When John McCain looks like he is in trouble with the uber-right wing of the party and might well go down in a primary challenge it is time to run for the exits.

But it sure is going to be fun watching the GOP trying to explain to its base that opting out is going to be electoral suicide. The tea party faction won't care.

All administrations face obstruction by career civil servants. A political appointee holdover from Bush is unlikely to be worse for the simple fact that they are not going to have anything like the same political support base.

The real problem is the stuffing of the career civil service with the likes of unqualified Regent University graduates.

Loss of federal grants already awarded is loss of property. Loss of the right to apply for grants is a property interest.

Acorn clearly has standing to sue here as they are the subject of the bill of attainder.

I really don't see how any argument could be made to the contrary.

More importantly, the Yes Men would get discovery for the Chamber's dealings with the coal industry. Now that would be more than worth the cost of any legal proceedings and then some.

The real problem for the chamber is that there is no link whatsoever between the policies they promote and their membership. They didn't ask the membership for input on the climate change policy, they just claimed to be speaking on their behalf.

Which was of course the point of the satire - a point that court discovery will prove beyond any contradiction.

We should hope the case goes forward, it will be the end of the Chamber.

There are almost no corporations that give a wetslap about Grover Norquist's agenda. Yet all their lobbyists will be off at his breakfasts chowing down so that they get their own personal face time in.

So you hire a lobbyist to pay attention to the regulations concerning the use of formaldehyde in running shoes and you find that they have signed you up for every GOP cause du jour regardless of what the corporate interest might be.

And you might not even care what the decision reached on the formaldehyde issue is so much as want to know when and how it is likely to impact your business.

The appeals court will throw the appeal out without comment to avoid further engagement, or they will up the fine significantly and refer it to the bar soc.

I for one have a hard time seeing how the US manages to deflect that strategy without coming off as a hypocrite. Iran has ticked off plenty of countries, but not so recently as the US has by invading Iraq.

Now imagine that there is an Israeli or US attack. Neither has the slightest chance of success since we have no idea where the uranium is.

The best estimates we have suggest that Iran has either completed its bomb already or has stopped just short of completion. Which is what Pakistan and India did for over a decade. The UK and France both built bombs in the aftermath of WWII, both countries were considerably poorer than modern day Iran and they lacked modern computing and CNC machine tools. Any country that has uranium reserves (as Iran does) can have a bomb if they want to.

So if Iran is attacked, the most likely outcome in my view would be that they shut down the straits immediately, the price of oil spikes and the war is shut down within a week.

If the US was either the attacker or had allowed use of Iraqi airspace, then expect there to be thousands of US casualties. It would not be very hard for a country that only wanted to inflict casualties on the US and was indifferent to the casualties it sustained to inflict casualties on the US in Iraq.

I don't think that there is any possibility that the Obama administration would attack, which leaves an Israeli attack against the will of the US President. I think that would be a total catastrophe for Israeli interests.

If Iran is attacked, they will withdraw from the non-proliferation treaty, wait eight to eighteen months and then perform their own nuclear test. At which point the offer of multilateral disarmament will appear to be quite reasonable.

Iran was very skillful in manipulating the last administration. They persuaded them to take out their principal regional threat and replace him with a convicted confidence trickster, the Bernie Madoff of Lebanon.

It would be rather nice if those people whose ignorance and incompetence has been proven beyond doubt by the fiasco they caused in Iraq would shut up and be silent for a decent interval. Certainly nobody should listen to them until they have admitted their own errors.

Even if Israel can get there and back, they do not know where all the facilities are. The only ones we know about are the declared ones. Only a fool would think that those are the only ones.

Contrary to what the neo-con fantasists who got the US into the Iraq quagmire contend, the Iranian regime has plenty of capacity for inflicting casualties on the US. The green zone is easily within range and they can shut down the Straits of Hormuz to the commercial shipping that delivers oil.

The Iranian regime very clearly desires an attack by Israel. An attack by the US would be second best but would meet their need to distract internal attention from their election fraud and allow them to crack down on the opposition as supporters of the foreign aggressors.

The way in which the election was stolen makes it clear that the regime wanted people to know that they had been cheated. It was a clear power play be Ahmedinejad against the clerics who have now been forced to discard any claim to legitimacy in order to endorse the result. Ahmedinejad wants people to know that they are living in a dictatorship and that he is now the power in the land to be reckoned with.

I bet the regime tipped the US off to the location of the site on purpose. Then when the US refused to act they were about to reveal it themselves. Ahmedinejad appears to have planned for an attack by the US or Israel as part of his election stealling strategy.

But that does not change the fact that the Republican party has been silent as their supporters have been using increasingly violent language in their anti-government protests. I do not know of a single Republican who has spoken out against clear threats of violence such as the poster saying 'we cam unarmed THIS TIME'.

This has all happened before. Back in the early 90s when Clinton was first elected there was outrage from the Talk Radio 'shock jocks'. The rhetoric was steadily ramped up until April 19th 1995 when Timothy McVeigh, a racist anti-government militia supporter murdered 168 people in the Oaklahoma City Bombing.

How much proof does the Republican party leadership need before it acts? Is it going to take another mass murder before they have the courage to tell their supporters that it is not ok to talk about armed revolution, that doing so is treason, that they utterly repudiate such talk?

The talk about death panels is not just a wingnut fantasy, it legitimizes violent acts. If the state is planning to kill people, then killing government workers becomes self defense.

The birther hysteria is not just a wingnut fantasy, it is a strategy to delegitimize the administration, if Obama is not qualified to be President then attacks on the government are not treason.

We do not know for certain why Sparkman was murdered, we may never know, but if the Republican party continues to ignore the seditious talk amongst its core supporters it is a question of when and how many, not if there is a murder where the motive is undeniable.

Israel is unlikely to be very much disturbed by a boycott lead by Iran. But it would be exceptionally disturbed by a boycott led by members of the Jewish diaspora.

The South African boycott was effective because the Whites considered themselves an integral part of the Anglosphere. And when the boycott began they had a huge amount of support for their position from the likes of Enoch Powell and the racist Monday Club faction of the Tory party in the UK and the overt supporters of segregation like Jessie Helms, Strom Thurmond and so on in the US.

Could the same happen in Israel, well of course it could. That is precisely why everyone gets so excited about the issue.

There are many problems with the factual basis for the claims made. The figures cited in the article overstate the proportion of Jews living in the borders controlled by Israel for a start. Jews are at best a bare majority of the population. That is why it is so important to pretend that the two state solution remains viable.

It is not too hard to see how this plays out from here. The US Israel lobby is already over-fond of playing the 'holocaust' card and the 'Nazi' card. I have seen plenty of AIPAC/CAMERA stuff that equates Josh Marshall to a Nazi, what do you think they say about Jews who are less sympathetic to Israel? Or non-Jews?

Ultimately the desperation of these people to deny any and all criticism, even the mere possibility of legitimate criticism of Israel will have the opposite effect to the one they intend. Every day they will demand that people take sides. Well, we have just seen where that has left the GOP.

Instead consider what the conditions for a stable peace would have to be. Could peace be sustained if the law continues to be different for Jews and non Jews?

In particular, can there be peace if a person with Jewish ancestry has an automatic right to Israeli citizenship while a person born within the territorial boundaries is denied citizenship because they fled in fear of massacre by the Irgun?

Or can there be any hope of peace if Jews are denied the right to live in Bethlehem or Hebron.

If there is going to be peace then both sides are going to have to live within a very narrow territorial district regardless of where the boundaries are drawn. And both sides are going to have to undertake not to visit petty discriminations against the other or any peace will quickly collapse.

Conventional US wisdom is that the borders of the two state solution are the only thing to be discussed. But the borders only matter because of the real fear of discrimination that both sides must face as a minority. And nobody who is caught the wrong side of any proposed border is going to accept it when that means being humiliated as a permanent minority.

The reason Israel supporters are so upset about the focus being put on their petty Apartheid system within their borders is that they know that they cannot defend it. Very few Israelis will even defend it, they attempt to deny it instead or start desperately trying to change the subject, as if the actions of the PLO or the Stern gang or Hamas or the Irgun were not all precisely as bad.

Dismantling the petty injustices must be the starting point for any peace process.

If Josh Marshall is 'anti-Semitic' then the term has no meaning any more.

What you are really saying is 'I don't have an argument, I don't have an excuse, but I really would not like to see my belief system challenged so I will try to find excuses to ignore the problem and hope it goes away'.

What happens in Saudi Arabia or Iran or Zimbabwe is utterly irrelevant to the argument here. The US does not provide any of those countries with aid, it has little to no cultural influence. The very fact that Israel has to compare itself to such countries is itself a terrible indictment of the system there.

These are the tactics of agenda denial. If you know you are going to lose an argument you try to avoid it by arguing that this is not the right time, or that something else should take higher priority.

Netanyahu's claim that the US should not consider the settlement issue while Iran is building a nuclear bomb is a classic example of agenda denial.

And Avigdor Lieberman is certainly stupid enough to create a senseless provocation. He is already busy backing moves to replace tri-lingual road signs with ones in Hebrew only. He is a racist and at some point that will be made uncomfortably clear.

Since 9/11 AIPAC has been rather busy turning friends into enemies. Anyone who disagreed with them for any reason has been called either a NAZI or a 'self-hating Jew'. Reports suggest that this mode of thinking has now spread back to Israel. The denial that Netanyahu referred to Emmanuel and Axelrod as self-hating Jews was particularly unconvincing.

So while I don't see US sanctions as being at all likely, I don't think it very likely that the US spends a great deal of time arguing on Israel's behalf.

Over the next few years it seems more likely than not that Iraq will be returning to normality. The cause has nothing to do with the surge and everything to do with the fact that it is now clear that the US has an honest intention of withdrawal. There is also a strong possibility of change in Iran. Again the significant factor is not the result of neo-con blovations about the axes of evil but the fact that they have stopped.

Israel's narrative would look even less convincing in that context.

The fact is that the two state solution requires both sides to do the impossible. Neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis will give up their version of the 'right of return'. The settlers cannot be moved and there is no equivalent land to trade. And even if the land existed, the settlers would immediately begin attempts to colonize it as well.

What Obama has demonstrated here is that Netanyahu cannot deliver any two-state peace agreement on any terms.

That is the real reason that AIPAC is so furious. Obama has destroyed their narrative in which only the Palestinians are the obstacles to peace.

Once it is clear that Israel is not serious about the two state option, the US is forced to recognize that Israel considers the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza to be permanent.

And that is something that US supporters of Israel really want to avoid having to admit because then they have to start admitting that the very concept of a state that gives preferential treatment to one group of citizens is totally unacceptable.

Drawing a proposed border would make sense if the Israelis were prepared to offer land equivalent to the land appropriated for the settlements. But Israel is relatively densely populated and the unused land is good for nothing. And Israel does not have the slightest intention of giving up the water.

What the Likudnicks are terrified of is the prospect that the Obama administration might do something of this sort: put a peace proposal on the table that the Palestinians accept and the Israelis reject.

Obama has a very full domestic program for his first term. Why is he obliged to fix Israel's problems as well?

Taking on the settlers looks like a very smart move for Obama. It has lowered expectations and kicks the whole deal down the road a few years.

By that time it is rather likely that there will be a different government in Israel and there might even be a different government in Iran.

As it happens the medicate prescription plan savings from bulk purchasing are a major part of the money that is going to be used for this plan.

Long term the health care plan will be funded the sensible way - by eliminating a very large part of the Pentagon budget.

What the GOP has stood for is low taxes and high spending. But only spending on totally wasteful projects to stuff the pockets of their chums.

Thats why the GOP can't have a mass movement, they can't risk having people think for themselves - they will go off message.

Now that the center has lost power, it has lost the power of patronage and the system flies apart at the seams. The tea-baggers are the next GOP. They will boot the current crew just like Newt did.

I suspect though that Josh is right here and that the real explanation will become apparent before too long. My bet is that it will be a financial scandal that is a bit tricky to explain. Or it may be something that would destroy her credibility with her base, like finding out that she had an abortion in her teens.

His wife had no problem with that behavior.

If she is more upset by the fact that people know about his behavior than the behavior itself then she deserves the pain.

The two state solution is no more than a way to allow US Jews to feel good about continuing to support Israel.

Its not the terrorism that is the threat to Israel, its the demographics. The West cannot support a state that treats non-Jews as second class citizens. And that is precisely what Bibi's 'Jewish state' means.

Since Israel has no intention of giving up the land it has absolutely no choice but to take the people who go along with that land. And if that means the end of the Jewish status of the state, well they should have thought of that earlier.

Let us imagine for a minute that Iran's theocratic system does collapse and is replaced by a modern democratic state. What is going to make the more attractive partner for the US, Israel with no oil and an obnoxious apartheid system or Iran? It is really no accident that so many Israel hawks are clearly hoping that the reform movement fails.

Another sign is the 14 words that refers to an 88 word passage from Mein Kampf. They are frequently used together as 1488.

But I really don't think it likely that this particular nutjob has been waiting till he turned 88 to perform this attack. 9/11 was originally planned to be a week later which would have coincided with some event AQ considers significant. The Oklahoma City bomb was set a year after Waco.

Nut jobs might wait days, weeks or a year for a significant date, but not till they turn 88.