that makes a nonsense of reason itself.

Let me be clear: Ethan Bronner is a friend, and I have followed his writing about Israel and the Middle for 20 years, that is, since before I knew him. If you think my friendship with him means that everything I am about to say is not to be trusted, then you have pretty much bought in to the standard Hoyt is proposing, and you might as well not read on.

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This chart shows that the number of working males has dropped back to 1996 levels when there were 30 million less citizens in the U.S. A lot of angry unemployed men in an interregnum is a recipe for social unrest and fascism. Any student of the rise of Hitler to power in 1933 understands that the depression unleashed a huge number of unemployed young and middle-aged German men onto the streets only to be organized by the Nazis. Here's Eric Hobsbawm from The Age of Extremes

"Fascism was triumphantly anti-liberal. It also provided the proof that man can, without difficulty, combine crack-brained beliefs about the world with a confident mastery of contemporary high technology.... Nevertheless, the combination of conservative values, the techniques of mass democracy, and an innovative ideology of irrationalist savagery, essentially centered in nationalism, must be explained"

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The neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem has been in the news a lot lately--due to tensions between Jewish settlers and the Palestinians who live in houses that the settlers would like to inhabit. But, the neighborhood will also be central to any future resolution of a two state solution. Most American Jews don't know it and don't see it; it's part of the Jerusalem they never see and really don't know.

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Anyone who has followed the Senate's handling of health care reform can't help but be impressed (or depressed) by the glacial pace at which things move in that place. In fact, it appears that Senate sloth contributed mightily to the failure of reform (by comparison, the House is a model of streamlined efficiency).

But the Senate can and does move with dispatch when it wants to (or is unable to resist the pressure to move). Sometimes a President can get the Senate to move as quickly as he wants. FDR and LBJ were famous for that. More often than Presidents, powerful interest groups can light a fire under the self-proclaimed "world's most deliberative body."

For instance, just last week the Senate passed comprehensive sanctions on Iran -- a bill being pushed by AIPAC neocons and the other "usual suspects" -- in record time. It was brought up with only three senators on the floor; there was a five minute debate and it passed by voice vote. Just like that.

Not everyone was happy that it passed by voice vote. It's an election year and senators want some Iran-bashing credit with their donors.

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As comprehensive health reform slowly dies inside the five yard line, Democrats in DC are at the fingerpointing stage: House Dems blame Senate Dems and vice versa. Obama is giving nice speeches, a cross between Carter preachiness and Clinton anti-Congress triangulation, trying to convince us all that he is "still fighting for health reform" and -- the real subtext -- that Congress, not he, will be to blame when it stalls and dies.

None of us in the center-left community should buy this. Obama will be held responsible by history, and he should be held responsible by all of us right now, if he does not get comprehensive health legislation done with huge Democratic margins in both houses and a bill pending that has passed the obstructionist Senate.

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Election season has begun. And the results of the contentious primaries in Illinois and the ranked up races across the country prove that it will be an entertaining, surprising season. There's already a muck-drenched story in the Land of Lincoln, full of zest and stupidity. But the best of the political contests can be summed up with one brilliant hashtag: #demonsheep.

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God bless my fellow Democracy Arsenal blogger Adam Blickstein, who is on the case, right on the ball. He's there at every turn, exposing the deceit, hysteria and all-around ridiculousness of the opposition's fear-mongering. Adam and others have built up an overwhelming arsenal of facts about how effectively the justice system handles terrorists -- not only in prosecuting but in collecting actionable intel-- and examples showing the Bush Administration didn't even do what's being asked for. Boy,the voices of reason are mopping the floor with these shameless and dishonest manipulators.

Wait, revealing the facts hasn't sent the fear pushers running for the hills? What's going on here?

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UPDATE:

Two years ago, at a family event, an Israeli guest noticed Wolf Blitzer in attendance and said, "In Israel, we took CNN off the cable packages for being anti-Israel. Now we have FOX which is great."

My younger son, astounded, said, "You banned CNN because you think it's anti-Israel. When will Israel start acting like a real country?"

The Israeli was offended and, after posing for a photo with Wolf, said that America is just as bad for banning Al Jazeera which Israelis watch. Touche!

Anyway, my kid's point was well-taken. Today the JERUSALEM POST, which foreigners consider to be a real Israeli newspaper, fired the liberal columnist Naomi Chazan for being affiliated with the New Israel Fund which is somehow connected with the Goldstone Report which has terrified Israel more than a hundred nukes in Ahmadinejad's pocket.

In case you missed it, there are all kinds of weird Goldstone-related stuff going down in Israel, not just crazy Alan Dershowitz calling for Goldstone's murder.

As for the Jerusalem Post, it it as if the teabaggers here had their own "newspaper." Unlike the other Israeli newspapers widely distributed on the web (Yediot or Ynet, Ha'aretz, Ma'ariv), the Jerusalem Post is an English language newspaper only read in hotel lobbies by American tourists and by a few thousand former Americans, Brits, Canadians and South Africans living in Israel. It has no Hebrew-speaking audience and, as you may know, Israelis speak Hebrew.

Still, it is sad to watch another newspaper sink into oblivion, even if its only a "newspaper."

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