Ed Kilgore writes a bit about the trend toward racy covers in the Frank Foer Era at The New Republic. The latest issue, however, breaks with the skin motif in favor of a portait of Iranian President Ahmed Ahmadinejad as . . . a vampire! But not an ordinary vampire, he's a vampire whose fangs point up instead of the traditional down. Why that is, I couldn't say, but the point of the article, I guess, is to lay the groundwork for a war with Iran. I'm not going to go point by point on this question, but one section of the article is worth discussing in greater depth.

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Apologies for the dearth of posts, I flew up to Boston this morning for my family's traditional not-on-the-right-day Passover observance. At any rate, this sounds interesting. Henry Farrell writes:

Yale University Press has just released Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. You can buy it at Powells, and Amazon, but it’s also available from Benkler under Creative Commons with an associated wiki. There’ll be more about this book on CT soon – for the moment, suffice to say that I think that this is a really important book, not only for people interested in the politics of technology, but for people interested in left or liberal politics more generally. It fizzes with ideas.

Here's the main page for the book's wiki. Here's the table of contents. Here you can find PDF's of each chapter. I'm going to download a copy right now.

Tommy Franks won the chutzpah award today when he showed up on television to criticize the six Generals who have called for Don Rumsfeld's resignation. If you watched the spectacle on Hardball you were certain to see, strategically placed in the background over each shoulder, a prominent copy of Tommy Franks' five million dollar memoir. Hell, the only thing missing was his medal of freedom.

Apart from taking credit now for the debacle that Iraq has become, Franks has created controversy over his claim (which was recorded by Bob Woodward in Plan of Attack) that Douglas Feith, the former Under Secretary for Policy at the Department of Defense was "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth." Not so fast there Tommy boy.

Today Franks appeared to change his tune about Feith. On Hardball Franks said:

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In response to the claim I made in my last post that the new floodmaps make a tacit admission that this was an unnatural disaster, commenter Dilan Esper responds:

"That may be the conclusion of POLITICIANS who don't want to lose votes by seeming heartless, but that doesn't make it SCIENTIFIC fact."

I find this kind of comment maddening, not because I question Dilan's good will, but because anyone of good will who wants to know what's going on would probably be with Dilan. The story is just not being told.

Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster. Bad things would have happened in New Orleans no matter what, because it is low lying and prone to flooding. But it would have been comparable to other disasters. What turned New Orleans from a disaster into an apocalyptic nightmare is not Mother Nature, but sub-standard engineering.

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Today it was revealed that Donald Rumsfeld was personally involved in a late 2002 interrogation of a high-value al-Qaida detainee known in intelligence circles as "the 20th hijacker." According to a report at Salon.com, On Dec. 2, 2002 Rumsfeld approved 16 interrogation strategies for use against the suspect including the use of forced nudity, stress positions and the removal of religious items. In public statements Rumsfeld has maintained that none of the policies at Guantánamo led to "inhumane" treatment of detainees.

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So the newest GOP gambit is to blame Democrats for blocking the Republicans in the House last December from downgrading illegal presence in the US from a felony to a misdemeanor-- in fact, they are going to run ads in Spanish to that effect.  

So let's look at the Congressional Record for WHY Congressman Sensenbrenner initially supported dropping the penalty from a felony to a misdemeanor. Was it out of concern that this penalty would be too harsh? Don't bet on it.   Read the transcript and you see the following:

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Like it or not, Don Rumsfeld's time as Secretary of Defense is running out. The real question is who will be next to step out of the shadows and denounce him. So far, six retired Generals (four Army and two Marines) have stepped up to the microphone to denounce Donald Rumsfeld as an incompetent, failed leader and the list is likely to get longer in the coming days. The list, so far, of retired Generals is impressive (for those non-military folk, a Brigadier General has one star, a Major General has two stars, a Lieutenant General has three stars, and a General has four stars; four stars outranks the others) :

Lt. General Gregory Newbold, (Marine) retired director of operations at the Pentagon’s military joint staff;
Major General Paul D. Eaton (Army);
General Anthony Zinni (Marine) former Commander Central Command
Major General John Batiste (Army)
Major General Charles Swannack (Army)
Major General John Riggs (Army)

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Matt Yglesias objects to immigration pedantry, and After the Levee’s Boyd Blundell explains how floodmaps can be fun.  Sam Spiewak has today’s news , and readers discuss Iran's nuclear capability, domestic surveillance programs, and ... Hugh Hefner. 

Starting on Monday, the Book Club will feature a discussion about Juliet Eilperin’s Fight Club Politics: How Partisanship is Poisoning the House of Representatives.

Secret military information is for sale in the bazaar just outside the gate of the US base in Bagram, according to NBC’s investigative unit. This week, NBC producers (following up on a LA Times article) bought six flash drives that included the names and personal information of military interrogators, ID’s and photos of US troops, and other information that NBC deemed too sensitive to disclose. Among the photos were images of individuals who appeared to have been tortured and killed. The article speculates the drives were smuggled out by Afghan employees. The Pentagon had no comment.

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Sean Michael Winters writes:

Democrats should start by running a series of ads with prominent immigrants from popular culture. Swing voters are probably not impressed by Bill Richardson, the Hispanic governor of New Mexico. They are impressed by Albert Pujols of the St. Louis Cardinals. Pujols is from the Dominican Republic, he is a perennial all-star, and he is a born-again Christian.

To get technical about it, though, star athletes are actually eligible to enter the country on entirely separate terms from your average person. They can get a EB-1 Immigration Visa for people with "extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics which has been demonstrated by sustained national or international acclaim and whose achievements have been recognized in the field through extensive documentation" or O-1 Immigrant of Extraordinary Ability visas among other approaches.

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The floodmaps have been released!

For those of you new to this game, residents who have every interest in rebuilding have been in limbo for the last several months. The federal government makes the determination of which areas of the city are susceptible to what level of flooding. Until those federal maps were released, basic things like mortgages, insurance, and equity loans could not be obtained. So businesses were afraid to re-invest, and workers were unable to move back, and so on. This was the one great barrier to any generation of positive momentum.

So now we have something to go on, and on the whole, the news is good for New Orleans.

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I think Kevin Drum's extracted the wrong factoid out of Kerry Howley's excellent article on the campaign to get Mifepristone (the "abortion pill") banned as dangerous. That a worst-case mortality rate of about one in 100,000 is lower than Viagra's five in 100,000 mortality rate is interesting. The truly crucial fact, however, is that compared to Mifepristone child birth is an absolute death trap. Kerry notes that "in 1997, the pregnancy-related mortality rate was 12.9 deaths per 100,000 live births; more than tenfold that of legal abortion." This CDC study concludes that "During 1991 to 1999 . . . about 12 pregnancy-related deaths occurred for every 100,000 live births." What's more, the CDC's ambitious long-term goal is that by 2030 we can reduce the maternal death rate to "no more than 3.3 deaths per 100,000 live births" which would make giving birth about three or four times as deadly as having an abortion.

Under the circumstances, attributing any danger whatsoever to abortion is deeply misleading. Of the options available to a pregnant woman, legal abortion by whatever method is, by far, the safest alternative. Obviously, that's not to say that nobody should ever have kids (the problems with this solution are pretty clear) but there's certainly no serious health argument in favor of childbearing.

During the US presidency of the Security Council in February, I offered rare words of praise to Ambassador Bolton for adopting a rhetoric of urgency that reflected the accelerating pace of human destruction in Darfur. To a certain extent, his rhetoric was backed up by some action: specifically, the council passed a proposal to begin contingency planning for a peace-keeping force in Darfur.

Two and a half months later, it has become clear my praise was premature. Reuters’ Evelyn Leopold reports today that the Western alliance’s “short list” of individuals to be subject to international sanction for their criminal responsibility in Darfur is, indeed, a very short list. According to her report, six or seven members of the Security Council have agreed to a list of only four names. Bolton does not seem perturbed in the slightest.

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Testifying for the second time in his trial, admitted 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui criticized his court-appointed lawyers for “criminal non-assistance” in defending him.  “I want to have somebody in court who I trust,” he said.  His lawyers are arguing that Moussaoui is mentally ill and should be spared the death penalty.

A car bomb killed at least 13 people in a marketplace in Northern Baghdad.  Earlier today, the US military said that a solder had been killed by a roadside bomb.  Yesterday, three US soldiers were killed in similar attacks.

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For nine days, a group of strikers at the University of Miami have been on a hunger strike. Three strikers have been hospitalized, including Felician Hernandez (who tells his story of employer anti-union harrassment here).

They have a simple demand for Donna Shalala, President of the U of Miami-- assure the janitors a fair chance to join a union through a card check procedure rather than forcing them through the meatgrinder of George Bush's NLRB procedures.

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Today at TPMCafe, Greg Anrig explains why the current situation with Iran is not the same as the Cuban Missile Crisis, and E.J, Graff explains why there is not a war against boys in this country.  Bolton Watch’s Scott T. Paul wants to know what you think makes John Bolton tick, and After the Levees Rosemary James ponders what it's like to slow dance in New Orleans. Joshua Hudelson brings us the day’s news, 13 and Drug Bill Debacle’s Cindy Zeldin examines what happens when states actually use their power to regulate insurance companies in order to expand coverage. Readers are talking about finding the invisible man, David Brooks getting “philosophical,” and how to avoid the "wimp charge."

Next week, the Book Club will feature a discussion about Juliet Eilperin’s Fight Club Politics: How Partisanship is Poisoning the House of Representatives.

As Justin Logan notes there's an awful lot of warmongering on The Weekly Standard's homepage at the moment. One contribution is by retired Air Force General Thomas McInerney who assures us that "Yes, there is a feasible military option against the mullahs' nuclear program." Now the two main reasons for thinking a military option isn't feasible are the following -- one, we don't really know where all Iran's nuclear facilities are; two, even if we do hit them all, that will merely delay Iranian acquisition of nuclear technology, not prevent it. McInerny concedes the second point, and says absolutely nothing on the first point. I gather from this that there is not, in fact, a feasible military option against the mullahs' nuclear program. Rather than actually address feasibility concerns, McInerney's piece is mostly dedicated to a quasi-pornographic listing of all the fancy airpower technology he wants to deploy.

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Those of you who have taken the time to comment on this page - it hasn't gone unnoticed. Many of you have weighed in on what makes Bolton tick and why he was appointed to the Ambassadorship.

I'm going to throw out some possibilities, but I'd like to hear other perpsectives.

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Lawyers for former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby say that Libby was not instructed to reveal the name of former CIA officer Valerie Plame when disclosing previously classified information to a reporter.  White House documents from two years ago do not mention Plame’s name, which Libby’s lawyers claim is evidence that there was no White House conspiracy against Plame’s husband Joseph C Wilson IV, who had criticized the administration.

About 20 gunmen stormed theWest Bank office of Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniya, demanding jobs and promotions, before leaving.  Haniya was not in the office at the time, but the group communicated with him via video-link.  The men were members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, an offshoot of the Fatah party which was defeated in recent elections.

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New Jersey recently passed legislation requiring health insurers to cover unmarried dependents, or grown children without access to other group insurance, on their parents’ plans up to age 30. According to an article in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, this is a growing phenomenon, with other states such as Colorado and New Mexico having passed similar bills. Given that young adults are more likely to be uninsured than any other age group, this is a smart—if small—idea. Time will tell if these types of initiatives will have even a marginal impact, but what is particularly interesting about this phenomenon, particularly in light of the emerging debate here at TPM Café about the wisdom of employer mandates, is that these states are using a lever they have—their authority to regulate insurance companies, which is much stronger than their authority over employer benefits—in an effort to expand coverage.

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The Deep South's voluptuous, ensnaring Queen is a contrary, self-absorbed, seasoned survivor. In the face of war, epidemics, fires, and floods of Biblical proportions, she shakes the blood and muck, ashes and black mold off her skirts in preparation for the ball. She won't be rushed, however. She will dance when she's ready. And you can forget making her dance to your tune. She makes her own music, moves to her own beat.

This sense of her own rhythm has proved, in some instances, the salvation of New Orleans.

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An interesting map by Geitner Simmons color-coding each county in America according to the percentage of religious adherents. Some of this turns out how you'd expect (lots of religion in Utah, little of it in Northern California) but considering how programmed we are to think in these terms, there's surprisingly little correlation between this map and your classic red versus blue election maps. Arizona's way less religious than Massachusettes. Indiana's less religious than Illinois. Georgia's about on a par with New York. Maps of the regional breakdown between where people say "soda" where they say "pop" and where they say "coke" seem to be a better predictor of electoral behavior (although this method gets the Pacific Northwest wrong).

The war hype déjà vu continues: Graham Allison, a former assistant defense secretary under Clinton, writes in a Boston Globe op-ed that the current situation in Iran is a “slow-mo Cuban missile crisis.” David Ignatius, without fully endorsing the analogy, nonetheless gives it legs by writing about it in his Washington Post column yesterday. Recall that President Bush made the same connection in the drumroll to the Iraq invasion, when he said in an October 7, 2002 speech, “As President Kennedy said in October of 1962, ‘Neither the United States of America, nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small. We no longer live in a world where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation’s security to constitute maximum peril.’”

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Lately it's been time in the culture for another round of: Blame the women! This time, women have over-feminized the education system, so that boys are getting left behind. The Week sums up the discussion here. John Tierney at the NYT warns over-educated women that there will be no one for them to marry. A Kenyon College admissions officer confesses that her school offers affirmative action to males, lest the school admit a high-achieving but overly-female frosh class. The problem with this problem is that it is bunk-o-rama... and not just because men still out-earn women at every level, including entry-level jobs. Recently Caryl Rivers and Rosalind Chait Barnett examined the data in the Washington Post and discovered that boys are doing just fine in school unless -- wait for it -- they're black and poor. But that little caveat doesn't make it into the media: who wants to write about race and class, when we can instead run a nice distracting culture war against those nasty straw feminists?

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Regarding Iran’s announcement yesterday that they have enriched uranium, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said “We can’t let this continue.”  Rice did not specify what sort of “action” needs to be taken, but officials say it could involve a UN-wide travel ban on Iranian officials and freezing the regime’s assets.

A car bomb at a Shia mosque in Baquba, Iraq, killed 25 people and injured 60.  Earlier today a Sunni politician announced that the parliament would meet next Monday for the second time since its election.  U.S. officials have been calling on Iraqis to unify their government in order to stop the near-daily attacks of the past several weeks.

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OK, so I understand that resume checking a right-wing blogger is a bit beyond the WaPo, but at least they don’t get flummoxed as much as the NY Times headline writers (or journalists) but falling for the Administration's line that 29 million Medicare recipients have signed up for Part D? Yup check that box:

The multibillion-dollar program, called Medicare Part D, subsidizes prescription drugs for the disabled and for people 65 and older. So far, 29 million Americans have enrolled, leaving at least 8 million -- and as many as 14 million by some estimates -- still eligible.

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Alex Tabbarok takes a look at some recent research indicating that the Millenium Challenge Corporation grants -- one of the Bush administration's token good ideas -- seem to be working pretty well. Tragically, during the high tide of foreign aid in the 1950s and 60s money was handed out in ill-considered ways and did way less good than one would hope given the quantity of commitment. Consequently, foreign assistance developed a reputation as something that "doesn't work" which has dogged it to this day. But like anything else, it sometimes works and it sometimes doesn't; it works for some things but not for other things -- it all just depends. With decades of experience at our backs, we now know much more about how to deploy money usefully. To his credit, Bush has done a lot to push back against the GOP's traditional hostility to foreign aid and has even devised some clever programs for delivering it. I believe if you peer into the details, the implementation of all Bush's aid programs has been problematic (a lot of robbing Peter to pay Paul, needless duplication, a strange unwillingness to participate in multinational endeavors) but it's laid the groundwork for things that can hopefully be built upon in the future and looks way better than the other parts of his legacy abroad.

You can't have a war without a Mark Steyn article, and his very long piece in the City Journal about the need to invade Iran sure is a doozy. It's about 80 percent irrelevancies and heavy-breathing. The main recognizable argument is that we need to do this because if we don't Iran will launch an unprovoked nuclear first strike against Israel which is ridiculous. If it weren't ridiculous, it would be a reasonable argument in favor of Israeli military action, but it's also ridiculous. To Steyn's credit, he seems to have a semi-realistic picture of the implications of his argument:

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Today at TPMCafe, Reed Hundt explains his predictions of how the immigration debate will play out in Washington, and Matt Yglesias takes on Stanley Fish. Bolton Watch’s Mark L. Goldberg wonders if the right is trying to make an “issue” out of the U.N, and Joshua Hudelson has the news of the day. Readers are discussing terror (and THE Terror) and Iran.

An article in the Washington Post claims that days before President Bush declared “We have found the weapons of mass destruction,” U.S. intelligence officials had evidence to the contrary.  A secret fact-finding mission concluded that suspicious trailers were not being used to make biological weapons.  The report reached the White House two days before Bush’s statement on the WMDs.

After officially losing the national election yesterday, Italy’s prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is demanding a review of 43,000 contested ballots.  His challenger, center-left politician Romano Prodi, said that “victory was clear in both houses of parliament.”  Berlusconi said that there have been “many irregularities” with votes sent in from Italian expatriates. 

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I was surprised several months or maybe a year ago to see Stanley Fish publishing an op-ed in The New York Times asserting that the only viable way of discerning the meaning of a document -- in the particular case at hand, the constitution -- was to inquire as to the intentions of its author. I was even more surprised to learn about a month ago that this idea is being taken seriously in at least one of America's top law schools. Fortunately, Fish's re-emergence as a Times blogger gives me a chance to deploy some of my undergraduate philosophy learning to say why this is wrong. Like a good academic, in his post on the subject Fish tries to anticipate objections. Unfortunately, he gets the wrong one: "The example also shows why one of the most often heard objections to intentionalism — it requires us to get inside the heads of interpreters and how do we do that? — is off the mark." I think that is a bit of a problem, but it's by no means the main problem.

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Another great piece in the WaPo news section comes down squarely with the view that the administration knowingly made false claims about alleged mobile biolabs in Iraq. Hopefully, Fred Hiatt will read his own paper before writing his next editorial about how crazy Bush's critics are.

You really did hear it here first. On March 31, I mentioned that Senator Kennedy might want to be much less eager to strike a deal with the Senate Republicans on immigration and that all Democrats should be more interested in fighting for families and citizenship than in negotiating Congressional compromise. And what do you know that same story has now appeared on the front page of the New York Times today.

Pushing my prognostication luck a little further, what will now occur is that the Republicans will hustle and flow toward a post-recess bill that Senator Frist will promise to get through both houses. But meanwhile the surprising, peaceful, inspiring, and enormous marches have already changed everyone's political calculation. Democrats are at last beginning to grasp that by representing a multi-ethnic, multilingual coalition of hard working strivers for the fruits of the American Dream they can recreate a Newer Deal coalition that will grant them political power for a generation. Some Democrats will come back from recess eager to put themselves in front of the crowds that have already formed. They will not be willing to cut the bad deals that the Republicans will want. The ship of state will be in irons, as the sailors say, because the White House will be focused on Iran bombing plans and the Libby trial; besides, the White House's base won't welcome the Democratic push for worker's rights and family values -- which is what the immigration cause can fairly be described as being. Senator Kennedy himself will find the roar of the crowd overcomes the impulse to wheel and deal in the cloakroom. Beyond that, my crystal ball is a little cloudy. More in the future from your faithful tea leaf reader.

In the midst of an op-ed showdown with Anne Bayefsky over the administration’s decision not to join the new Human Rights Council, Representative Tom Lantos hits a theme I suspect we might see repeated as we race towards November.

The Bush administration's announcement of its disinterest in membership on the new council also projects a disturbing image of weakness in U.S. diplomacy. It should not have required heavy lifting for our diplomats in New York and in foreign capitals to recruit the necessary 96 "yes" votes to seat the United States on the new council. By the same token, our capable diplomats should have been able to ensure that 96 countries do not support the likes of Zimbabwe, Syria and North Korea for U.N. Human Rights Council membership.

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Alan Wolfe, reviewing Francis Fukuyama's book, opines: "As Fukuyama's book makes clear, the 'Bush doctrine' of preventive war lies in shatters. No future administration is likely to invade a country without committing requisite numbers of troops to finish the job." This makes me think that the Bush docrtine of preventive war hasn't been shattered at all. Wolfe isn't saying that no future administration will launch a preventive war. Nor is he saying that he would disapprove of launching such wars in the future. He's just saying that next time we attack a country that poses no actual threat to the security of the United States of America we should either send a larger invading army or else choose a smaller country. That this is the foreign policy vision of Bush's leading critics is what really makes me worry about the future.

If the U.S. fails to get a strongly worded resolution against Iran in the Security Council, who's fault is that? According to John Bolton, it's the UN's fault. I don't have the exact quote yet, but Randall Chase of The Associated Press reports:

Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology presents a challenge that will help determine whether the United Nations is an effective problem-solving body, U.N. Ambassador John Bolton said Monday.

This is classic Bolton. He consistenly suggests that it's the Security Council's job to build consensus in the U.S. interest and the U.S. Ambassador's job to sit in judgment of the process.

That's upside-down logic. It's up to Bolton to advance U.S. foreign policy goals at the UN - not the Security Council.

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Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, confirmed today that Iran has enriched uranium to the level needed for use in nuclear power plants.  “This great achievement shows that resistance against illegal demands from others can pave the way for greater achievements,” said Aghazadeh.

More than 50 people, including the head of an Islamic group and several religious leaders, were killed by a bomb explosion during a gathering in Karachi, Pakistan.  President Pervez Musharraf condemned the attack and called on the local government to apprehend whoever caused it.  Angry citizens threw stones at police for not arriving at the scene faster.

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It's come to light that the 2005 spending bill contains a little-publicized new restriction:

Individuals seeking care through Medicaid beginning on July 1 will be required under federal law to show proof of U.S. citizenship -- such as a birth certificate, passport or another form of identification -- the Boston Globe reports. The requirement was included in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which President Bush signed into law earlier this year. The provision's intent is to prevent undocumented immigrants from claiming to be citizens in order to receive benefits only provided to legal residents, according to the Globe.

Can we say Katrina??

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Some good comments to my post on basic research (plus this totally non-responsive one. Neil asks a good question: "Do you think we might just be big enough that the widely-distributed benefits of basic science research make a net gain for us?" That seems possible. If every X dollars of basic science funding great nX dollars of benefit, then it can be worth doing even if the gains are diffuse as long as the funding entity is really big, which the US is. For small countries like Iceland free riding may be the best strategy while big countries like the USA may benefit from ponying up the money and just accepting that some will free ride. Mbarton raises an interesting point about human capital -- funding research is a way of funding the training and development of researchers and, I suppose, building institutional knowledge and so forth.

Normally, I spare this audience the basketblogging, but this is too good to ignore. Dwyane Wade says:

I've read Pride and Prejudice a couple of times. It's one of my favorite books, which usually surprises people. I guess they wonder how a love story from Regency England could be relevant to a 21st century basketball player from the Southside of Chicago. Class struggle, overcoming stereotypes and humble beginnings, getting out of your own way and letting love take over: these are things I can relate to, definitely. Reading the Classics is like opening a door to a world that at first looks so different from mine, but when I look closer, is filled with people who struggle with the same things I do. And the great thing is, they may be a little farther along in their struggle than I am, so I can actually learn something.

Well, it's one of my favorite books, too, and next time someone says anything funny about it, I'll just have my friend Dwyane beat them up.

To make a semi-serious point, there's a common assumption that we could cure all manner of inner-city ills if only prominent African-American athletes did more to act as role models. Hence the NBA Cares initiative under whose auspices we gain these pearls of literary wisdom. This strikes me as arguably misguided -- it's main effect is to further increase the valorization of star athletes and entertainers which merely entrenches the notion that unless you can develop Wade's level of basketball skills (which, obviously, the vast majority of people simply can't do no matter how hard they try) there's really no other constructive goals in life worth setting for yourself. What's needed is the valorization of people with modest, actually feasible achievements, combined with a recognition of the fact that star performers, while incredible, aren't people the rest of us should really bother trying to emulate.

Today at TPMCafe, America Abroad’s Juliette Kayyem wonders what we will do with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), and Jo-Ann Mort considers the response to union agitation by French and New York City authorities. Larry Johnson offers this updated Plamegate timeline, and America Abroad’s Ernie Wilson looks at how local politicians are talking about international challenges. Nathan Newman looks at who makes up the immigrants’ rights supporters,  and Joshua Hudelson has the news. Readers are discussing illegal immigration and red states and protest songs.

I'm purusing the content at the Brookings Institution's new Hamilton Project website, and these innovation bullet-points reminded me of a general gripe:

• make more workers literate in science and engineering
• adopt smarter incentives for private firms to undertake R&D and remove barriers to private-sector innovation
• increase the federal commitment to fundamental scientific research
• achieve energy independence
• improve our nation's physical infrastructure

This is a pretty standard 21st century progressive list, but the logic of point three always escapes me. The salient fact about basic scientific research, or so it seems to me, is that anyone can use it. That Albert Einstein outlined his major contributions to physics while in Europe has in no way disadvantaged the United States vis-a-vis Europe. Similarly, that Charles Darwin was English hasn't given the English some insurmountable lead in biotechnology. As far as I know, no scientific discoveries of any consequence have ever been made in Canada or Iceland, but both are wealthy, technologically advanced societies. Knowledge diffuses. More basic science is good for everyone, but precisely because it's good for everyone the trick is to dupe some other country into funding it. Then we can spend our money and stuff only we can use like bridges or zoos or tanks. Or am I wrong? Lots of smart people seem to think otherwise.

There is no better contrast between our American ways and that of the French than these two stories: due to the explosive and determined response of students, trade unionists and the French Socialist Party, President Jacques Chirac was forced to stand down from his attempt to create flexible work rules that would allow employers to fire young people without recourse. At the same time, a New York City judge has sentenced the leader of the New York City Transport Workers Union, Roger Toussaint, to 10 days in jail for his union's strike last Christmas Time, which was done in defiance of the NYS Taylor Law. According to the NYT, Toussaint and the union lawyers are not going to contest the judge's ruling. There is still a chance that the union will be fined millions of dollars--and that they will lose their "privilege" of dues check-off, which means that they can automatically collect membership dues from transport workers. Both of these penalties would effectively cripple the union.

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