Opening: Make Hilary Secretary of State (that is, remove the leader of the opposition from New York). Show the Arab and Muslim world--a place where honor matters--an abiding respect. Embrace the Arab League peace initiative of 2002 and frame the Israel-Palestine conflict in regional terms. Set out the long range goal of a Palestinian state, albeit in vague terms, but along with the insistence that settlements cease--code for some variation on the 1967 border. Draw Egypt and Jordan into the mix, implying their participation as forces on the ground. Open a diplomatic channel with, and through, Syria.

Middlegame: Cultivate the Palestinian Authority's new government, providing training to its police forces, while providing the promise of new investments to its business class. Use channel to Syria to bring Hamas into negotiations with the PA. Encourage rejection of Islamist radicalism in Palestine by implying American pragmatism; leave the Iranian regime to discredit itself and, in the process, the democratic pretensions of Hamas and Hezbollah. Challenge Israeli government on settlements' "natural growth" to establish future position on a 1967ish border. Work with Quartet to establish a consolidated front of world opinion and great power fiat; imply complete diplomatic isolation of groups in Israel/Palestine that defy the "peace process."

Attack: Broker a deal, with Egyptian participation, for the return of Gilad Shalit, in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners and the opening of the Gaza crossings. Visit Russia. Visit Damascus. Prepare the ground to isolate Iran diplomatically. Welcome the creation of a joint Palestinian negotiation team, led by the PA, but including Hamas officials; accept the principle that any deal will be put to a referendum; accept that all groups that agree to abide by a referendum can enter into a dialogue with Washington. Call for renewed, bilateral negotiations between Israel and the PA presided over by George Mitchell.

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The word most used to describe Palin's press conference yesterday was "breathless". She sped through her little speech like a student with too much Adderal in her system. Last night at a dinner party the theories ranged between two poles. On one side was the thought that the emails about to come out in one of the corruption lawsuits would be truly embarrassing. On the other pole is the theory that her speakers agent has told her how much money she could earn in the next 18 months if she wasn't tied to the Alaska Governor's mansion, and the thought of making a killing while she was still in her Andy Warhol "15 minutes" was too much for her and Todd to pass up.

Either way, despite the hopes of Bill Kristol, the whole resignation speech didn't do her a bit of good. She just seems like one more nutty, impulsive Republican governor. Mitt Romney is enjoying his breakfast this morning.

I'll never forget the moment, ten years ago this weekend, when I first heard the news. I was winding down after a long week of work, my thoughts drifting to Independence Day holiday festivities, when my cell phone rang with word that a young white man driving a blue Ford Taurus shot up a crowd of Orthodox Jews as they were leaving Sabbath services. Six people lay seriously injured on the sidewalk outside Congregation Adas Yeshurun, not far from my Chicago apartment.

After years of researching white nationalist groups, my instincts told me that this wasn't some random shooting. Minutes later, I received a call alerting me to another shooting just north in Evanston. Those blasts left Ricky Byrdsong, an African-American family man and basketball coach, lying dead in front of his children.

As I raced back across town through rush hour traffic in the sweltering summer heat, I got another call that more shots were fired in another suburb. Thankfully, this time the perpetrator missed the young Asian-American couple. The identity of the shooter was still a mystery, and he was still at large.

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This is credible.

There clearly is a story here and it is not that Palin can do more for Alaska NOT as governor.

Anyone who missed the announcement, check it out on TPM or wherever. It was incoherent, even scary. Obviously something is about to hit the fan and she is bailing.

She clearly is not running for President. A governor or senator who is running for President delivers some kind of policy address. Palin ignored policy, limiting herself to whining about media scrutiny.

She's done. My only hope is that she doesn't ruin Levi Johnston's career before it starts. I was so looking forward to his book. Actually, this craziness may increase interest in the book and the true story behind the Palin family follies.

What a fun 4th. Sanford, Ensign and now Palin gone. Three candidates, three scandals. Bring em on. The new GOP is delightful.

And check out this Alaska website which has done great work in uncovering the mystery called "Who Is Trig's Mom." Or dad.

Also, check out what the crazy right is saying. I love these automatons. Whatever they are fed, they swallow.

I'll never forget my Independence Day at war. On July 4, 2003, I was in Baghdad, preparing to return home with my infantry platoon after six months fighting Saddam's Army and an insurgency that was just beginning to exact its toll on coalition forces. On that day, however, my expectations were thwarted, as my men and I were notified that our combat tour would be extended indefinitely. So instead of enjoying fireworks stateside, my unit watched AK tracer trails zip across the sky, walked patrols instead of parades, and ate MREs instead of hot dogs.

Many Americans will never see the inside of a Humvee on the Fourth of July. Instead, they will enjoy three-day weekends capped by barbecues, block parties, and Roman candles. I'm extremely proud to be an American, but real patriotism is more than just picnics. And anyone who has served in any war will tell you that.

Ironically, for veterans, the Fourth of July can be a difficult holiday to celebrate. With every uniform that marches by in parades, we remember our friends that did not make it home. The sounds of fireworks remind us of incoming mortar rounds. And as large crowds gather to celebrate America's birthday, we sometimes find ourselves scanning the masses for potential danger.

But the impact of war isn't limited to July 4th.

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David Kurtz asserted on the front page this morning that Michael Jackson's "Thriller" is actually not the best-selling album of all time - The Eagles' "Greatest Hits 1971-1975" tops the list. His source? Sales figures from the RIAA.

So many readers - and TPM staffers - have taken issue with this claim that we've set up this open thread as a forum for Eagles and MJ fans to go head to head (instead of flooding the TPM inbox with complaints). Enjoy the discussion, and enjoy the holiday!

One telling moment in Scott Shane's NYT piece on the FBI's 2004 interrogations of Saddam Hussein, just released through the invaluable labors of the National Security Archive, is this FBI summary trying to explain why Saddam wanted to thwart UN inspections and cover up his non-possession of WMD. This is not brand new stuff, but still revelatory. Saddam told the FBI he

was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq's weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions [from] the United States for his refusal to allow U.N. inspectors back into Iraq. [Inspections] would have directly identified to the Iranians where to inflict maximum damage to Iraq.

Shane then quotes the US's former chief weapons inspector, Charles A. Duelfer, attempting to explain why Saddam would have wanted to fake WMD possession. Evidently it did not occur to the geniuses then on a mission to run American foreign policy for God that Saddam, having warred with Iran at the cost of millions of casualties for eight years, might fear the Islamic Republic.

"We did not appreciate how large the threat of Iran loomed in [Saddam's] thinking," Mr. Duelfer said, calling the United States' understanding of Iraq in 2003 "cartoonish."

This insult to the subtlety of the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote must not be allowed to stand.

But seriously, the FBI documents, though remarkable, are incomplete. The redacted sections are voluminous, and whatever appeared there is intended to remain classified until 2034. What are the subjects closed to investigation until then? The National Security Archive says:

Not included in these FBI reports are issues of particular interest to students of Iraq's complicated relationship with the U.S. - the reported role of the CIA in facilitating the Ba'ath party's rise to power, the uneasy alliance forged between Iraq and the U.S. during the Iran-Iraq war, and the precise nature of U.S. views regarding Iraq's chemical weapons policy during that conflict, given its contemporaneous knowledge of their repeated use against Iranians and the Kurds....This series of interviews also does not address chemical warfare in Kurdish areas of Iraq in 1987-1988, although an FBI progress report says Saddam was questioned on the topic.

I suppose it's a backhanded tribute to the new-era FBI that the redactions are whited-- rather than blacked--out. But that's not quite the change we had the right to expect from the transparency-claiming Obama administration.

Bring out the rest of this history, people. We have a right to know.

Jeff Stein of Congressional Quarterly keeps doing the best reporting on the continuing story. I assume we can expect more including from AIPAC as it fights off Steve Rosen's claim that alleged violations of the Espionage Act is just business as usual for the lobby (it isn't) and that therefore AIPAC owes him gazillions in damages for firing him and further damaging his reputation.

Also this from Natan Guttman, the ace Forward reporter.

Good reading for the Fourth of July.

Parting thought: Al Smith once said that the "only cure for democracy is more democracy." If he were alive today, he'd add "and by that I mean getting all money out of politics through 100% public financing."

The 'Green Revolution' in Iran has its paradoxes-- not least among them the anomaly of seeing young people out on the streets of Tehran in outfits that seemed openly defiant of Islamic dress norms while they also sported a color that many Muslims consider represents their religion.

The choice of that color, and of the accompanying rallying cry of "Allahu-akbar", seemed like deliberate attempts to build alliances between the often pro-secular west-o-philes of North Tehran and important reformist branches of the country's ruling hierarchy. (The lack of any real agreement between these two portions of the movement over whether the goal is to reform the country's Islamic system or to overthrow it is probably one of the movement's most notable weaknesses.)

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Months ago I declared that Gaza had cracked the Israel lobby. It did so by causing non-affiliated Jews to at last speak out about Israel/Palestine policy. These Jews had traditionally ceded the foreign-policy turf to their pro-Israel cousins (as I did, deferring politely to Marty Peretz out of the stupid guilty feeling that he was a better Jew than I was) till they realized that their cousins were nuts.

The Israel lobby is slowly waking up to the new landscape, and blaming anyone but the real culprit: a state practicing Jim Crow with millions of Palestinians under occupation and promoting a policy of permanent war with its neighbors.

The latest evidence of the lobby's puzzlement is a highly-tendentious piece by Gary Rosenblatt in the Jewish Week about "Whispered Worries About Obama" that--while poohpoohing the settlements and feeding suspicion about Obama-- states that the body of American Jewry is with Obama, even if the "mainstream supporters of Israel and Jewish causes" (i.e. Jewish chauvinists) are against him.

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In recent weeks, Americans struggled to make sense of tragic shootings that seemed disconnected at first glance. Anti-Semite James Von Brunn killed Stephen T. Johns, a black security guard at the Holocaust Museum. George Tiller's murder a few days earlier seemed to be about abortion, yet his shooter, Scott Roeder, also had roots in the racial purity movement. Two weeks ago, it was reported that the murders of Raul Flores and his daughter in Arizona were charged to three people with white supremacist ambitions.

There's been lots of discussion about why hate crimes are rising and how to prevent future tragedies, yet we've largely missed the relationship between extremist racism and the less obvious version that plays out in our political debates. These shooters all felt that people of color (along with women and Jews) have stolen the birthright of white men. In his book "Kill the Best Gentiles," Von Brunn rails against "the calculated destruction of the White Race." Roeder was a member of the Montana Freemen; commenters on white supremacist websites praised him for ensuring that Tiller would never "kill another White baby." Flores' alleged murderers appear to have been preparing for a white uprising.

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The media is full of speculation about President Obama's deft "deflection" against President Hugo Chavez' maneuvering and finger-pointing in the Honduras crisis. But another narrative is possible, of an undisclosed new diplomatic collaboration replacing the constant tensions and CIA foreknowledge of the brief 2002 coup against the Venezuelan leader.

It is too early to define a new era, but something profoundly new began developing between Obama and Chavez at the hemispheric conference in April in Trinidad.

According to eyewitness sources, under the apparently blind eye of the global media, the two leaders had lengthy conversations. The media covered the friendly photo of the initial handshake between the two leaders, then made much ado about an apparently-impertinent Chavez handing Obama a book in Spanish by Eduardo Galleano.

What has not been reported is that Obama, leaving his advisers behind, held lengthy private conversations with Chavez where only an interpreter was present.

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Adding my thanks to Leonard for producing this timely and thorough book. I think mostly about how explicit, violent white supremacy relates to the more subtle ways in which racism works, as seemingly race-neutral policies like deregulation of the mortgage industry or immigration raids produce never-ending racial disparities. Those disparities segregate Americans and create the conditions for a racial divide into which white supremacists easily step.

In a piece called The White Supremacist in Us, which I wrote after the shootings of Dr. George Tiller and Stephen T. Johns, I note that our solutions to racist violence tend to focus on the individual - either punishment or education depending on how far gone the person is. But the policies that aren't obviously about hate crimes have the greatest potential to stop the perpetuation of racist ideas. Racial hierarchies show up in our policy debates every time we ask the question who deserves education/healthcare/legal status/prison. These are the policies that the Obama Administration will work to change, drawing even more ire from the white supremacist crowd.

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John Hodgman was right. It's the revenge of the nerds in America right now. These past few years we've seen self-proclaimed, highly-influential nerds using the power of online technology to play a huge role in driving public policy, political campaigns and organizing grassroots engagement. In the 2008 presidential campaign both McCain and Obama harnessed the power of new media to address voters, raise millions and rally their supporters. And just in the last two weeks, Twitter is revolutionizing the way protests are coordinated and communicated in Iran.

But social networking isn't just for electoral battles. It's transforming the way communities organize for the public good. And now, nerds--and I say that with the utmost respect-- are changing the lives of thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. Case in point, Rey Leal, an Iraq veteran, found his community online and began his journey home from war:

Rey served in Fallujah during some of the heaviest fighting, earning a Bronze Star with valor as a Private First Class, an almost unheard of accomplishment for a Marine of his rank. When he was discharged in February 2008, Rey looked forward to returning to Texas to begin a new chapter with his wife and infant son. Unfortunately, Rey's transition home from combat was far from easy. He struggled with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and spent months trying to deal with his symptoms, including severe depression and insomnia. His marriage at a breaking point, Rey sought treatment.

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Each month, I receive from Leo Hindery an update on "America's effective unemployment rate" which includes not only the official unemployment figures but other data points showing off-the-books unemployed or underemployed people.

The numbers are staggering and are aggregates of official data. They matter because various Obama administration officials including the President himself started off calling for huge stimulus packages to help generate "jobs, jobs, jobs!"

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Congratulations to my Iraqi friends on the occasion of the significant (if not quite total) withdrawal of US military occupation rule from your cities and towns that took place yesterday according to the November 2008 Withdrawal Agreement between our two governments.

I wish you all the very best as you continue working to reconstruct lives, communities, and a nation that have been harmed very severely indeed by the actions and decisions of my government and its military (as well as by others.)

I am so sorry that we in the peace movement were unable to prevent the disastrous (and lie-based) decision our government took to invade your country in 2003. We tried, but we were not strong enough.

I hope that the rest of the US withdrawal, as mandated in the Withdrawal Agreement, goes ahead smoothly.

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The other day Ashraf Khalil wrote about how hard it was for him to publish an account of the mistreatment of Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer in the LA Times last year. Khalil's story reminded a reader of the story that Ken Silverstein wrote in Harper's two years ago, describing his ordeal in trying to publish a story explaining Hezbollah's political appeal in Lebanon:

After submitting my story, though, I ran up against insurmountable editorial obstacles. It was clear that I was deemed to have written a story that was too favorable to Hezbollah, even though any article seeking to examine its popularity would, by necessity, require some focus on the group's more attractive aspects. After the story was near completion, a new editor was called in to review it because, I was told, Hezbollah had a history of inviting reporters to Lebanon and controlling their agenda. The obvious implication was that this had happened in my case--despite the fact that, outside of my interviews with Hezbollah officials, I had had no contact with the party. I had hired my own driver (who turned out to be sympathetic to Hezbollah, like most Shiites, but not connected to the movement) and translators (all Christians), with no restrictions placed on where I went or who I met with; and in fact I had spent significant time with the group's critics.

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First of all, I want to thank Leonard Zeskind not just for Blood and Politics, but for all the work he's done over the years tracking the White Nationalist movement. While writing my first book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, I learned how psychologically grueling - not to mention tedious - it can be to spend lots of time in milieus whose values are radically opposed to one's own. Leonard, you've persisted in this crucial work much longer than I ever could have, and I'd be curious to know how you manage it.

Though of course, that's not the most pertinent question here. For me, the one looming issue raised by your book is what Obama means for this movement. I suspect the election of any Democratic president would have resulted in an increase in right-wing terrorism; as I've written many times before, it was no accident that right-wing domestic violence peaked amid all the febrile conspiracy-theorizing of the Clinton years and then fell off under Bush. But obviously Obama takes it to a whole new level - he's pretty much the embodiment of the white nationalist movement's nightmares. There are plenty of disturbing signs out there suggesting growing activity among violent, far-right groups. What are you seeing? And what do you predict?

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Last Sunday, Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell was interviewed on "Fox News Sunday" and declared, "America has the finest health care system in the world."

Only a politician who takes his talking points from big PhRMA or the insurance industry could make such a statement in these times. Whereas during the last big health care debate many tried to make this argument, most elected Republicans would be unwilling to go out on this limb today.

Let's just examine some very simple facts:

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The Minnesota Supreme Court today ruled that Al Franken was the winner of the November senate election. Could it really be over? What's your favorite moment from the six months-plus drama? Use this thread to discuss the story.

Max Blumenthal writes that it is wonderful that we all empathize with Iranians killed or wounded in the struggle for freedom but points out America's utter indifference to identical tragedies in the West Bank and Gaza.

Of course, as Max explains, it is hard for Americans to become outraged by events they rarely see. The American media decided long ago that reporting honestly on the occupation was dangerous. Advertisers and pressure groups don't much care about Iran but they do care about anything related to Israel.

Fortunately, the public mood is changing. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are changing our ridiculously one-sided Middle East policies. And, according to the polls, the public at large agrees with them.

But the media lags behind and no wonder with the MSM in such financial problems. Not so the blogosphere which is entirely (with the exception of the crazy right) opposed to Israel's current policies. It is no coincidence that the blogosphere is immune to pressure from big advertisers and from highly paid lobbyists. That may be one reason an Andrew Sullivan can move from being a typical New Republic type friend of the occupation to its most powerful and persuasive internet opponent.

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Al Kamen, via Michael Crowley, offers up this spectacular piece of Americana: there is a General Tommy Franks Leadership Institute and Museum.

If it merges with the Bernard Madoff Leadership Institute and Museum to form the Bernie-Tommy Leadership Institute and Museum, it could brand itself with the motto: It Looked Great Until We Tanked.

But that, of course, would be unfair to Gen. Franks. Madoff knew what he was doing.

The House's passage of the Waxman-Markey bill raises the possibility that the United States will finally do something on global warming. This prospect has the industry hacks screaming at top volume about the horrible fate that awaits the economy. Everyone should know not to take them seriously, as I will explain in a moment.

First, we should acknowledge the obvious: The bill is awful. It gives away permits to greenhouse gas emitters that should instead be auctioned. As a result, money that could be rebated to taxpayers or used to fund the development of clean technologies instead goes to the industries that are the source of the problem.

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At the daily briefing today, State Department spokesman, Ian Kelly, was asked if there was room for compromise on the issue of a settlement freeze.

Here is Kelly's response. "We look forward to sitting down and talking about what can we do to move this process forward. In order to create this environment that will be conducive to resumptions of the negotiations, both sides need to comply with road map commitments....Freeze on all activity relating to settlements including natural growth is laid out very clearly. Working out the way to our resolution, I'm not going to say we're not going to compromise; we'll see what happens."

Note that last part. "Working out the way to resolution, I'm not going to say we're not going to compromise; we'll see what happens."

He seems to be saying that the US will compromise on settlements or "natural growth," but, in fact, he is saying the opposite. He says that first the freeze goes into effect, the Roadmap is complied with, and then "working our way to a resolution....we'll see what happens."

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By a 5-4 decision, the conservative judicial activists on the Supreme Court violated in the Ricci decision any reasonable notion of state sovereignty by second-guessing use of public money by a local government, imposing by fiat the elitist views of those judges on how to judge potential qualifications for a local firefighters job.

It is a remarkable thing that conservatives that supposedly object to (a) inflexible federal rules on civil rights; (b) telling states how to spend their own money, and (c) second-guessing elected officials with judicial opinion would violate all three principles in the Ricci firefighter case. But then, conservatives have never really objected to judicial activism or federal imposition on local governments, just to most situations where such federal activism benefits poor people or non-white folks.

Somehow don't expect to hear Sotomayor praised for judicial restraint and deference to states rights in her 2nd Circuit ruling in the Ricci decision.

Update Below the Fold

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OK, so Bernie Madoff will spend the rest of his life in jail. But the question of what happened to the money still remains.

The central problem being played out among Madoff victims is that only a small fraction of the nearly $65 billion that disappeared has been recovered.

So he didn't earn 10% a year on the invested money with some fantastic stock picking skill. Even if he had left it in a money market account earning 2%, it wouldn't explain how most of the $65 billion has disappeared, unless as I speculated in January it was just a money laundering operation for some very bad people who made sure they got whole.

The New York Times is reporting that the Netanyahu-Barak government may do us a big favor and accept a 3-6 month ceasefire.

Basically that offer means nothing. The status quo will be frozen for a few months (except where "construction is underway" and in East Jerusalem). And then, when the heat is off, there will, as always, be a huge explosion in settlement building. By the end of the year there will be more settlers and more land expropriated for settlements than now.

The Jerusalem and "construction underway" exemptions are typical. With these exemptions, the Israelis are rejecting Obama's demand. He said no exceptions and Clinton reiterated it. But here they "accept" with gigantic holes. Jerusalem, come on! Only a credulous press will call this acceptance. Rest assured it will.

Nonetheless, this offer -- if it pans out -- is good news. It means that the pressure is working. The administration should just pocket this offer and keep the heat on. Our goal must remain, in Secretary Clinton's words, "stopping the settlements."

Three to six months is a nice start to forever. But you can be sure that Netanyahu and Barak do not intend it that way. It's up to the President to ensure that is how it plays out.

The string of recent attacks by racists and anti-Semites, including the point-blank murder of a Latino man and his nine-year old daughter in Arivaca, Arizona, by members of a Minuteman splinter group from Washington state, has riveted the public eye on the violent wing of the white nationalist movement. Less well noticed, by contrast, has been the "mainstreaming" wing as it seeks to find new adherents. Just this past weekend, for example, the Council of Conservative Citizens met in Jackson, Mississippi for one of its bi-annual conferences. The organization is the lineal descendant of the white Citizens Councils, known in the 1950s and 1960s as the "downtown Klan." And the Council and other white nationalist groups are preparing to use the July 4 weekend Tea Party events coming up as a place to find new recruits.

Let me proffer Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream as the essential background reading necessary to understand the context and meaning of these latest events. One of the lessons of this book is that murders and politicking both have been part of the white-ist movement since it resurfaced after the defeat of old-style segregationists by the black freedom movement in the 1960s.

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General Electric's CEO Jeff Immelt gave a speech in Detroit on Friday announcing a new manufacturing plant. What he said went beyond the usual corporate-speak into the realm of essential truth.

Many bought into the idea that America could go from a technology-based, export-oriented powerhouse to a services-led, consumption-based economy - and somehow still expect to prosper. That idea was flat wrong. And what did we get in the bargain? We've seen a great vanishing of wealth. Our competitive edge has slipped away, and this has hit the middle class hard.

As a nation, we've been consuming more than we earn, saved too little and taken on far too much debt. Growth in research and development has slowed. Our country has made too little progress on some of the defining challenges of our time - like clean energy and affordable health care. Our budget and trade deficits have reached levels that are clearly not sustainable...

Recently my colleague Peter Loescher, the CEO of Siemens, extolled the importance of Germany as an exporting country. In my career, I have never heard an American CEO say that the United States should be leading in exports. Well, I am saying it today: This country ought to be, and we can be, not just the world's leading market but a leading exporter as well.

As I have been saying, the consumer economy will not rescue us from this crisis. We have to become an export power again. And this transition has to come soon. Bob Herbert pointed this morning to a shocking study on labor underutilization (unemployed+part time employed+given up looking for a job).

"By May 2009," according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, "the total number of underutilized workers had increased dramatically from 15.63 million to 29.37 million -- a rise of 13.7 million, or 88 percent. Nearly 30 million working-age individuals were underutilized in May 2009, the largest number in our nation's history. The overall labor underutilization rate in May 2009 had risen to 18.2 percent, its highest value in 26 years."

If a year from now we still have 30 million underutilized workers the civil unrest could be exploited by demagogues of the right and the left. Take your pick. It could get ugly.

This, from my friend David Shulman, an activist in the Israeli-Palestinian peace group Ta'ayush, who has written widely about acts of witness in the South Hebron hills--including in this blog:

While Prime Minister Netanyahu scoffs at Ahmedinajad's beatings of peaceful demonstrators, here is what happened yesterday, in broad daylight, at the village of al-Safa, inside occupied Palestinian territory. I am reporting the testimony of Dr. Amiel Vardi, and many other supporting testimonies. There is graphic photographic documentation, including a live video clip, which can be seen here. The pictures seen here are part of a series that can be viewed at this Flickr site.

Further photographic evidence will become available within the next day or two. (Israel has so far not resorted to blocking internet sites.) What Amiel reports is incontrovertible.

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A well-informed friend writes from Tel Aviv "of the shame of Ehud Barak as a servant of Bibi. Mitchell refused to meet Bibi because he refused to accept a freeze on building in the settlements. Today Barak leaves for Washington as a middleman," to meet with Mitchell. "He comes with an offer: A freeze of 3 months. Everybody knows that 3 months - when one builds hundreds of houses, streets, infrastructure - is nothing. Sometimes it is what one has to wait just for the plumbing company to finish another project. But the cheating that enabled the building of the project of settlement goes on: If one reads the small print in Barak's 'new offer' it says" (according to Yedioth Ahronoth):

Barak would propose that a three-month moratorium would not cover some 2,000 buildings under construction in West Bank enclaves. Work on homes for Jews in Arab East Jerusalem also would continue.

Reuters, which moved a story about the small print, also says:

U.S. officials said Washington was considering making allowances for some structures nearing completion.

The AP has this:

"The stalemate with Israel will continue if settlement growth does not stop," said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, an aide to Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Isn't the U. S. in its fifth decade of "making allowances" for West Bank settlements? Isn't it past time to cut off the allowances?

P. S. Gershom Gorenberg has a wise and pungent WP op-ed yesterday on the tedious history of Israeli rationalizations for self-thawing "freezes." His punch-line: "the real question is whether the Obama administration will blink first or stand firm on a freeze as an essential step toward making peace."

Okay, that's not exactly right, but there is an important link. In his column in the NYT today, the former chief economist to President Bush warns that a public health care plan could in the long-run lead to lower pay for doctors and therefore fewer doctors. Of course one of the reasons that we pay twice as much as everyone else for health care is that our doctors get paid twice as much as in places like Canada, Germany, and England, so one part of controlling costs will probably involve making doctors' pay more internationally competitive.

Greg warns that this will lead to fewer doctors in the long-run. While there is surely some truth to this (we could remove the protectionist barriers that limit the flow of qualified foreign doctors), there is the obvious question of what else these would be doctors could do. After all, physicians are the most highly paid profession.

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